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Islams & Anarchisms

Mohamed Jean Veneuse | 11.06.2006 03:45 | Analysis | World

ﺍﻠﻤﺘﻮﺘﺮ ﻮ ﺍﻠﺒﺎﻂﻦ ﻮ ﺍﻠﻈﺎﻫﺮ: ﺍﻠﻤﻫﺎﺠﺮ

Dimensions-The Epimenides paradox:
Towards the creation of Islamic
Poststructuralist Anarchist
Interpretation(s)

Dimensions-The Epimenides paradox:
Towards the creation of Islamic
Poststructuralist Anarchist
Interpretation(s)

Preface: Times of Tearful Kings
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon. This is a mad pornographic confession of a proposed real. An infinite conversation coupled with silence, dispersed and reserved, very much alive in an infinite curvature of space, and intertwined, with the paradoxical limit of a realistic exacerbation of a frenzied virtual temporary autonomous zone. Confined in a simulacrum, frenzied, institutionalized and absurd diabolic racist structure, transpiring visa a vie the portal of a delinquent and schizophrenic mind, with a pure intention at heart attaining all the while a calculable “Weberian” notion of a charismatic leader, yet attempting at abstaining from vanity and its lured genealogy through a forced de-ejaculation of desire. Try and exercise will. The rapid production of this seemingly meta-theoretical language is potentially transportable to those at the grass-roots. Otherwise this production which is fed has resulted in nothing but a hygienic wreckage of my intentions and henceforth subsequent actions. This is not the Aalim’s (scholar’s) “know it all”, nor “is it a know it” anything, but rather it is a subtle confrontation, a shipwreck if you will, that through God’s help is left seductively open and filled with void and thus requires in essence Tayseer (Henceforth appeal to a disarmament of the AK and the laborious attempt at visibility to make easy), Ijtihad (the struggle whose doors have, out of hope, remain to be addressed as “the permanently possible”) and a form of initial dialogue(s) between the multiplicities that chose to engage in its dock(s); namely, hope.
Its attempt at evoking the rizhomatic (think of maps and ask yourself where they begin and if they end) is proposed to vulgarly assign and emphasize a “perhaps” to the possibility and then to observe. One prays that it will allow for the manifestation of an orgasmic pleasure of sorts. A smile as an act of charity maybe all that this engagement amounts to, if not regarded as a childish ignorant heap of trash. Yet the room is left open delivering an unbound ‘libidinal’ crystalline energy which could act in this play as a forum for opposition and an alternative to the bound productive, discovered and undiscovered, governing or autonomous bodies that lie in limbo and their respective forces within these maps and networks. Power gives rise to its own resistance…Then what?
This is the beginning of the end of the beginning. This is an Islamic Poststructuralist Anarchistic Interpretation. Domains will be provoked and the potential for any “venereal diseases” Wazo Bi-Allah, that may infect this interpretation will be injected, as absolute consciousness is interrupted by sensation, intentionally to allow for subsequent interpretations to remain autonomous and for it never to become reducible to a “given”. Rather in order to “understand” what has become a “habit” or “ritual” which a plenty have been accustomed to, it becomes necessary to evoke the conscious and unconscious. However what the interpretation requires are the “gift(s)”, knowledge and practice, and in daylight the outcome is a reciprocal “counter-gift”; it is freed. Respectively, pardon the vazaha poetry.

