Islam and Anarchism

Mohamed Abdou

Description

Discourse around Muslims and Islam all too often lapses into a false dichotomy of Orientalist and fundamentalist tropes. A popular reimagining of Islam is urgently needed. Yet it is a perhaps unexpected political philosophical tradition that has the most to offer in this pursuit: anarchism.

Islam and Anarchism is a highly original and interdisciplinary work, which simultaneously disrupts two commonly held beliefs - that Islam is necessarily authoritarian and capitalist; and that anarchism is necessarily anti-religious and anti-spiritual. Deeply rooted in key Islamic concepts and textual sources, and drawing on radical Indigenous, Islamic anarchistic and social movement discourses, Abdou proposes 'Anarcha-Islam'.

Constructing a decolonial, non-authoritarian and non-capitalist Islamic anarchism, Islam and Anarchism philosophically and theologically challenges the classist, sexist, racist, ageist, queerphobic and ableist inequalities in both post- and neo-colonial societies like Egypt, and settler-colonial societies such as Canada and the USA.

Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration and Translation
1. Introduction: Panegyric Desert of the Present
The Destructive Legacy of (Neo)Liberalism and Colonial Modernity in the Production of Neo-Orientalist and Neo-Fundamentalist Muslim Subjectivities
A Match to a Powder Keg
Islām and Anarchism Are Dead: Muslim Anarchists in Turtle Island’s Newest Social Movements
Positionality: Who Is Speaking?
A Sum Exceeding the Whole, Everything Divided: The Argument Condensed
2. Authoritarianism, Capitalism, and Capitalist Nation-States: Anarcha-Islām’s Playground and Ethical-Political Consciousness
On Decolonization and Reindigenization, and the Crises of Fleeting Tahrir Moments
Thus Spoke God: The Method of Anarchic Ijtihād
Deleuze and Guattari’s Oedipal Triad: The Nation-State (Daddy) – Capitalism (Mommy) – and Me/Us
3. Anarcha-Islām: An Anti- and Non-Authoritarian Islām
Anarcha-Islām’s Osteological Left-Side
Arise: An Anti- and Non-Authoritarian Islām
Modern Uses of Waṭaniyyah, Qawmiyyah, and Dawla, and Decolonized Vestiges of the Umma and Īmāmah in Arab and Muslim Lexicons
Muslim and Non-Muslim Glossaries of Indigeneity Towards a Resurgent Umma: Anti-Blackness and Anti-Indigenous Politics
4. Anarcha-Islām: An Anti- and Non-Capitalist Islām
Anarcha-Islām’s Osteological Right-Side
Awaken: An Anti- and Non-Capitalist Islām: Micro- and Macro-Economics
As Patients We Come to Each Other’s Aid
5. Uprisings: On (Im)Possibilities and Militant Resistance
The Delusional Myth of Nonviolence
Violence, Jihād, and Qitāl in Islām: A Single Blunder Can Fuel a Great Fire
From the Deception of “Nonviolence” to Red, Black, and Brown Power
Liberatory Victory
6. Conclusion: There Are Only Middles, No Beginnings and No Ends. Between BLM, NoDaPL-INM, and Tahrir
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Islam
• Culture
• Social
• General
• Eastern
• Anarchism
• Anthropology
• Theology
• Cultural studies
• General officer
• Islamic theology
• Sociologie, société et politique
• PHILOSOPHY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Social Science
• Political Ideologies

