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Tequila_Wolf OP wrote

there's many and much bigger concerns here than the naming of things

Of course! But names are also important, especially when they are frames with implicit relations built-in.

It's been really interesting seeing this non-sectarian and open concept of the region play out in Mohamed Abdou's Islam and Anarchism book.

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fortmis wrote

I would love to read that book sometime. It looks really interesting. What do you think of it so far?

And ya, you're right! There's no harm in adjusting our naming of things. It's a pretty easy and effective step in the right direction. I just hope people (not directed at you) don't see a name change as carrying any more weight than it actually does. It can be the illusion of actual change and a distraction.

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Tequila_Wolf OP wrote (edited )

What do you think of it so far?

It's possibly been the most interesting and good anarchic text I've read in a while. I'm only a couple chapters in and have unanswered questions, but he's engaging Islam transversally through a decolonial Deleuzian post-anarchist politics, which is for me already very interesting. It has high affinity with what would go for good politics in a space like this one, even as far as having critique of gender/sexuality, civilisation and colonialism/indigeneity, but actually going beyond people here because most people's conceptions of indigeneity/coloniality are primarily drawn from the global north afaik. So for example he's generally much better than people here on questions of Orientalism. So in some ways it's the most comprehensive anarchism I've seen, though the transcendent god story doesn't work for me.

I don't know if you are/were Muslim, I'll guess you are aware of some of the concepts?

He develops an anarchist Ijtihād first by criticising some of the ways that authoritarian practices and interpretations of Qurʾānic texts became regularised and naturalised after Mohammed, and that actually there are a range of what he calls micro-antiauthoritarian ethical imperatives that when that when applied become anarchic macro-relations politically. He combines this with a re-reading of Umma as independent of its current conflation in the present with the idea of a nation-state, for rethinking notions of kinship and community.

And he does this in particular as part of a project of helping Muslims (especially immigrant Muslims in western spaces) escape either having to assimilate with double-consciousness and therefore become active in the continued colonialism and dispossession of indigenous peoples in the places that they are, OR get sucked into reactionary extremism on the other end.

So I'm really curious about what this kind of project enables. Specifically I'm curious about the ways that this politics could push partial anarchic sensibilities in spaces where a pure anarchism would go nowhere.

So far I think that in practice anarcha-Islam may be very little different from an anticolonial queer insurrectionary anarchist practice. Definitely not the kind of massive differences you might see from those who try to claim anarchism while sneaking state-mediated change into their practice.

Anyway it has lots of really interesting consequences for other stuff I have to do, so I'm going to keep reading it slowly. It's on the usual websites as an epub if you want to download it.

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fortmis wrote

Amazing. I'm going to download it for sure, and really looking forward to it.

I grew up Christian-ish and I really didn't come into contact with much Islamic thought until I started hanging out with other middle eastern folk outside of my family. Having lived in Canada, the reality is that a lot of the diaspora in my community were refugees or children of refugees from Islamic states/islamic revolutions, and for that reason, I think my perspective is a little bias. My mind is still open though.

He develops an anarchist Ijtihād first by criticising some of the ways that authoritarian practices and interpretations of Qurʾānic texts became regularised and naturalised after Mohammed, and that actually there are a range of what he calls micro-antiauthoritarian ethical imperatives that when that when applied become anarchic macro-relations politically. He combines this with a re-reading of Umma as independent of its current conflation in the present with the idea of a nation-state, for rethinking notions of kinship and community.

Definitely intrigued by this. On one end I don't find this hard to believe at all. I've seen this sort of approach applied to Christianity, with varying degrees of "success." Still, referencing what ziq recently mentioned, I too am a little skeptical about the motivation to find anarchy in religion. Not skeptical enough to not be super intrigued by it!

Going to look for this epub version now. Hope that by the time I've read it it's not to deep in your long-term memory, so we can discuss!

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Tequila_Wolf OP wrote (edited )

Still, referencing what ziq recently mentioned, I too am a little skeptical about the motivation to find anarchy in religion.

It is a standard anarchist analysis that I basically agree with.

The questions for me which it raises are, what is the function of the analysis, and what does this analysis mean for our actual practice?

It seems like it is primarily educative. It's important to make clear to people who haven't engaged, that transcendence is incompatible with anarchy. It is important to note the ways that public identification with / participation in (especially Abrahamic) theisms can legitimise their most horrible forms.

But there are very many more ways to relate to it than that, and some of them seem worthwhile to explore. It would be an essay if I wrote about them so I think I'll stop with just some questions that gives more meaning to what I'm trying to think about:

If someone Muslim who embraces anarcha-Islam was in your spaces, under what circumstances would you work with them?

If you were surrounded by or related to Muslim people and you wanted them to understand you better, aware that they would never be anarchists - under what circumstances would it be worthwhile to show them that book?

In what circumstances would knowing these anarchic reading/elements of Islam make us better at engaging Muslim people in their contexts and on mutual terms, and better at doing right by them as people?

There are lots of other important questions to ask that may not foreclose as many possibilities as people might imagine.

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