Paths of Nomadic Germinations & Politics of tactical Affinities

Bismi Allah. Alhum Ishrah Lee sadree Wayisr Lee Amree Washrah Okdatan Men Lisanee Yafqahu Qawlee. Learned to stay awake early but someone killed my show. You made your bed so lay in it. We (Those signified and whom identify as Muslim) ended up like the rose that grew from a razor blocked underground, only to find a posting upon rising to the surface; “No Trespassing”. Graffiti: “Fuck your politicians and Holy Wars” become visible and discovered, infiltrating our psyche as they “texture” the surface. Wrote this one dialing 1-800-Brooklyn after pulling up a green chair and watching Islam(s) being worn out, disheveled like clothes (Ibn Kathir: 87), pondering all the meanwhile when the Heaven will split asunder (Qurran: 84:1). Aggressive passion begins to beckon that one exercise patience and avoid bending the knee to superiors whilst stamping on subordinates; as Chinese Mandarins accomplished with the autonomous Forbidden City. Mandarins danced around gear shifts and slit through clouds with tactical magic potions for love and war as they migrated in rotation from province to province, like infinite nomadic Hijras (from Mecca to Medina and back), without knowledge of the dialects or matters of fate (for the “other” replace fate with chance). No Grat houses in England. No castles in Rhine. No grand villas in Italy. No city temples in Japan. No abodes amongst the freedom fighters or suffrage for Muslims and people of color other than the kill switch of palpable loneliness. Even in pretense, amongst clouds, we pretend to travel in player modes, as panther packs congregating underneath the flags of “black, shades of green and colored” skin, conflictingly embracing only “white masks” territorially, economically, politically and psychologically. We toil during Friday and Taraweeh prayers of the fasting month ecstatically in our proposed success as outlawed post-modern small time traders. In the meanwhile our mentality coincides now with the multiplicities of schizophrenic identities, a simulacrum if you will, where we are copies of an original whose meaning is “lost but somehow not forgotten”, engaging in ritual without a draft in our mental ecosophy. We are caught in “drama syndrome”, re-enacting the perpetual “guilt” of the colonialized. For some caught in an extreme we play a game of constructing the equivalent of a revolutionary crises, neurotically embracing a profound role within our breasts, suffering from dis-utopia as screams of reciprocated “blames” are requested from God upon the lured “white devil”. A “white devil” they proclaim has robbed us through appalling battles and left us bleeding. “The White devil” deprived us of the possibility of being human. The resultant is an alienation, a propagation of the racial stereotypes in an implacable drift, to the point of an absolute void, where what you do say embraces an a point of absolute void as an attempt at liberating yourself from isolation. To do those who embark on this, the necessity arises to examine ﺍﻠﺒﺎﻂﻦ (that which you are hiding from), quite blocking every compromise resulting from a defeat and construct away out of your identity crises and God knows best.
People of color keep the Gestapos packed, locked up in state prisons, busy by their own accord and as they fill up, the torturers, ourselves, screaming “How strange that it is that we suffer everlastingly?” The metaphysical denotation “everlastingly” is now a proclamation for everything discovered, but indeed the responsibility to venture on a search for the “Forbidden City” has faded within us as an inspiration Wa-oz Bi-Allah (God Forbid). People of color, for the most part, have forsaken justice and embraced absolute delivery as fair exchange for our “suffering”. We have become introverts of Jean Veneuse, categorizing “other” people of color in a tripod neurotic eye as we become frustrated with the anguish created by our own abandonment and the aggression which partially arises, due to its amalgamation with the devaluation and degradation that flows resentfully out of us. Repeat it three times: "Ruined are those who insist on hardship in matters of the Faith.''
Our prayers (intentions) ought to correspond to our compromised walks (actions), sedating an eruption within the ego of clusters, that are connected via networks, due to a mythical reaction (when based on homogenous categorizations based solely on categories of race, gender, ethnicity, religion and the like and dislike) to chosen dead and false germinations that remain unresponsive. Imprisoned, lacking air and surface space despite the barren land that lays ahead, dignity and strength waver, ever since we relapsed away from affinity based germination. For Muslims, veiled supplications are aroused leaving our faces with a place to sprout and live, though in the meanwhile we engage in heresy and hypocrisy, refusing to plant seeds (where intentions correspond to actions, within one’s best ability) sincerely, awaiting instead for God delivery us and resurrections to commence (Musnad Imam Ahmad: 2: 191). How then could supplications be accepted, when our acquired property is through theft, the food we eat is based upon the sufferings of a fellow species, and the drink is laced with additives?
Alas, every dormant formation needs to erupt following a cycle of uprisings and resistances against its seed coating(s). The question is when, internally and externally, will adequate moisture (that is the undiffused Ijtihad) dialectically vaporize into an identifiable Jihad on every discovered and undiscovered front. Repeat it three times: "Ruined are those who insist on hardship in matters of the Faith.'' The hallucinogen oxygen and light require the temporal abandonment of the underground whip; to allow the hybridization process into the radicle, a temporary photosynthesized uprising, to commence (over come your fear and develop your difference as an “other” while recognizing potential roots from building solidarity with someone else). Otherwise and God knows best, expect situations of frustrations, instead of writing letters to our unborn seeds as a starting point for autonomy. Watch a priest carrying a prayer book, thought to be not subject to interpretations save from their end, and make him/her believe that the book of prayers is nothing more than a deck of cards to be adopted and implemented in given circumstances and situations. The echo of Ijtihad reigns. This is an offering of a folklore constituted in the tactical magic potions of poststructuralist germination(s). That is, the ability to partake in imperceptible transitions of maneuverability in accordance with the parlor inadequacies of these “postmodern” times. Allow for colored shadows to emerge, in place of the white masks and permit mobility on the surface level without a hegemonic strategy of one for all and all for one, in sight. Recall "Allah loves a slave who is pious, free of all wants and the unnoticed (Riyad Al-Saliheen: 597).