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781786807151
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Islam and Anarchism
This is one of the fiercest books I ve ever read. It is a call to action. It is conceptually rich and gives us new methodological tools for thinking theory and politics together. It is unrelenting in its critique of liberal assimilationist tendencies in diasporic and BIPOC knowledge production and movement organizing. Abdou is a truth-teller of the highest order. Drawing together disparate geographies and thought into a dazzling web of interconnectedness and dialogue, Islam and Anarchism proffers a kaleidoscopic vision of what could be otherwise.
-Jasbir Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages and The Right to Maim
A passionate plea for a spiritual decolonial movement. Mohamed Abdou advances a vision of Islam that is abolitionist at its core, reminding us that Islam has been and can still be a religion of the oppressed, one that is anti-capitalist, egalitarian, anti-ableist, antipatriarchal, queer feminist and for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
-Sherene H. Razack, Distinguished Professor and Penny Kanner Endowed Chair, Gender Studies, UCLA
An uncompromising queer-feminist vision of decolonial, abolitionist, and anti-capitalist praxis that is keyed to the pluralistic traditions of Islamic spirituality and anarchic thought.
-Iyko Day, Elizabeth C. Small Associate Professor of English and Critical Social Thought, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts
Islam and Anarchism
Relationships and Resonances
Mohamed Abdou
First published 2022 by Pluto Press
New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Mohamed Abdou 2022
The right of Mohamed Abdou to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4191 0 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4192 7 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 786807 14 4 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 786807 15 1 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration and Translation
1. Introduction: Panegyric Desert of the Present
The Destructive Legacy of (Neo)Liberalism and Colonial Modernity in the Production of Neo-Orientalist and Neo-Fundamentalist Muslim Subjectivities
A Match to a Powder Keg
Isl m and Anarchism Are Dead: Muslim Anarchists in Turtle Island s Newest Social Movements
Positionality: Who Is Speaking?
A Sum Exceeding the Whole, Everything Divided: The Argument Condensed
2. Authoritarianism, Capitalism, and Capitalist Nation-States: Anarcha-Isl m s Playground and Ethical-Political Consciousness
On Decolonization and Reindigenization, and the Crises of Fleeting Tahrir Moments
Thus Spoke God: The Method of Anarchic Ijtih d
Deleuze and Guattari s Oedipal Triad: The Nation-State (Daddy) - Capitalism (Mommy) - and Me/Us
3. Anarcha-Isl m: An Anti- and Non-Authoritarian Isl m
Anarcha-Isl m s Osteological Left-Side
Arise: An Anti- and Non-Authoritarian Isl m
Modern Uses of Wat aniyyah, Qawmiyyah, and Dawla, and Decolonized Vestiges of the Umma and m mah in Arab and Muslim Lexicons
Muslim and Non-Muslim Glossaries of Indigeneity Towards a Resurgent Umma: Anti-Blackness and Anti-Indigenous Politics
4. Anarcha-Isl m: An Anti- and Non-Capitalist Isl m
Anarcha-Isl m s Osteological Right-Side
Awaken: An Anti- and Non-Capitalist Isl m: Micro- and Macro-Economics
As Patients We Come to Each Other s Aid
5. Uprisings: On (Im)Possibilities and Militant Resistance
The Delusional Myth of Nonviolence
Violence, Jih d, and Qit l in Isl m: A Single Blunder Can Fuel a Great Fire
From the Deception of Nonviolence to Red, Black, and Brown Power
Liberatory Victory
6. Conclusion: There Are Only Middles, No Beginnings and No Ends. Between BLM, NoDaPL-INM, and Tahrir
Notes
Index
Preface
How did it become a universal truth that electoral democracy is the sole democracy model that most are willing to participate in? When did it become acceptable that governing politicians could truly represent the governed - you, me, and us? When have enshrined laws ever compelled self-made men and capitalist-corporations to act ethically or in any people s interests, particularly in a contemporary neoliberal age in which there is no separation between capitalism and nation-states, or politics and economics? This book attends to these questions. Although the histories of individual Muslim anarchists or anarchistic Muslims, from early twentieth century figures such as Gustave-Henri Jossot, Isabelle Eberhardt, Shibili Shumayyil, and Leda Bruna Rafanelli to more contemporary thinkers such as Peter Lamborn Wilson, Michael Muhammad Knight, Abdennur Prado, and Yakub Islam, are well known, little has been written or imagined about how the Holy Qur n and the Sunnah through the a d th - the Prophetic practice and oral tradition - could be used to flesh out the theology, politics, and philosophy of an Islamic anarchism. Starting from the position that Isl m is not a monolithic, unified belief system, but a heterogeneous and pluralistic series of traditions, perspectives, and practices, Islam and Anarchism constructs an anarchistic interpretation of Isl m and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism, which I call Anarcha-Isl m. It offers a decolonial, social justice framework that elides the prevalent Orientalist and Fundamentalist tropes of Muslims and Isl m and seeks to interweave Indigenous, Black, and People of Colors lives and narratives together.
