#it is a hatred of the oppression and subjugation of innocent people

[notetaeker]

Two distinct patterns of antisemitism can be identified by the Jewish holidays that celebrate triumphs over them: Purim and Hanukkah. In the Purim version of antisemitism, exemplified by the Persian genocidal decrees in the biblical Book of Esther, the goal is openly stated and unambiguous: Kill all the Jews. In the Hanukkah version of antisemitism, whose appearances range from the Spanish Inquisition to the Soviet regime, the goal is still to eliminate Jewish civilization. But in the Hanukkah version, this goal could theoretically be accomplished simply by destroying Jewish civilization, while leaving the warm, de-Jewed bodies of its former practitioners intact. For this reason, the Hanukkah version of antisemitism often employs Jews as its agents. It requires not dead Jews but cool Jews: those willing to give up whatever specific aspect of Jewish civilization is currently uncool. Of course, Judaism has always been uncool, going back to its origins as the planet's only monotheism, featuring a bossy and unsexy invisible God. Uncoolness is pretty much Judaism's brand, which is why cool people find it so threatening and why Jews who are willing to become cool are absolutely necessary to Hanukkah antisemitism's success. These "converted" Jews are used to demonstrate the good intentions of the regime which of course isn't antisemitic but merely requires that its Jews publicly flush thousands of years of Jewish civilization down the toilet in exchange for the worthy prize of not being treated like dirt, or not being murdered. For a few years. Maybe.

-Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews

Anon im not sure what your point is here by sending me this. This is all true, I agree with you about the truth of antisemitism. and also it has nothing to do with anything I ever mentioned here. Thanks for the excerpt of history, I guess. The more you know.

[animebw]

I've been struggling to figure out how to write this post for the past couple weeks. Part of me thinks I shouldn't bother writing it at all. Not like my words will accomplish much in the grand scheme of things. But if I don't say anything, these thoughts will just keep gnawing at my mind like caged animals. And as the chaos in Palestine shows no signs of slowing, I need to get this out before it's too late for my words to do anything but cast regretful looks back at a moment I was too cowardly to add my voice to.

So.

Most of you don't know this, but I'm Jewish. Not incredibly so; my dad's side of the family is full of active temple-goers and worshippers, but I've mostly just tagged along for holidays and bar mitzvahs. It's a part of myself I used not to think that much about, just one aspect of my life among many. But in recent years as right-wing anti-semitism has ramped up, I've begun appreciating my Jewish connections more and more. Judaism may not be a religion I follow, but it's been an integral part of my culture and community over the years. It's the connections I share with my extended family who I usually only see a couple times a year on Passover and Hannukah but nevertheless tie us together unshakably. Being Jewish is an indelible part of me, and I've always wanted to make a more active effort in connecting with and exploring that part of my heritage. There was even a time back in college where I was tentatively planning a birthright trip to Israel to connect with my ancestral roots or whatever. Classic post-graduation travel abroad stuff.

It feels really weird to think back on that now.

I've never read much of the Torah, I admit. Not like I could, since I never learned Hebrew. But everything I've picked up about Judaism over the years has overwhelmingly painted it as a call for compassion, kindness, and community. Yes, the world can be cruel, it says, which is why we must add light to the darkness wherever we can. Celebrate the freedoms we've won. Cherish the bonds we've forged. Weep even for those who've wronged us as they suffered in turn from God's judgement. Judaism, to me, has always been about how absolutely essential it is to choose love over bitterness and hatred. It is our responsibility to cultivate a kinder, better world, so those who come after us need not suffer the same ills as us. It's been a comfort in many rocky periods of my life.

And it is with that perspective that I say unequivocally: what Israel's government is doing to Palestine is indefensible. Bombing hospitals, dropping chemical weapons, denying critical aid to innocent civilians trapped in the barrage, even bombing safe routes they themselves told Palestinians to take. Displacing people from their homes, their lives, their dignity with no regard for their basic humanity. Speaking with increasingly dangerous rhetoric with a desire to wipe the entire population off the face of the map. Never mind the decades upon decades of abuse that Palestine has already suffered under Israeli occupation, second-class apartheid citizens in their own homeland. There is no excuse on the face of the planet that can justify this cruelty and carnage.

Yes, Hamas are bloodthirsty terrorists themselves, and there can be no peace until they are brought to justice. But Israel's actions in response to the October 7 attacks have long crossed the boundaries of justified retaliation. What Bibi Netanyahu and his far-right government are enacting upon Gaza is exactly the same breed of genocide that has been enacted upon Jews across the world throughout history. From our subjugation in Egypt through the Holocaust, we know all too well how it feels to face this evil, see it rip through our communities as it seeks to tear apart the fabric of our very personhood. So to see the craven extremists in Israel's government invoke those horrors in an attempt to justify subjecting another downtrodden, oppressed people to the same fate... I don't think I can properly describe how angry it makes me.