An infant is unaware of the limits to his/her own power of engaging in space maneuvers and thus becomes a Wizard of Oz because of the very absence of the superego in companionships, particularly those based on mutual struggles. The dormant superego has yet to access the child, making it revolt against itself and turning it into a coward. In midsummer festivals of Vedic times priests and prostitutes reviled one another and then engaged in intercourse; for the purpose(s) of germination(s) and Allah (SWT) knows best. This intercourse is like the helper cells of germination(s), co-existing with one another, intersecting at various junctures, easing the burden upon one another and themselves by confiscating residues and remnants of that authority that we covet for, forgetting meanwhile that the “original seed of that authority”, “will be a cause of humiliation and remorse on the Day of Resurrection (Riyad Al-Saliheen)” & capitalism, simply two of the suppressor cells. The new ghetto: Asabiyah (Social solidarity).
Begin to run wild and "Plough (the earth) well, for verily, plough-ing is a blessed task…sow many seeds” and become "like seed produce that puts forth its sprout then strengthens it, so it becomes stout and stands firmly on its stem, delighting the sowers" (Qurran: 48:29).
Now imagine if you could backup, abuse your own kind because they are of a different “race”, with your supreme ideology; you become null and void, with an empty soul, losing the will to survive all the meanwhile claiming your innocence on grounds of insanity because of what “wrong” has been done towards you. Till the end of time you lose touch, become arrogant, as you hegemonically terrorize and destroy those perceived to be below you, while dismissing that "On Doomsday, if any one has a palm-shoot in hand, he should plant it" (Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal: 5:440 and 3:184). Now who is to say if I am right and wrong, but what I see is breathing, raw and closer to achieve for tilling that which is barren. The missed Darce (lesson) created contemporary preachers positioned on phony pillars, a buried Ijtihad where every hand is a “losing” hand.
The last sermon of the Prophet, is now diluted, as all that is now beckoned and encountered is a proclamation and indoctrination of re-claimed islam-itude(s). We have created the anti-racism & fascism for our selves and abandoned by auditing the last sermon as diversity, multiplicity, the infinite Différend, is now being proposed to be an “ailment”. Need we be reminded that “an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action” (The Last Sermon). “All actions are but by intentions (that between the breasts),” and that everyone shall have that which is intended (Saheeh Al-Bukhari and Muslim). The demagogic “losing” hand engaged in running away, cheats its marriage and responsibility with an artificial superiority claiming authority, subjugating it with calculations of judgment after judgment, and as it is afraid to lower its guns to keep. It is now hereditary, this industrialized “claim to righteousness”, piety and the reciprocal ritualized pressure on a wound adorably still bleeding and a scar regulated by an addiction to terror. Perhaps I am forsaken. The demagogues have apparently attained knowledge of all our intentions, reconciling an abandoned monotheism with an embraced polytheism. The sun of your native “identity” is now nothing but a shadow, regurgitating the flood of lofty empty words as you listen to a tyrants voice and the “objectionable” is neither altered, with the hand, tongue nor with the heart.
An alternative lays in germinating. Germinate whilst you are in this world like a stranger, nomad, traveler/wayfarer for you know not “when evening comes, do not expect (to live till) morning, and when morning comes, do not expect (to live till) evening. Take from your health (a preparation) for your illness and from your life for your death” (Forty Hadith). Magic (Germinations) are revolts against the discovered “losing” hands of these demagogues. Embrace the sorcerer’s tactics as the Pitjentara youth did at the age of eight or ten in their sublime conquests for “white flesh” across desert terrains; embrace rudimentary nomadic fashions. Flirt with art and transition slowly from the insatiable empathetic abandonment coloured neurotic, to a network mosaic of refracted white tonalities. Accept going blind and stand on surface seashells only to abandon words, embrace silence and temporarily privilege another. Fast for a month in solidarity with those unprivileged. Feel what it is to have nothing for you are nothing. Witness the occupations of a former dispossessed network and the potential that is now paraded in an endeavoured conquest. Practice austerities for unions with the infinite.
Rhythmically even ballads of dead soldiers germinate in prison cells with no witnesses to scream bloody murder. Dis-alienate for “It is He Who sends down rain from the skies; with it We produce green [crops], out of which we produce grain, heaped up [at harvest]; out of the date-palm and its sheaths [or spathes] [come] clusters of dates hanging low and near; and [then there are] gardens of grapes, and olives, and pomegranates, each similar [in kind] yet different [in variety]; when they begin to bear fruit, feast your eyes with the fruit and the ripeness thereof. Behold! in these things there are signs for people who believe.(Qurran-6: 99)” For those who don’t have none but want some; let the punks know about the prelude: Everything they owe stipulated in the “constitution”.
Watch and witness the concepts of power and religion, as they de-funk, within Eurocentric Classical Traditions in Anarchism(s). “My People” are now living somewhere free and you begin to get a flash back: “You got what is mine and I want that”.
If we choose to rise then we become subjected to the stipulated personified union of an ideology of recently lost times, that shed tattoo tears for most cosmological inspirations, migrating instead to an overture of almost exclusively psychological value. Tectonic lines eroticize the isomorphic naked reality that lies in the midst of its “fantastic” fog leading to Astigmatism. With Astigmatism commissioned visions pry into the umbrella despite the image’s duty-bound alliance with the respective “distorted” and wavy mirror. To assume that the process of intercourse, between unions, has reached climax (no longer space for tactical affinities) acknowledges a restriction, impoverishment and paralyzed de-amplification of the skill in being somewhere else and seeing the mistress without feeling dutifully bound to her by marriage. Alternatively, one ought to ride the wave of the germinating nomad embracing the radiance without disregarding that which remains as multiplicities of discovered and undiscovered background choruses. Prepare an arsenal and reserve of disorderly, flourishing and “abused” radical “subaltern” literature(s) transitioning from the politics of demand to politics of tactical affinities in an attempt to minimize the hierarchy in your own mind, thereby terrorizing the manipulating and privileged center of marriage; ‘totalities and closed holisms’ of “Classical” Traditions. Our Muqqadimah (the beginning), pays homage to my Brother Ibn Khaldun, is a cloud ushered beneath the winds, not as a reaction to confusion, but as a hybrid of blackouts and the evident lack of sufficient light, for the spiritual and mental infinite family of toric singularities, belonging to known or unknown horizons. So let it begin. Power does not stop here. Let it dislodge into migratory radicles sufficed by intentions and actions dependent on Asabiyah(s); Affinities.

