peripateticpeasant [none/use name]

  • 3 Posts
  • 13 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: March 17th, 2024
  • peripateticpeasant [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoEthnic Minorities and People of Color@hexbear.net•EM & PoC Biweekly thread - 23/06/2025 and 30/06/2025English
    11·
    4 days ago

    I really don’t care what is happening in New York. And i especially don’t care if this person is “Muslim” who will work under the chains of the liberal bourgeois state. If all you need is some left-facing slogans to vote than I don’t know what to say.

    Can’t wait for my country to get indebted to Wall Street banks and get “structurally adjusted” - but atleast the banks are under a city with a “Muslim” governor! All is well. - Felt the same when Sadiq Khan become London’s mayor.

    and before anyone says why I have “Muslim” in quotes, I take the opinion of Houria Bouteldja of what it means to be a Muslim in the West:

    spoiler so it doesnt take the whole chat

    One of God’s names is “a l-‘Adl,” which means “The Just.” The idea that my father, Allah yrahmou, transmitted to me is that Islam is fundamentally an ideal of justice. So, to the question “Can one be Muslim in the West?” his answer (as well as mine) would have been a provocative “No.” The presentation I will make here is not that of an Islamic scholar, as I have neither the qualification for it nor the pretension to it. Instead, I would like to offer an analytical framework for understanding the interactions between the fact of being and calling oneself Muslim and the fact of being involved in politics. Wal-‘Ilmou lillâh.

    If Islam is really this ideal of radical justice, then our presence as Muslims in the heart of the imperial city, in the heart of injustice, is problematic. In this context, perhaps we would have more humility if we saw ourselves as becoming Muslims.

    Some of you may dismiss that statement since, at the individual level, you respect the teachings of the sacred book, the five pillars of Islam, the Sunnah and the great principles. These are indeed the bases of Islamic practice and they are fundamental to whomever aspires to belong to the Ummah el Islamiya. But I contend that there is a profound contradiction between the ideal of justice advocated by Islam and the material gains that we have achieved by living, to a great extent, off of spoliation of the South (in the form of wages, social redistribution or political rights). We are certainly not the main beneficiaries of North/South domination (the bourgeoisie is), and we are not even secondary beneficiaries (the white working classes are). We are the unwanted and collateral beneficiaries of this system but we still benefit, even while remaining in the margins.

    When I say “we,” I mean this intermediate category between Whites and people of the Third World, that is, postcolonial subjects living in the West. Ancestors of colonized people and victims of structural racism in the North, they are despised, relegated, discriminated against but their burden is lessened, relatively speaking, because they enjoy the social, economic and political rights of liberal democracies. So I speak of “aristocratic indigenous people” not unlike those in white left movements who speak of “aristocratic laborers.” The first thing to do in order not to escape one’s conscience is to face reality in all its ugliness. And the first ugliness of this system is that none of us is innocent. But we are not guilty either because the world in which we live is a system that precedes us and will probably survive after us. We are not guilty, but we are responsible. We are responsible as human beings, we are responsible as third-people living in the North, and we are responsible as “potential” Muslims. In my view, it is based on this awareness and this objective situation in conflict with the Islamic principle of justice that we must forge politics. Here, I would like to introduce a distinction between social and political Muslims. The first are, in a large sense, cultural Muslims (they inherited Islamic culture because they were born in an Islamic environment—they practice or not or are converts) while the second are those who, in addition to having faith, are aware of their responsibility in a structurally unjust world. It is this second category that is the focus of my interest in this paper.

    I’m not here to have a debate (because my mind is already made up), but i am just airing it out at the void really.

  • peripateticpeasant [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoEthnic Minorities and People of Color@hexbear.net•EM & PoC bi-weekly thread 09/06/2025 and 16/06/2025English
    8·
    18 days ago

    I had this in my notes

    Do people think their armchair analysis of events in West Asia have any relevance to their praxis in the West - did I somehow miss the underground missile silos procured by the DSA?

    Doesn’t matter if you want to get “both sides of the story” or a “materialist” analysis of daily mechanisms of the war, in the end Iran/Russia are objectively anti-imperialist. That’s the only position you’d need to argue. The rest will be handled by the relevant peoples that are actually directly affected by the war.

    I am sometimes very thankful that my part of the world barely gets mentioned by Westerners. I would have to stop paying my internet bills if that was the case.

  • peripateticpeasant [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoEthnic Minorities and People of Color@hexbear.net•EM & PoC weekly thread 01/06/2025English
    7·
    28 days ago

    I am trying to find a different piece of work of Lenin that talks about the role the masses in not commenting the national affairs of countries that their nation-state is in imperialist war with but I can’t find it.

    Regardless any Global South radical knows this, whether through explicit radical theory or through culture, of not interfering in other people’s affairs especially when you lack the knowledge or ability to affect it.

    But in the meanwhile I found this which I find perfect for this context in Opportunism, and the Collapse of the Second International:

    Kautsky wants to represent the golden mean, and to reconcile the “two extremes” which “have nothing in common”! Today (sixteen months after the outbreak of war) he admits that the masses are revolutionary. Condemning in the same breath revolutionary action, which he calls “Abenteuer” “in den Strassen”[4] (p. 272), Kautsky wants to “reconcile” the revolutionary masses with the opportunist leaders, who have “nothing in common” with them—but on what basis ? On the basis of mere words! On the basis of “Left-wing” words of the “Left-wing” minority in the Reichtag! Let the minority, like Kautsky, condemn revolutionary action, calling it adventurism, but it must feed the masses with Left-wing words. Then there will be peace in the Party, unity with the Südekums, Legiens, Davids, and Monitors!

  • peripateticpeasant [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPtoneurodiverse@hexbear.net•Am I Autistic?English
    3·
    2 months ago

    So many great responses, thank you all. meow-hug

    It touched upon all my concerns and questions, and further avenues to do research when I have the time.

    I think I’ll stick with self-identification for now, and use it for mainly personal and social settings. I think the sort of accommodations I would get with an official Autism diagnosis is already covered through my ADHD diagnosis, at least at this stage of my life.

    We shall see if this remains the case as I progress through the tiresome testing of the ADHD meds, but I’ll not worry about the costs and additional work for now.

    Care-Comrade