Netenyahu and his government do not speak for all Jews. Hell, according to recent polls, they don't even speak for most Israelis anymore. They do not get to claim Judaism for their own murderous purposes. They do not get to use my voice as justification for their war crimes. They betray the soul of this culture with every hospital they blow to bits and every scrap of aid they deny the suffering children next door. And I refuse to be silent in face of their propaganda. I refuse to let this culture, which has been nothing but a source of kindness and community to me, to be weaponized to excuse the same monstrosities we celebrate rising above every year. I refuse to accept their definition of Judaism as long as I have breath to speak against it.

Palestine deserves freedom. Palestine deserves self-autonomy. Palestine deserves the same kindness that Judaism preaches to all downtrodden people of the world. And Israel must stop this senseless slaughter before their history of surviving the world's horrors ends with them becoming the horror in someone else's scripture. Find and destroy Hamas without punishing the people of Gaza- over half of whom weren't even born when Hamas came to power- for their crimes. Work toward a two-state solution where Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, can live side by side in solidarity of the trials they've both overcome. Remember compassion in a world that venerates blind hatred. Remember the kindness we claim rises above all attempts to squash it down. Remember that the heart of Judaism is supporting those who struggle through darkness, helping them find their way out into the light.

Remember who we claim to be.

And refuse to let us be defined by death.

#FreePalestine

[cascaria]

Sucks being a Christian because the core fundamental ideas of it, the reason I still identify with the faith (beyond any intangible, spiritual reasons) despite everything, are unconditional Love and Acceptance. And yet for millenia it has been and still widely is twisted and molested and perverted into a basis and justification for hatred and oppression. The amount of people I've seen driven away from a God I recognize as Love because the loudest voices that claim to serve Him use Him as authority on which to blasphemously base their own hatred and evil is genuinely sickening. They are not fighting the good fight, they are not standing up against "persecution". They are actively damaging and even ending the lives of those who need Love the most just because they can't stomach the idea of someone being different. Of someone existing outside their shallow and propagandized view of the world. There are Christians getting their heads chopped off over seas but Trans people just trying to exist peacefully is persecution??

There is a special place in Hell for anyone that uses God or the Bible as a justification or basis for the oppression and otherizarion of LGBTQ+ individuals. Just as there is a special place in Hell for anyone that uses God or the Bible as justification or basis for the oppression and subjugation of women, or of other ethnicities, or of those with disabilities, or any other aspect that may make them different from the cishet white men spewing blasphemy from the pulpet, indoctrinating generations of impressionable people into believing an innocent stranger is a threat to their very existence. I usually try and skew positive with my online presence and stay away from hefty topics, I just want to spread a little Love and/or happiness at the end of the day, but this has been weighing on my mind lately and I felt the need to say something, even if I'm just yelling into the void. If nothing else to put on record what I mean when I say I'm a Christian, or rather what I don't mean.

I know some people mean well, I know some people just don't know any better. I know because I was there. I was raised in that exact way, I believed all the rhetoric fed to me. It wasn't until I disconnected from the constant stream of poison and actually made friends from different walks of life that I realized how wrong it all was. Still, ignorance is no excuse, and evil is still evil. People raised as slave owners back in the day weren't innocent just because they didn't know that slavery was wrong. They still held the whip.

God is Love. He is not your fucking gun to murder all the innocent people you don't like with. If you can't respect that, keep His name out of your fucking mouth.

Peace and Love on planet Earth.

[leovoid]

Attack on Titan video update...

Hello everyone, and first and foremost I would like to apologize for the lack of updates on my YouTube channel. A lot of things have happened that has caused my updates to come to a halt. Truthfully, most of it being writers block, others being work, my partners pregnancy, and the changes made at the end of Attack on Titan that made me have to change somethings in my script. But regardless, I wanted to share a piece I've written today to show you all that progress is being made, and a video will be uploaded eventually. I would love to hear any opinions about it good or bad Thank you so much ^^

Grisha Yeager - The beginning of the story

The story begins with Grisha Jeagar and his sister Faye, at the tenderness of their childhood idealistically and naively sought one of the many wonders of this world, a wonder in which many deems trivial.

These children knew nothing about the world, about the hatred the world has for their people, and yet, their childish endeavors pushed them forward to seek what it was that they fervently wished to see with their very eyes, something they knew they would never be able to see normally.

Play: “Faye: But it must be nice, I wonder what we can see from up there”

“Grisha: That naive day of my youth when I had to face the truth of this world”

Grisha had to face the truth, the cruelty of this world, a world that would not allow innocent children to roam freely without severe consequences, a world that would not spare a little girl for the naivete of their youth.

The history of King Fritzs' conquest has left a scar on the world, and a deep hatred for his people.

As a result, when Eldia fell to Marley, Eldians were forced to live in internment zones, stripped of their dignities, pride, and liberties.

The people subjugated to accept not being shipped off to paradise and killed as living humbly, considering it a grace to live under Marleys rule, even if it comes at the cost of inequality, prejudice, and persecution.

Play: “Grisha: My father was awfully talkative for someone who just lost their daughter”

Despite losing their daughter without reason or answer, Grishas father instead dogmatically attempted to institutionalize his son of the propaganda that Marley set for Eldians barbaric history.

That his race were nothing more than devils who once tyrannically ruled all, killed all, and oppressed all.

Whether this history can be seen as factual isn’t the point, for all that was on Grishas mind was the loss of his sister and the hands of her killer.