An Exodus towards “Chaos”

The birth of a “sub-cultural race” had begun. It’s inherent desires where in setting the stage to reconstruct the eminent and transcendent double-edged sword of worldly ignorance and venom. Its image would spiral continuously over the course of its history, resurrecting itself not merely as an idea passed from generation to generation, like that shadow of a whisper in the dark alleyways of the urbanized slums, but rather as a way of life.
European Classical Anarchism(s) conception of power and religion, require a rewinding of the tape back to the schisms between Bakunin and Marx, of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the International Working Men’s Association of 1872, through Michael Bakunin’s to its influence by Poststructuralist philosophies, where “minds and things” are called to jurists for deliberation, as for bodies (astral and vegetal) they are language where every word is a symptom.
Bakunin emphasized the indispensable need for the “disassembly” of both the State and the Western church for “the real enfranchisement of society” to begin. It is through this process of disassembly that these two top-down, hierarchical, exploitative, and suppressive structures are broken down and that their power is redistributed. Thus, there I derive, though do not constrain my language to two postulates that could be derived or are given rise to from the above statement: one regarding power and the second pertaining to religion. The first postulate recognizes that if there is to be any future for “humanity”, then the social setting in which they reside ought to be dictated not by an authority figure ( A Hobessian Sovereign or Leviathan), a ruling aristocracy, or even a national assembly, but rather, by an inverted “approach”. This bottom-up approach occurs through the “free association or federation of workers, starting with the associations, then going on to the communes, the regions, the nations, and, finally, culminating in a great international and universal federation”. This proposal highlights the nature of European Classical Anarchism(s) analysis of countering and resisting state power, unlike dimensions and interpretations of Marxism (artists that gave rise to the work to come), and the state’s insatiable infatuation with using a suppressive force. Bakunin’s conception is an articulation of power that based upon a negative, limited, centralized, confined and consolidated understanding of power as a force strictly utilized to serve the interests of the sovereign minority at the expense of the majority, through the mere existence of the authoritarian state. It is not that the minority possesses social evils that such a minority, need to be rid of or to undergo an “expropriation”, articulated through Kropotkin. Bakunin posits that it is through glorified social positions provided by the multiplicity of irrational inorganic and hence organized structures within a society that are based upon injustice, which such institutionalized forms of power exist and it is these types of evils that ultimately ought to be resisted!
In order to shed light on the Bakunin’s second postulate highlighted above regarding religion, I will shift focus onto another Classical Anarchist, the dearly beloved Emma. Goldman’s sentimentality reiterates Bakunin’s notions regarding religion and its ability to confiscate the masses and pollute them when she proclaims that the tyrannical “God, the State and society are nonexistent; that their promises are null and void, since they can only be fulfilled only by man’s subordination”. Goldman’s, religion is the dominion of the human mind. The fettered human mind requires liberation from this obtrusive structure, which is imposed upon, rather than consciously chosen by, the ignorant masses. Espoused in “Classical Anarchism(s)” is that “religion” masks its motivating force, namely, the attainment of social control and power, thereby degrading and humiliating the masses. This degradation and humiliation is germinated and nurtured by the constant obligation upon “la masse” to follow the preacher’s rhetoric, by responding to the shepherd who calls for the complete submission of the flock of sheep. After all, such preachers have been given a right by God, as in Nietzsche’s Christianity, and thus, their authority cannot be called into question by the common person. The image invoked is that of the preacher’s rhetoric of “truth” dissipating and spiraling downwards to the populous and thereby, in Goldman’s opinion, resembles that of top-down structure of the oppressive state. However, although it is notoriously “understood” that Goldman and Bakunin’s notions regarding “religion” are predominantly influenced by a particular type of a particular “sect” of “religion”; namely a particular form of Christianity brought forth by the formerly mentioned Constantinian shift, using the signifier “religion” to indicate a “particular perception or a particular kind” of it, remains inappropriate.
Classical Anarchism(s) objectives are primarily the reconstruction and liberation of humanity from the double-edged swords of worldly ignorance (the dominion of religion through its reliance on the blind following populous) and venom (the state through its exercise of forces of oppression). At this point, I will introduce and infract an examination of Classical Anarchist theorists’ notions of the totalistic conception of such a top-down model of power within a society, as being construed as purely negative and consolidated in the hands of a minority. It is construed since Bakunin’s vision of Anarchism as a “unique religion that can stir hearts and create a saving collective strength”, along with Goldman’s assertion that “Anarchism …stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion....liberation from the shackles and restraint of government” along with Anarchism(s) direct-active-capacity to permeate every phase of human endeavor, all indicate the potential for Anarchism(s) to be viewed contrarily as a positive, libratory form of power. Therefore, Bakunin and Goldman’s statements imply that power is not necessarily consolidated, centralized, restrictive, or repressive. Rather, power can possess a libratory attribute as well and the potential respectively, at least from a Classical Anarchist perspective, to liberate human beings.
As such, Anarchism(s) unconsciously “purified”, “Orientalist” and “classical” images of power mutates and spirals with the advent of Post-Structuralism, continuously through the course of its history, resurrecting Anarchism(s) not merely as an idea passed from generation to generation, but rather as a way of life. Whether such (Goldman and Bakunin) conceptions of Eurocentric Classical Anarchism(s) propagate the larval stage or discourse of Proudhon’s Mutualism, Bakunin’s Collectivism, Kropotkin’s Communism, French Anarcho-Syndicalism, or otherwise, they emulate bamboo roots in allowing organic and fluid attitudes to partake within and “underneath” the umbrella of moral self-realization and obligation without an authoritarian governance, be it state or religious, to enforce it. We begin to see a recurring “theme”, which requires more, as they represent blocks that ought to be comprehended for “Le Différend” to have room.