As a participant in the Orientalized Arab Spring/Islamist Winter uprisings and as an anarchist and a Muslim settler in Turtle Island, I have witnessed troubled times as a result of extreme divisions that exist between these two identities and communities. In response, I offer an Anarcha-Isl m that disrupts two commonly held beliefs: one, that Isl m is necessarily authoritarian and capitalist; two, that anarchism is necessarily anti-religious and anti-spiritual. Anarcha-Isl m is a basis for exploring a new transnational politics and an ethics of friendship and disagreement between these traditions in the context of both the Tahrir uprisings in Egypt and what Richard J.F. Day has called the newest social movements in settler-colonial societies of the U.S./Canada.
The book operates from the premise that colonialism never ended in settler-colonial societies such as the U.S./Canada or in franchise post-colonial societies such as Egypt that inherited the capitalist-State model. Since modernity, Muslims have been globally struggling with an exponentially growing identity crisis, which has led to two reactionary responses. The first response is that we seek to become neo-Fundamentalist terrorists re-enacting our colonially internalized traumas by adopting wanton-impotent violence as a sole holistic strategy. This is exhibited in non-statist movements such as al-Qaeda and proto-statist movements such as ISIS that have embraced warped notions of non-Qur nic concepts as the Caliphate as well as Qur nic concepts as Umma (i.e., a global community of Muslims that historically and traditionally included non-Muslims). The second response is one in which we, as Muslims, re-enact projects of self-Orientalization. An example of this is how diasporic Arabs, Muslims, South West Asians, and North Africans in the U.S./Canada strive to become good law-abiding citizens, who reify and mimic anti-Blackness and participate in the U.S./Canadian states settler-colonization of Indigenous peoples. Furthermore, self-Orientialization does not only occur in the context of assimilation: it was visible in the initial 18 days of the 2011 Tahrir Uprisings. During Tahrir, Egyptians were united under the false banner of patriotic nationalism and abstract chants of freedom, bread, social justice that camouflaged ethical-political, ethnic, gendered, and spiritual factional differences between them.
Anarcha-Isl m can help diasporic Muslims under Euro-American assimilation as well as Muslims in predominantly conservative societies such as Egypt to begin again the transnational radical recreation and re-imagination of their subjectivities and social justice orientations in a way that is conducive to Isl m s post- 9/11 s confrontations with a Euro-American Age of Terror. Anarcha-Isl m is vital in light of the Euro-American perception that Muslims are incapable of assimilation as well as the global perception of Muslims as unable to incept suitable social justice alternatives to Euro-American capitalist nation-state paradigms. The absence of Anarcha-Isl m from social movement horizons leads Muslims, Arabs, South West Asians, and North Africans in non-Euro-American and Euro-American societies to engage in false (neo)liberal-reactionary choices in the form of Orientalism and Fundamentalism. This is stated while noting that an underlying premise of this book is that the so-called East and West are not in a binary relationship, but rather represent a discursive formation that in fact obscures dialectics that cross-cut identities, migrating bodies, and movements. No one is completely oppressed or an oppressor, a victim or victimizer, and in the absence of decolonization all we learn from our internalized violence, trauma, and victimization is its reproductive radiation upon others. That does not deny the subjects of violence agency. It merely affirms that fascism is a mass psychology that has already won, given how we all embody micro-fascistic tendencies in light of our positionalities and the distinct penalties and privileges structurally and symbolically afforded us