Grisha attempted to bring the situation to light, but was instead immediately shut down by his father continuing his preaching of the many lives and cultures slain by Eldians hands, but even so…

Play” Grisha: Faye and I didn’t do any of that, we were just walking around!”

Was it fate that was cruel or just some twisted sense of luck?

Had Grisha been born under normal circumstances his disposition would’ve been completely correct, however he was cursed with the history of his ancestors, caught within a web of corruption without choice.

Who was truly right here? Grishas father for obeying his oppressors in favor of his families safety, or Grisha for seeking justice?

The reality of it is that both of them were victims of this cruel world.

Play “ Do you have regrets about your family” Episode 63 15:00

Years pass and Grisha eventually learns the inhumane truth of his sisters fate.

Fueled with rage not just at the death of his sister, but for the injustices committed towards his people, Grisha dedicates his heart to rebelling against his oppressors, forming an alliance in seek of freedom.

But Grisha becomes blinded by his hatred, passing on a biased truth of their history onto their son, committing the same mistakes his father did all those years ago.

Creating another layer in the chain of corruption.

But that corruption runs even deeper than Grisha imagined.

For when he was face to face with his sisters killer, he was met with the corruption of the world first hand.

Instead of even a glimmer of remorse or disdain of his actions, Gross instead rationalized his actions under the pretense that “it was interesting”

Going even further to rationalize his insanity and lack of empathy by stating that humans in general simply want to see violence.

And despite how purely insane this mindset is, there is some truth to this.

When one is surrounded around peace and prosperity, one cannot help but fathom the question of the unknown, to peer into its foreign conception.

But this does not mean that all who live in peace wish to see death or wish to cause harm to others, as there are other elements at play here that causes Gross to have the disposition he does.

In a general sense, it is clear that Gross lacks empathy for his fellow man, but the brutal reality here is that Gross does not see Eldians as people.

Cultivated within the corruption of Marleys propaganda and Eldias bloody history, it becomes clear how he is able to commit such atrocities without remorse.

Deeming that all of humanity wishes for the extermination of all Eldians, how can one have empathy for another human when you don’t see them as human.

With a justifiable outlet for the monstrous desire deep within, no wonder he feels no remorse for the lives he takes, no wonder he cares so little for the apparent truth of Eldias grand history.

But on the opposite side of the same coin, it is no wonder that Gross would eventually pay a debt he never wished to incur

As the seeds of rebellion seeking justice and freedom bloomed long before he was ever born.

Were Eldias' perception of their history truth or was it Marleys?

Does it even truly matter?

Play “Kruger: There is no truth,  anyone can become a god or a devil, all it takes is for someone to believe in it”

For liberty, for justice and freedom Grisha was chosen and began the entire story.

Not just for his hatred towards the injustices committed against him, but for the innate wonder that young boy had that fateful day, the innate curiosity and seeker of something beyond the world's corrupt nature.

To be free to see the beauty of this world, to exercise his birthright as a child unknowing of the sins his ancestors before him committed. 

For that same innocent wonder to be passed onto generations forever more, Grisha must...

Eren: Fight…

[askhubertvonvestra]

Can we truly blame Sothis for not achieving "everlasting peace" when the peace her and the Nabateans had with the people of Fodlan was disrupted when TWISTD waged war on her (with the very technology she taught them to use so they could presumably prosper)?

I agree that she should have reinforced the value of humanity to her Children, but in her defense she probably didn't expect the humans she lived with to attack her, naively expecting peace to last however long she thought she would live. Also I don't think you can fault some of the Nabateans to distrust or even hate humanity because of what was done to them.

Do you belive that teachings of loving humanity would persevere in the face of the Red Canyon massacre? "Humans/Agarthans killed my mother and siblings and use their blood and bones as weapons, don't think I can just be friends with them after that. They could discover what Crest power really comes from and turn on me."

It was the Agarthans that plunged Fodlan into war in the first place, Sothis and her Children are victims of your supposed allies and should not bear the brunt of your rage.

I will never understand the tireless and tedious dedication of the blindly devout. Rather than assess the tenets and history of your religion, you attempt to pick apart my reasoning. As if, by critiquing thoughts that challenge your own, you have proven Sothis’ innocence. 

Ultimately, yes, the actions of Those Who Slither in the Dark were directly responsible for disrupting the initial peace. Yet if a person’s house is consumed by flames and the original constructor made no effort to prevent fires, can you not hold them accountable as well? Once Sothis accepted her role as a so-called goddess, she was obligated to do more than simply bask in praise. It doesn’t take much critical thought to realize that nearly any device may be misused for violence and oppression. Some will choose not to prosper, but to take from others. That she did not plan ahead for this was only one mistake to be followed by several others.

All of which would not be possible with the foundation of her initial oversights.

No two human communities are alike. Even a passing glance can expose that to an untrained eye. The individuals among those communities are likewise distinct from one another. Someone not in a leadership position might be pardoned for naïveté, but not someone who gladly embraced the role of deity. As for distrusting humans, that might also be pardonable in the time shortly following their breach of trust. It has been centuries since, and they have spent all that time never once questioning their subjugation of humanity for an event they censored from our histories.