Insurgencies and Assaults upon the Exodus: Towards infinite migrations
An endorsement of the fundamental view described above, namely, that power is not solely oppressive and “negative” but resistive and “positive” as well propels itself to the forefront.
The single perception of that, which is “revolutionary” and total, associated with a European vision of Classical Anarchism(s) which lies in its idea of “oneness”. It becomes necessary for Eurocentric Classical Anarchism(s), and respectively its particular multiplicitous shade(s), to comprehend as an example, the cultural and ethnic diversities which had been discounted, consciously or unconsciously, amongst “anarchist/anti-authoritarian movements active today”. This is due to the fact that, identities, whether they are associated with gender, sexuality, race, or religion, are immeasurable and infinite in their representations. “First wave Anarchism(s)”, as recognized by some though the term is not endorsed nor is particularly appealing to myself and its ability to re-conceptualize history and theory recognizes the latter’s development of “alternative” Anarchism(s), as they exist amongst what is defined by some as the “people without history”. The complexity and diversity of the multiple developments that branched out of “Classical Anarchism(s)” ought to be recognized and commended. Therefore, former writing(s) and literature of the Classical that have been presented witness an unspoken assumption that the state and religion are always the primary and dominant forces of oppression. Furthermore it is assumed that Classical Anarchism(s) is the sole savior and that only “it”, as if there is a one “it”, is/are capable of resisting the negative and oppressive forces, thus ushering in what Goldman refers to as the “new Dawn”. This viewpoint does not give much, if any, consideration to the historiography of Non-Eurocentric Anarchism(s) or other movements, like certain shades of Islam which will be briefly highlighted, that maybe anti-authoritarian and non-hierarchal (“Mutazillate” and “Kharijites”), and that predominantly reside in Non-European spaces. “The most available anarchist literature does not tell this history not to a necessarily malicious disregard of non-Western Anarchist movements but rather to the fact that even in the context of radical publishing, centuries of engrained Euro-centrism has not really been overcome”. However a failure to grasp the complexity of such interconnectedness and an attempt to develop a genealogy of Non-Western forms of Anarchism(s) itself, on an international level though luring is destructive, as it too engages in holisms: Everything is not Everything… from Sam Mbah’s African Anarchism to Frank Fernandez’s Cuban Anarchism. The effect of this approach mirrors Classical Euro-centric Anarchism(s) tendency to utilize literature to totalize once more the “superficial surface” pertaining to the conceptions of power and religion. A case example of the “undiscovered subaltern other” is that of the Indigenous movement in the “West”. Though it could be easily contested that such a movement still geographically exists within the “Western hemisphere” this would be a misconstrued conception because of the context of what could be geographically defined as the “West” to begin with. Radical literature as “Wasase” conceptualizes what is defined as “Anarcho-Indigenism” as a starting point or a means of resisting post-colonialism, whether through the “Gandhian strategy of non-cooperation” or otherwise, state power and the Neo-Liberal Capitalist Global project. Furthermore there are “philosophical connections between indigenous and some strains of Anarchist thought on the spirit of freedom and the ideals of a good society; parallel critical ideas and visions of post-imperial futures that emerge from the two traditions of thought” and which “have been noted by a few thinkers”. However, despite “Anarcho-Indigenism possessing” these characteristics, there is at times no mention of such a movement, although an entire section on Resistance in “Euro-Centric” literature is dedicated to such and such, thereby not acknowledging and gendering interest in “Le Différend”. The pitfall of Eurocentric Classical Anarchism(s)’s tendencies of ignoring certain Non-Western movements or oversimplifying them or imposing their own conceptions upon them lurks, though this does not imply that affinity and solidarity could take place at the grass-roots or within academia. Any broad analysis of “Non-Western Anarchism(s)” risks the development of an over-exaggeration of certain elements and relations which are espoused by the author, but that are, in reality, superficial. The examination of an Anarchism of India, as an example, may fail to mention or develop a critical examination of the “caste” system in Hinduism, along with a Gandhian perspective pertaining to it. Instead what is drawn upon is “Gandhi’s passion for collective liberation” and his endorsement of non-violent pacifism and the necessity of removing “social evil” which, according to Gandhi, is the cause of the “state evil”. Gandhi’s notion of the origins of the state as an oppressive force does differ drastically though from Goldman and Bakunin’s conception of the state as the source of the “social evil” and oppression. Upon conducting more research one would also find that in reference to the caste system in India, that through “Gandhi: Saint or Sinner”, Gandhi is quoted, as believing that "to destroy the caste system and adopt the Western European social system means that Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation, which is the soul of the caste system…The hereditary principle is an eternal principle”. As such a more detailed study, reveals that Gandhi’s conception of the importance in preserving the caste system, though non-hierarchally, has “saved Hinduism from disintegration”. This alters and drastically undermines the belief mentioned earlier, regarding “Gandhi’s passion for collective liberation”, since it is radically different due Gandhi’s endorsement of a divided system of social order. However, what is often sought is a virtual “wish” to see Anarchistic conceptions of collective liberation as
“real” threads in India when in fact a contradiction is played upon and which more research has “uncovered”.
Once more, with the advent of Poststructuralist philosophy, the philosophical and political image(s) of power moves away from a centralized or subordinating and oppressive force to one that is interconnected and productive. The implications of this shift could simply be stated as follows: Power is and always will be infinitely produced and consumed not solely in between the oppressors (state and religion) and resistors (Anarchists) as was formerly perceived by Eurocentric Classical Anarchists like Bakunin and Goldman. The repercussions of this are that, once more, “power not only intervenes in more places; its intervention is of different types” and that it is that power exercised through oppression that gives rise to resistance within a given “social space”. A chosen terrain for the conception of the “social space” lies in digesting a philosopher’s network.