People do not even know how loathed they are by this organization that claims to care and show compassion. A hatred you evidently feel is warranted towards even your own. Indoctrinated as you are, I cannot say I’m surprised.

If the teachings of humanity were nuanced enough, allowing room to acknowledge the rotten apples in any bushel, yes. I believe they would endure. Methods to identify the corrupt among the innocent would become more advanced. Wariness would increase, yes, as would distrust. But unlike the unified consensus among Nabateans to either directly exploit humanity or passively permit their oppression, humanity did not do this as one. Nemesis and his cohorts did this at the behest and undoubted manipulation of the Agarthans that organized themselves around this concept of superiority.

If one plant gets rot, do you mow down the farm? If a window breaks, do you shatter every single one?

The Red Canyon massacre was a horrific tragedy. I will not dispute that. But to reenact for humanity, slowly over generations, as our people were tormented and experimented on with no consequence... Is that not its own horror? Is it not the responsibility of every Nabatean who did not look closer? Who sensed something was wrong and did nothing? 

Yet I am instructed by one on occasion. I sit at a table with his daughter. If they knew my designs on the Church, they would surely kill me in some merciless manner. Somehow, I have managed. I am well within my rights to expect the same of someone who is my senior by hundreds of years.

The Agarthans responsible for the war will get what is coming to them, make no mistake of that. But I am allowed to be enraged and spiteful toward whomever I please, when those very people chose to make more victims, over and over for decades upon decades of silent atrocities, as a salve for their own pain.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

In the cognitive war against Israel, supporters of what historian Bat Ye’or called Palestinianism have come to accept the fact that Israel will not be defeated employing traditional tools of warfare. Instead, the Jewish state’s enemies, abetted by the academic and media elites in the West, have been using different, but equally dangerous, tactics to delegitimize and eventually destroy Israel in a cognitive war.

By dressing up old hatreds against Jews and transforming it into what comprises the “new anti-Semitism,” combined with a purported goal of seeking social justice for the oppressed and repackaging ugly biases as academic scholarship, professors, student activist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Israel’s other ideological foes have found an effective, but odious, way to ensure that the Jew of nations, Israel, is still accused of being: a racist, apartheid oppressor of an indigenous people; white European Jews with no historical connection to the Holy Land who are colonial usurpers of Muslim land; the main impediment to Middle East peace; and a brutal military occupier of land on which illegal “settlements” are built as a way of subjugating an existing innocent population in the quest for a Great Israel that will swallow even more territory to which the Jews have no legitimate claim.

This is the current narrative in what Melanie Phillips has called “the world turned upside down,” an inversion of truth and fiction, calumnies and lies targeting the Jewish state in an effort to elevate the Palestinian cause, delegitimize Israel, and make Israel a pariah in the world community. But this narrative, unfortunately, is based on a presentation of lies, a series of repeated tropes about the malignancy and illegality of Israel that has little to do with facts, history, or reason. These lies are repeated promiscuously until they accepted as fact, a Goebbel-esque tradition that creates a new truth through the unrelenting repetition of falsity, disingenuity, and distortions of reality.

[hillarykylie]

With all due respect to Lana, I’d like to politely and respectfully dissect her ig post and address the loopholes and fallacies in her arguments, in hopes to clarify why it’s inherently problematic for some, and hopefully bring people on both ends of the spectrum towards a middle ground :-) x

(in no way, shape or form, am I attempting to invalidate Lana’s struggles. Her feelings are completely valid and just like everyone else, she has every right to express herself unapologetically.)

(I do not condone any immature individuals sending her threats, but where dissenting arguments are presented on a factual basis by well-meaning fans and the general public, I’d like people to understand that not all criticism is bad or irrational. Criticism, when constructive and logically sound, can often serve as a fuel for self-improvement and advancement.)

Lana’s fundamental gist was her frustration in being unable to sing candidly about “morbid” issues in society without being censured or harped on by the media for her melancholic lyrical content.

She feels stifled and is tired of critics being critical of the way she unintentionally ‘glamorizes’ abuse and the pathologies of society, and proceeded to incorporate some of the biggest names in the music industry - many of whom were WOC. (Beyoncé, Nicki, Cardi, Doja and Kehlani), and goes on to speak of feminism and how she feels contemporary feminism doesn’t cater to her ‘aesthetic’ and singles her out.

There are so many reasons why her following arguments are deeply flawed and erroneous:

1. By name-dropping and bringing in stars in the industry who’ve been through the same level of scrutiny and castigation as her, if not worse, completely defies all logic in her paragraph and her purpose of cultivating acceptance.

Her comparison is not analogous.

These women have all bore the brunt of Hollywood and a predominantly whitewashed, chauvinistic music industry, and have undergone years of tabloid stings, scandals, controversies, to widespread denigration and misogynistic subjugation by men in the industry and the wider public.

Beyoncé has been in the industry for more than a decade, from her innocent Destiny Child days to her solo debut, where there was never a moment where she was spared from the media vultures, who preyed on her and slammed her for her music, to her looks, to her alleged “anti-feminist” lyrics, to her stance on Police Brutality, to her ‘glamorizing’ Jay-Z’s infidelity in Lemonade and to inconsequential things like the way she dresses her daughter, Blue.

Cardi and Nicki both, have been victims to years of media disparagement for their sexually explicit lyrical content and for proudly embracing their sexuality and their body confidence and self-love. Their music have been subject to relentless cynicism, with many arguing that their lyrics ‘promote promiscuity’ and what not.

More importantly, the fact that they’re WOC already puts them at an incredibly unfair disadvantage from the get go, as they’ve had to challenge not only misogyny, but institutional structures such as racism and xenophobia.

WOC have been known to be systematically and historically OPPRESSED by our patriarchal Eurocentric society, where andocentrism and white superiority takes precedence over everything else.

We like to think that society is becoming progressively ‘equal’, but that cannot be farther from the truth. There are always underlying race relations and power struggles at play, even if one denies it.

The reality is that it is completely out of character to compare her struggles to Women of Color, who not only face the same austerity of slander and retraction as her, but have had to deal with institutionalised discrimination and racism their whole lives.

She cannot pit herself on the same level playing field as these women for she’s not of ethnic descent, and is a fairly wealthy white cis female herself who already is privileged from the beginning.

These women Lana mentioned are and have been DOUBLY oppressed - in terms of their gender AND race, and have had to work TENFOLD as hard to even make a breakthrough in the industry, let alone set trailblazing records of topping charts - which is why their success is not only monumental, but legendary and should be commemorated.

If you’re not a person of Color, you would never understand, but you don’t get to tell people of Color what consists of racial microaggressions or undertones or not when you do not walk in the same shoes as them.

Just like there exists capitalism, racial discrimination and ostracisation has stood the test of time. POCs have never had anything easy, and have been systematically stigmatized since the dawn of civilisation.

What makes Lana, or anyone think, that people like Bey, Nicki or Cardi have never faced scrutiny for their lyrics, or are somehow precluded from criticism or hardships?

Drawing them as examples is a ridiculous analogy and reeks of white privilege. Lana cannnot compare her experiences of being “slammed” to what POC women have to go through to even be recognised or respected for their craft. Her race automatically puts her on the pedestal in life, where she doesn’t have to be affronted with the same level of systematic subjugation or suppression that the WOC have undergone.

For years, the contemporary feminized ideal was the ‘soft-spoken’ and ‘delicate’, overtly feminine white woman.

Black women have had to cope with being mislabeled as “aggressive” / “loud” for literal decades even up till this day, while the conventional, soft-spoken white woman archetype is celebrated all around the world. Today, the stereotype has been refuted thanks to the contribution of our WOC - who‘ve shown that there is femininity in being strong and charismatic.

Aforementioned, Bey’s lyrics have been dubbed as “anti-feminist” for ages, and the amount and magnitude of calumny bey received is simply, and unquestionably UNPARALLED to Lana’s.

America, the world, and feminism as a whole, have always CATERED to white women, while WOC have categorically had to bear the brunt of their unequal/restricted access to opportunities.

There’s space in feminism for Lana - she is not oppressed in any manner.

The problem doesn’t lie with these artistes, the problem lies right with patriarchy and the workings of a heavily male-dominated industry.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Women will always be scrutinised, judged and censored for whatever they do or say. Whether it be WOC or not, most women in lucrative industries have had to put up with shit from their male counterparts - it’s nothing new.

I hope this post highlights the hypocrisy in Lana’s statement in the most amicable way possible, without discrediting anyone in the process.

It is imperative that we are receptive to different viewpoints, and not class every dissent in opinion as a form of “hatred”, and not allude ourselves to ignorance.

Cheers x

[sunspira]

if i remember this graphic was originally developed by Jewish Holocaust survivors and non zionist jewish people have a rich history in social justice. it's actually a reason why so many alt right and neo nazis are antisemitic.

it is because jewish thinkers and grassroots leaders have made such strides in identifying these tactics and standing against them. jewish activists were instrumental in building progressive social reform as we know it today. many american jewish people were some of the first and only white people in solidarity with the black civil rights movement.

neo nazis (and nazis of old) love to paint leftist jewish progressives as a force of evil and destruction, when all they seek to destroy is race supremacy and racism, atrocities and war crimes, and dismantle tyrannical regimes and imperialist murderers. for a nazi or fascist indeed, its loss of total domination and control and subjugation of their victims, and the rise of equality and peace is exactly what a tyrant king sees as "destruction". that's my opinion anyway.

most jewish people are not zionist and do not stand with israel. (or they do not now, even if they did in their youth or their past because of propaganda, much like when young americans are taught patriotism and to support the troops).

so in the case of israel? what went wrong? well it may be that this social justice thought was corrupted by zionists, a white supremacist organization, to serve an oppressor instead.

like when palestinians make legitimate and concrete unbigoted criticisms of an oppressor, those words are purposely interpreted and demonized as Biased Attitudes. if you can convince people that "isreal is stolen land" is an "offensive remark". or that palestinians aren't upset we stole their house they just "fear us for our jewish differences". well with that set in motion it becomes easy, for foreigners especially, to write off palestinians as another round of antisemitic nazi sympathizers. and easy for zionist israelis frame themselves as children of the holocaust rising against the latest hatred.