If the imagery of an upside-down and uprooted tree in European Classical Anarchism(s) is juxtaposed with that of a decentralized multiplicity of networks in Post-Anarchism(s), then the philosophical tactics espoused by Goldman and Bakunin that are aimed at deconstructing the hierarchal and centralized state or religious powers are misconceived. Hence, oppression is never localized or confined to a social space, nor does it find its origins solely in the state or religion. Oppression in Eurocentric Classical Anarchism(s) was displaced, and its effects undermined by European Classical Anarchism(s)’s displaced and misperceived roles of power. Furthermore, Classical Anarchism(s) identifies power through its suppressive force(s) rather than consciously recognizing the libratory or resistive force(s) which arises from it. The image of power with which Classical European Anarchism(s) “operates is that of a weight, pressing down- at times destroying- the actions, events, and desires with which it comes into contact”. This imagery, associated with Classical European Anarchists like Bakunin and Goldman, has an adverse psychological effect, relying primarily and solely on state decentralization as a form of resistance, thereby achieving no significant change, and even if there was historically it was merely temporarily, on the micro or macro levels. On this matter, a philosopher discovers that Bakunin and other Classical European Anarchists adopted a hegemonic vision of power, engaging with it only in the context of the “macro”, where the main objective of the “Classical Anarchist Project” was to call towards a “decentralization in order to resist the reductiveness of centralization while at the same time offering a vision of decentralization that was itself reductive”. This process became tautological in its nature, never really identifying the diversity of distinctive modes of resistance, like those adopted historically by Non-Western Anarchism(s), and the relationships that these modes have with power. In essence, this viewpoint leads to a one dimensional battle, pitting Classical Anarchism against an illusive, anonymous, and at times impersonal structure: authority. However, this section argues that neither the state nor religion necessarily assigns authority and that the authority’s resultant attributes, power, takes on various directions of motion, as the rhizome, within a given “social space”. Furthermore, though it is not disputed that there is such a force whose nature is oppressive by the state through its social structures, this force does not descend upon the social space it occupies, let alone exist on its own. It is accompanied by other exploitative forces and potentially resistive, forces, providing a dichotomous affair between both, with neither necessarily “winning” nor “losing” permanently. Instead, it is a temporary struggle, or tug of war, between these two “discovered” occupants of the networks within the recognized space. It ought to be understood as well, that in the process, these forces are never simply haphazardly “present” in a network but rather, are discovered through a collectivity of infinite sites territorialized by,through fate or chance (choose what you’d like) knowledge/ignorance (acknowledging that they exist, or have the potential to, in a given paradigm by studying literature) coupled with similarly infinite experience/inexperience (acknowledging that they exist, or have the potential to, in a given paradigm by direct action).
Poststructuralist philosophy thereby challenges Classical Anarchism(s) unitary, totalistic, and holistic views on power and liberation, as well as the resulting existentialist bleakness that such a viewpoint places upon an individual, in order to jettison the subject as a relevant source of its own constitution or action. Post-structuralism, “confine[s] itself to neither analyzing the interiority of the subject nor the exteriority of the structures, but rather to occupy itself with examining the networks of the contingent practices that produces both the subjects and structures”. The rejection of subjectivity as a “viable source of political activity” as well as the denial of a solely negative and repressive vision of power, represent some of the influences that Poststructuralist philosophy had upon some Classical Anarchism(s), as remnants and residue remain behind, through the theoretical and grassroots. The strategy as posited by some is a new type or hybrid of Anarchism(s), Post Anarchism or Poststructuralist Anarchism(s) (Though I disagree with the name!), whose perspective is defined through the rejection of the strategic concepts of power and subjectivity, in the context highlighted above, and instead sets them up as tactical a priori’s of traditional Eurocentric Classical Anarchism(s).
If these proposed “Post-Anarchistic” contours, “along with some of the specific theoretical interventions that characterize it” are indeed to fulfill their vowed promises of incorporating the infinite multiplicity of perspectives and “subject positions” along with their uncovering of the inescapable plurality of representations, then that covenant needs to be further developed through the conclusion of the author of ‘Who is this we that gives the gift? Native American Political Theory and the Western Tradition’. The author comments that the response of liberal multi-culturalism to diversity results in the exclusion of dissenting voices from intercultural dialogue. Although the author focuses on Native American and Indigenous identity, the same issues also apply to other minority groups. While the author’s theories may be utilized to examine “subaltern” groups other than Native Americans, it is important to avoid making generalizations that deny the different environments, cultures, and circumstances of other minority groups. Although the circumstances are different, there are indeed nodes or points of intersection worth examining, whether in the context of a particular type of oppression or its reciprocated force of resistance. Hence Solidarity without solidity! Thus, Post-Anarchism(s) intends to avoid tactically seeking a “single common language, but engage[s] in the creation of a diversity of languages that correspond to the diversity of” infinite subjectivities unlike Eurocentric or Non-Euro-centric Classical Anarchism(s), while supporting the idea that infinite subjectivities are yet unrecognized or undiscovered. However, to begin this task that involves the inclusion of the “subaltern other” in Post-Anarchism(s) it is necessary to remember that the potential for homogenizing needs to be evaded. In other wards, these Anarchistic elements, which a warrior chooses to highlight in accordance to his/her or hybrid of these socially constructed categories, particular visions of Anarchism(s) resulted in a broad and bleak vision of them, since as illustrated earlier they merely skim the contour of these movements, leading to an unjust and sometimes falsified representation of them.