jewish people worldwide who encounter real antisemitism are told that palestinians are antisemites, rather than colonized genocide victims, and it's rather believable because when you're jewish you know from birth all too well there is so much actual antisemitism is out there and around us. the same people are told that israel is a place they can be safe from all that. birthright trips are almost a cult like love bombing escapade.

dismantling antisemitism in your community and country and worldwide is one of THE most concrete ways you can dismantle israel.

make sure no one feels like they need to leave their country of origin to join that zionist cult

that includes communities of color, as part of the reason so many MENA jewish people moved to israel is because of violent antisemitism in their countries as well and being pushed out and displaced. arab supremacy and ethnic cleansing and oppression of indigenous ethnic minorities in the middle east and north africa is entire side of the coin here. it doesn't excuse anything going on in palestine for a SECOND or indicate that arab palestine is or ever was even the oppressor here. only that various arab supremacist imperialist nations have occurred in the middle east and north africa. the history of islamic imperialism in MENA similar to christian imperialism in europe. except that at least a great deal of islam is actually indigenous to parts of mena and roman christianity was always an occupier of europe. but there are many places communities nations in mena where islam was not indigenous and did not spread naturally but was imposed by colonizing forces such as on the Zoroastrian people especially and the violent attempt to nearly wipe them out of modern day iran. it's rather important to understand the contradictory sounding truths that no ethnic group is innocent or the victim inherently. hell greek people are considered white europeans and were victims of turk supremacist imperialist genocide in their indigenous homelands when the young turks attempted ethnic cleansing within their empire for turk purity and greatness. often certain ethnicities have the power but that's not a guarantee, the important thing is that there are structural reasons and power dynamics and context every time for why imperialist aggressions and colonizing and suppressing indigenous people are wrong no matter who does it, and in the end yes it often leads to genocide.

this graphic is still so applicable to the treatment of palestine to widespread antiblackness and widespread transphobia.

the biased attitudes section can and does run rampant even in progressive or queer communities!

which completely alienates and isolates the most vulnerable among you and promotes an escalation of hate happening to them.

you can make a change to that. this graphic was my best friend when i was young and 18 and first being exposed to progressive ideas or academic social justice. if you are against bigotry please definitely read this. especially if you too are young and white and are new to these things

[troybeecham]

Fr. Troy Beecham

Sermon, Proper 11 A, 2020

Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Jesus put before the crowd another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”

In the Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus speaks in very challenging language for contemporary sensibilities. Jesus explains his parable to his disciples saying that at the end of days, God will execute judgement on evildoers. Now, to the ears of his disciples and his contemporary audience, they had no trouble in thinking about God and judgement and evildoers being cast into a furnace of fire. Quite to the contrary, they eagerly desired for God’s judgement to begin because they had obvious evildoers in mind – the occupying Roman Empire. Just like his original hearers, our contemporary identity politics lead us to demand that everyone be accepted and celebrated for who they are because any destructive behavior can be explained away due to their intersectional identity, and no one may be considered an outcast, depending, of course, on one’s intersectional identity. Just like the people two thousand years ago living under the crushing might of the Roman empire, our current philosophy of intersectionality also allows for entire groups of people to be branded as unacceptable and worthy of being an outcast based on their intersectional identity, an identity that is inescapable, ruthless, and able to accommodate violence in the pursuit of “justice”. It is sad and absurd, all in one, how in our drive to excuse ourselves of responsibility for our sins and evildoing we have created yet another system of judgement that brands itself as a system that does away with judgement, unless you happen to be part of a politically undesirable group, of course.

Let’s look at the parable for a moment. If you were a subjugated Israelite living under the oppression of the Roman occupation, hearing that God would execute violent judgment was totally acceptable, even desirable. But is that what Jesus is talking about? Doesn’t he talk about God the Father as the God who is self-emptying love? How does Jesus’ teaching about the Father square with the judgment language in this parable?

Like so many of Jesus’ parables, we are so removed in time and place that we miss how the details open up the meaning of the parables. First of all, today’s parable is a continuation of the parable from last week about the sower of seeds who casts seed on all types of soil. In this parable, the sown field contains both good seeds and bad seeds because an enemy, Satan, has snuck into the field at night to sow the seeds of weeds among the wheat. In Jewish law, any field that had more than one kind of seed planted in it made it unclean, and so a farmer would lose the entire crop for the year. What a disaster for people living at subsistence levels! The weeds in this parable produce a plant almost indistinguishable from wheat unless you know what to look for at close inspection. Even then, it is hard to tell them apart. The slaves in the parable (typically used to signify the rightful landowners whose land had been confiscated by the Roman occupation, leaving them, at best, as tenant farmers) rightly ask the landowner (a word often used to signify wealthy, non-Jewish settlers who had been given land by the empire) if they should go out into the field and pluck up the weeds by hand so that the harvest will not be compromised and ruined, leading most likely to malnourishment or starvation, or to increased debt by asking the landowner for enough food to survive. It’s a completely understandable request in the face of crushing poverty and starvation.

When the landowner says let the plants all grow together until the harvest and then let the reapers separate the wheat from the weeds, he has no care that for his tenants nothing that comes out of that field is edible because of religious law. For the landowner, no big deal. He gets his crop either way, and he gets greater control through the instruments of debt and starvation over his tenants. For the tenants it is a catastrophe. Those who were listening to Jesus preach these things understood, and it would have incited deep anger and hatred for the forces of the occupation. No wonder that Jesus’ countrymen who betrayed him to the Roman authorities used his parables as proof that he was inciting riot against the empire. But was Jesus trying to incite riot and violence?

I don’t think so, and here’s why. In explaining the parable, Jesus makes it clear that he is speaking about the end of days, when the chief actors in the parable are God and his spiritual agents, his angels. Using such apocalyptic language was typical of Jesus’ preaching and teaching. ‘Apocalyptic’ in this sense means revealing the truth of the world, the world behind the curtain, which only a few are able to glimpse and see, and even seeing fail to fully understand. Jesus preached and presented himself as one who not only saw behind the curtain but who understood God and the Truth of creation completely because he knew the mind of the Father, and was God’s appointed representative, the Son of Man. He is teaching us the Truth of creation because God created all things through him.

But because we are not able to fully understand the Truth, we often get lost in explanations that make sense to us. I am not making any claims to greater understanding because I know myself well enough to know that I would have misunderstood Jesus just as deeply as his first disciples. Jesus did say, later after his resurrection, that the Holy Spirit would be sent upon his disciples to lead us into all truth. Because of this, I do think that it is profitable, and by the Holy Spirit it is possible, to do our best to be open to exploring as deeply as possible the parables of Jesus to seek ever deeper understanding, perhaps even wisdom.

So, what do I think are some further keys of insight into this parable? How can we inch closer to understanding? First of all, if we read this parable and the explanation that Jesus gives to us and it fills us with a sense that we are being given enough wisdom and authority to decide who is a saint, or the wheat, and someone doomed to judgment, or the weeds, then we have entirely missed the point. If we think that we are wise enough, good enough, innocent enough to walk through the field of humanity and decide who is good and who is bad, then we are showing ourselves to be the most unwise, the most wicked, the most guilty because we are arrogating to ourselves the role of God and his angels. When we try to place ourselves between God and the judgment of evildoers, trying to take the role of judge in deciding who is an evildoer and who is a saint, we are exalting our own ‘wisdom’ and wickedly put ourselves in the seat of God. There is no human system of deciding who is ‘ok’ and who should be excised from society that is holy or wise. We may say that we are being harmed by a person or by society at large, and even turn to the law for redress and protection, but that is a far cry from passing final judgment on others. Only God has the wisdom to discern between “all causes of sin and all evildoers”, and the wisdom to execute justice. Here’s another important thing to ask, because the parable is by nature slippery and leaves us with uncertainty: does the fire that Jesus talks about in this parable represent eternal damnation, or does it signify the refining fire that separates gold from dross, a fire that we all will face so that we might eventually shine like the sun? At this point I think we have simply to say with all humility that only God knows, and that whatever God does is done in love.

In the face of this world’s calamities, of the confusion of our present time, in the face of rage and violence, the only faithful response of a disciple of Jesus in this world is to leave all judgment to God, to never seek vengeance, to love our neighbor – yes, even those neighbors we think of as evildoers, who fail our intersectional system of judgment – as ourselves. Jesus said that the world would know that we are his disciples by the way that we love each other. Do we only love those who share our world view (philia love), or those who are relatives (storge love), or those with who we share the feelings of passion (eros love)? Or will we love as God loves, the love that is self-emptying, that gives all for the wellbeing of others (agape love)? Jesus calls his disciples to this agape love, a love that takes us outside of ourselves and personal desires or hurts, outside our cultural value/judgment systems. He also said that the world would only come to know that he is the Son of God if his disciples are seen living lives of agape love, the love that passes no judgment, that empties itself for the sake of all people, that leads us to serve all people.

Will we be faithful as disciples of Jesus, loving each other so that we are conspicuously different, conspicuously his disciples, so that the people of the world will come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God? This is the one, the true, the only vocation given to us by our Savior Jesus. Have we gotten enmeshed with the judgment systems of the world? Have we allowed the rage of the world to take up residence within our hearts, leading us to believe that becoming warriors of social justice will reveal Jesus to the world? Have we allowed our hearts to judge others? If we answer yes to any of such things, then let us with our whole hearts fall to our knees and ask God to restore us in grace to faithfulness to Jesus, to the Faith he revealed to us. The only hope for the people of the world is to see humility, compassion, forbearance, mercy, and agape love in the disciples of Jesus, a people set apart by self-emptying love and absolute trust in the mercy and justice of the God who is Love.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

[wisdomrays]

Concord and Alliance Once More

QUESTION: The noble Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, stated that his supplications to God about his followers not being destroyed by a wholesale disaster and their not remaining constantly under others’ dominance were accepted, but the supplication about his followers’ not falling into discord and disunity was not accepted. Could you elucidate the aspects that these points share and the messages they convey to us?