Get Busy Child: The Muqaddimah:

In accordance with the Poststructuralist theories espoused a philosopher in some book, interprets that “if power creates its own resistance, then the liberation from specific forms of power must take into account of the kind of resistance that is being engaged in, on pain of repeating that which one is trying to escape”. Therefore, if as I believe that the genealogy of Eurocentric Classical philosophies has propelled itself solely to the forefront downplaying, in the meanwhile, the importance and agency of, as an example, the Non-Eurocentric, then the introduction of Islamic philosophies and an examination of their genealogy are necessary in Eurocentric academia as is vice versa.
“To take Islam(s) as an example – the ‘hyper-orthodox’ & the ulemocracy cannot so easily reduce it”, as had been done historically with regards to “religion” through Christianity by Nietzsche. It becomes necessary therefore to abstain from “a hegemonistic/universalistic ideology as to rule out divergent forms of ‘sacred politics’ informed by Sufism [e.g. the Naqshabandis], ‘radical’ Shia-ism [e.g. Ali Shariati], Isamilism, Islamic Humanism, Sunni-ism, the ‘Green Path’ of Col. Qadafi (part neo-Sufism, part anarcho-syndicalism), or even the ‘cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia”. Henceforth to comprehend and indicate that there is and will not be a single “monolith” of Islam let alone Islamic fundamentalism, is more than just a slanting ray of the setting sun, an odor, a flavor, a draft, an ephemeral qualitative complex that owes its value to the “subjective aspect” which is never the last word of the search, but merely a “truth”. These variant and divergent traditions in Islam(s) could permit the creation of a new open, un-holistic constellation whose contours are defined, just as Poststructuralist philosophy(s) is, through the specific theoretical and theological interventions that characterize them and are committed to their creativity. In treading this ground it becomes important to tread cautiously, not solely to avoid the pitfalls due to generalizations which may not be true, and not hegemonic-ally exploiting a tradition of Islam(s) as the only “green shade”, as there will never be one so quite claiming, voluntarily and involuntarily, that your foliage is superior to another.
Ibn Khaldun, acclaimed by some as the forerunner of modern, historiography, sociology and economics, wrote Al-Muqqadimah- Prolegomena to History in the 14th century in Tunis. Ibn Khaldun’s grasp of the various branches, at the time, of Islam(s) theological and sociological models and practices of agency, identity, power, authority and the state, along with the influence of his writing(s) upon other Muslim scholars, has led to an engagement with the creativity of Islam(s). These Islam(s), in my opinion, retain the project of social justice, in the broadest sense, without necessarily having to rely on a theory of law based on a homogeneous collective identity and thus embrace the Poststructuralist philosophical concept of multiplicity.
The phantasmal lure of Ibn Khaldun prevails in his ability to fashion and engage with theoretical paradigms a priori to the philosophers examined above; Hegel and Nietzsche. Ibn Khaldun perceives “the state” as a natural goal of Asabiyah. Asabiyah is derived from the Arabic root asab (to bind); that is to bind the individuals into asabtun (a social group). Asabiyah is also derived from asaba, which designates the concept that is etymologically abstracted from the concrete form. Amongst the translations in which Asabiyah had been translated to are “spirit de corps”, “tribal spirit or loyalty” and “collective consciousness”. Asabiyah is an abstract concept, not necessarily prefaced in a consanguinal relation, but is rather a natural bond that can be used to measure the strength and stability of social groupings. It is social, as well as psychological and physical prescribed though not confined to nomadic or tribal groups and thus is heterogeneously subject to multiplicities in its variation to individual and collective, subjectivities and identities respectively. Ibn Khaldun highlights that once asabiyah has “established superiority over the people who share it, it will, by its very nature, seek superiority over people of other asabiyahs…if an asabiyah overpowers another asabiyah and makes it subservient to itself, the defeated one gives added power to the victorious one, which as a result sets its goal of domination higher than before”. Ibn Khaldun continues and posits respectively that “the weak people will have to submit to this new power”. One of the most important aspects of a dominant class’s hegemony is its ability “to struggle to assimilate and to conquer ‘ideologically’” a social space, whether intellectually or otherwise, while sacrificing the interests of numerous individuals “to serve the interests of the few”. This clearly resembles the work and perception of Ibn Khaldun, save that the Muslim philosopher and sociologist had discovered the logic of hegemony from his derived concept of asabiyah in the 14th century in contrast to Gramsci who writes regarding it in the 19th century. Alas Ibn Khaldun’s conception is not strictly however confined to the logic of hegemony and that of hegemony of hegemony (the struggle for power between two dominant groups), but rather I would venture and posit that he proposed a logic of affinity as well. Ibn Khaldun comments that “if an asabiyah is equal to another in strength, each will have to maintain its sway over its own domain and people…through cooperation”. This resembles and falls in line with Guattari’s “Fluidarity” and the author of “Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements” whose representation of affinity based relationships as being non-coercive and non-universalizing, non-hierarchal and engaged in mutual aid offer a mutual un-soldering fusion. Since Ibn Khaldun anticipates the potential of communities equal in strength the potential thereby that he identifies that these groups refuse or are compelled not to exercise hierarchy or coerciveness in search for dominating “Le Différend” exists, whilst in the meanwhile these coming communities engage in mutual cooperation and respect. Ibn Khaldun engages in other worlds beyond those of merely abstract information, to engender universes of reference and existential territories where singularity and finitude are taken into consideration allowing thus for “Fluidarity” to exist, as friction begins to unfold between the associative commitment to the micro-politics of individuality and the macro-politics of solidarity.
The tenor of Eurocentric Classical philosophies undermines itself, as much as possible within a given social terrain, positing the necessity of offering a multi-polar approach, which engages in the spirit of affinity with Non-Eurocentric traditions that have the potential of revolting and reshaping the study of philosophy. They eliminate many things and many people in the course of a search of a telos, and these form an apparently incongruous group: observers, friends, philosophers, talkers, homeless, homosexuals à la grecque, transsexuals, intellectuals along with their varying degrees of participation and characterizations within the logos.
Islam(s) represent here “that which is veiled”, but that which is veiled “is not absent or invisible, since the veil is a sign of presence, its imaginal reality, its power…. is unseen”. The sweetest dreams that I offer is that of an Auturi who could be a nomad that identifies as a Muslim…the nomad that who has no horizon, coming from no land and errant, is dispossessed of any material belonging, and whose position of dispossession facilitates a chance of an encounter and also of an infinite disposed conversation

Dramatic Dead Ends: My Death toll in the thousands:

Un-trapping the double pincer movement(s), Islam(s) and Anarchism(s) are not consequences of Chernobyl-style accidents. One needs hardly mention the almost delirious stockpiling of thousands of dominant modes in which any attempt to homogenize any groupings of these could lead to collective extermination of any hope of “Fluidarity”.
“At the time I loved Gilbert, I still believed that love really existed outside ourselves…it seemed to me that if I had, my own accord, substituted the simulation of indifference for the sweetness of avowal, I would not have only deprived myself of a series of pleasures I had long dreamed of, but that I would have fabricated, to my own taste, a fictitious and worthless love.”
Sections of collective subjectivities are floundering or simply huddled around archaisms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Moderation, leaning neither the far to the left or the right is a response to this crises. Visible relations of force of the grand scale are not to be discounted but rather they ought to take into account that which is of the molecular. All actions are but by intentions. Abstain from Demagoguery.
Chains of commands attempt to over-code all possible points and connections within the network to regimes in Arborescent systems that implement Hegelian dialectics that confine, dine and drink too little wine, us to an airtight vacuum in search of a pre-ordained “God-given” teleological outcome. Your fate with society is written. You cannot divert under the panoptic eye of surveillance, though once in a while you can shop at 9-11. However, Professor Challenger neither subscribes obedience to your rules. Professor Challenger just drilled a whole to the earth, spat on a button and the earth recognized ﺍﻠﺒﺎﻂﻦ (that veiled) as it was interrupted.
An alternative is to interrupt and engage in Bakhtinian dialogics, where no one is in control, decisions are emergent be they through consensus or otherwise, as are the very identities engaging in the process through which decisions are made. The Rhizomes implement that which is Bakhtinian, making a map and not a tracing, between semiotic chains utilizing the events of the social space and engaging with war-machines. Be ware of the false rhizomes that profess the local and multiple yet remain subject to a singular authoritarian logic. If the war-machine fails destroy it before it is incorporated into the state’s apparatus. Engage in community building and know thy neighbor: Node one. "...and do good to parents, kins-folk, orphans, the poor who beg, the neighbor who is near of kin, the neighbor who is a stranger...” (Qurran: 4:36) and if you’re interested recall that your neighbor is not immune from your mischief.
Ali Abd Al-Razeq’s expression in Al-Islam Wa-Usul Al-hukum offers a re-shaping. The government of the Islamic “state” can be of any kind: Node two. “It can be an autocracy or bureaucracy; a monarchy or republic, a dictatorship or constitutional or consultative government; it can be democratic, socialist or Bolshevik; that the prophet was nothing but a Rasul or messenger for a religious call, purely for the sake of religion, unblemished by any tendency to rule or call for the formation of a state”. On the contrary Islam is a religious unity and the prophet called for that unity. It should be realized that ‘al-risalah in itself required the prophet to acquire some power over the umma (nation and community). But this is very far from the leadership of kings and their power over their subjects. Hence one must not confuse the leadership of al-Risalah with that of a king”. It is untainted by the urge to rule. For recall that you(Muslims) are all guardians and you are all responsible for your wards. Node Three. If everything on Earth belongs to Allah (God) alone, and people are only entrusted with managing them, and live off the Earth and its products a paradox envelopes with the capitalist concept of ownership based on the Roman doctrine of "the right to use and abuse". Islam lays the foundation for ecology, as the creations of Allah (including plants and animals). This is similar to the concept of private possessions, introduced by Proudhon’s "What is Property?” and shared by most Anarchists. A primary pillar, Zakat (Alms Tax), “ant-capitalist levy on wealth” and the right of the poor over the wealthy as opposed to Riba (Interest). Riba to increase or grow endlessly without a service or labor in exchange becomes the "The usury that is practiced to increase some people's wealth, does not gain anything at God. But if you give to charity, seeking God's pleasure, these are the ones who receive their reward many fold.”
Zakat acts a purification and a reminder for Muslims to remember “what truly matters in life”, to not forsake morality for the sake of materialism (Islam’s ethical conceptions of human relations and social organizations). A beloved Ramdan claims that, “The person who possess has duties before God and not before man. Islam does not conceive of poverty as a normal fact of the social universe. Nor does it envisage that the treatment to this distortion be the free generosity towards others, that in the hope of some miracle there will be a balance. The obligation places the question rather in the domain of morality and cannot be left to the discretion of each person. Social solidarity is a part of faith, as it is its most concrete testimony. It is not a question of goodness…rather a question of justice. Furthermore the managing of personal spending is to fight against egoism and hoarding.” To possess it is tantamount to having to share …it is impossible to shamelessly increase one’s property at the price of exploitation and social injustices.
Node Four. Ramadan’s proposal lay in the need of a concrete strategy and thought-out solutions which are inscribed in and by solidarity without solidity which alone will allows us to achieve a real alternative project, as Islam in its fundamentals is radically opposed to the existing liberal economic order. Cooperatives and the function of logics of “fluidarity” and affinity propelled by popular participation must be the subject of more in-depth studies. This is merely the beginning of the end of the beginning.
Node Five. An alternative view, illustrates a multiplicity of interpretation,
Annihilating demagogues and gods of war where “The choice of the one placed ahead is delegated in Islam to those who leave themselves behind. One can be chosen by means of elections, a representative system or any other original idea. The important thing is that the people choose their representative. This means, fortiori, that one must be granted all the conditions that allow one the opportunity to choose with full knowledge of the facts. Any pressure or attempt (coercion), to influence public opinion must be the subject of strict regulations, for this means that there is a real deficit in the real participation of the people. Just as is the case, moreover, with ignorance, illiteracy and misery which are, as many social phenomena, obstructing the real participation of the grassroots. The multi-polar solidarity brings forth issues of contention where proof lies in Surat Al-Hajj, where in “In Islam general principles were given in the field of politics and social affairs. But the Qurran does not mention details and particulars which have been left for the Muslim ummah to formulate according to the needs of time and space.” Consensus and seeking consultation as Abu Hurirah’s “I’ve never seen anyone else who seeks consultation of his companions more than prophet” escalate Surat Al-Shura (43:38) to new heights higher than the sun.
Is it not more compatible with the Islamic method of Islamic legislation to leave matters to be brought before Shura unspecified and undefined, establishing only principles and general rules and leaving details to be worked out by Muslims in adapting the law of Islam to a particular time and place, or where Abu Hanbal, Abu Hanefa and the like prophets determining “indefinite lifestyle islam(s)” closing the door to Ijtihad. Engage in Asabiyah.

Mohamed Jean Veneuse

Comments

Display the following 8 comments

  1. Humdrum Claptrap — St. Satyr
  2. Islam = submission
  3. Taking the piss — Joker
  4. Indymedia promoter of ignorance — unai
  5. Come the Islamic revolution, — Allahu aqbar
  6. yah boo sucks — Dan
  7. .. — ...
  8. AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE IS A COMPLETE WANKER — Ahmad

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