ANSWER: In order to educate believers, the Qur’an related many different stories about the lives of the Prophets. An important point relayed in these stories is the destruction of people who refused to believe in the Messengers that God sent to guide them. The people of Prophet Noah, were destroyed by a flood after they obstinately denied him and oppressed his followers. The people of Prophet Hud (Eber in the Old Testament) were destroyed by an inauspicious storm; the people of Prophet Salih by a terrible blast, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were sunk into the ground.

Whether these acts of God were restricted to a certain region, or whether the destruction included all humanity, we do not know. However, when we consider the fact that the Prophets before the Pride of Humanity (Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him) were each sent to a particular people, then it is possible to discern that every act of destruction was limited to that particular region. Therefore, if people did not believe in the Prophet sent to them and insisted on their unbelief and oppression, ultimately facing destruction, it was limited to that group of people.  However, accordingly, as the seal of the Prophets was sent to all humanity then the entirety of those who refused to accept his message but insisted on denial and oppression should be destroyed.

The accepted petition

It is for this reason that the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, supplicated so that his followers would not face such a wholesale destruction.

“But God would not punish them so long as you were among them; and God is not to punish them (or other people) while they implore Him for forgiveness for their sins” (al-Anfal 8:33).

This verse indicates that his prayer was accepted.

There are certain distinctive features that are unique to the Final Prophet, (peace and blessings be upon him). One of these is that for as long as he spent his blessed life among his followers and led them, they would not face total destruction as befell peoples of the past. According to the apparent meaning of the verse, this truth is apodictic. It is also possible to infer the following implicit meaning from the verse: As long as the Prince of the Prophets lives in the hearts of Muslims, God will not punish them as He did earlier peoples; he will not sink them into the ground. If there is a sound Muhammadi spirit among the believers, just as God Almighty forgave the followers of the Final Prophet during his lifetime and after his demise, God will forgive and protect them until the end of the world.

In the rest of the world, it is also stated that another means of believers’ protection from destruction is realized by their asking for forgiveness. If Muslims ask for forgiveness immediately after committing sins, God will save them from misfortunes that could befall them from above, below, from the right and left; He will not sink them into the ground. In short, God Almighty accepted the Prophet’s prayer about Muslims’ not facing total destruction. The Qur’an stated this truth and history has evidently revealed this.

Temporary periods of subjugation in the cycles of history

Secondly, the Final Prophet supplicated to God asking that Muslims’ not stay under the invasion of an exploitive state. God’s Messenger saw with his Prophetic sight that could reach the unseen, that believers would sometimes face invasion, but this would not continue forever. Some 4–5 centuries after his blessed life, Muslims faced successions of crusades. After that the Mongols came, invading Baghdad, the center of the caliphate, but none of these invasions became permanent. None of the invasions by the crusaders, the Mongolians, or by the oppressors and transgressors in later periods lasted. A day came and all were finished by God’s permission and grace.

In our time, the Islamic world is suffering from invasions of a different nature. Where as in the past, invasions were realized by brute force, these days they are operated by means of pawns within the Islamic world. These pawns are administering the Muslim geographies. Tyrants with a nature that suits others’ purposes are selected and used to subjugate the Islamic world.

As has always happened in the past, and will happen again after this, people will gain their independence, with the permission of God, and the period of tyrants will come to an end. Who knows which ants will once more bring down the palaces of Pharaohs, and which mosquitos will make Nimrods fall flat on their faces. The noble Prophet petitioned God about this matter and God Almighty accepted his prayer and gave him the glad tidings that his followers will not remain under invasion forever.

The source of disunity: Human weaknesses

Lastly, with his Prophetic sight which could reach the unseen, the Pride of Humanity saw that feelings of greed, envy, rivalry, ambition for fame, love of status and desire to be the center of attention would cause discord among his followers and bring them to loggerheads with each other. He entreated God to save them from such a danger but did not receive a positive reply because this is a direct test of individuals’ free will. Although God Almighty did not totally reject the petition of His beloved Messenger, neither did He decree that they would confront one another. God left believers’ living in unity to their willful choice. God did not create people as—forgive the expression—beasts, or not as trees to remain standing in peace when put side-by-side; He created them as human beings and endowed them with willpower. Hence, human beings must give their willpower its due and constantly struggle against their negative feelings such as jealousy, grudges, hatred, malice and intolerance, so that they can progress. In other words, the issue of maintaining concord and unity was not given to Muslims as an unmerited favor. On the contrary, God Almighty made Divine guidance and assistance on this issue conditional to their giving their willpower its due.

In this regard, if believers wish to make a consensus, agree with and embrace one another, they must open their arms to everybody in the same way that Abdulqadr al-Jilani, Abu Hasan al-Shazili, Jalaluddin Rumi did. In terms of their personal rights, they should be without hands against those who strike them, without speech against those who curse them and without bitterness against those who break their hearts. They must keep the door to agreement and unity open all the time. If they achieve this by giving their willpower its due, they will have established unity and togetherness in this world; and in the Hereafter, they will receive the surprise blessings of God. Such endeavors they make in this world will bring very different returns in the next one.

Like a rocket on a launcher

Remember that giving one’s willpower its due against lustful feelings turns that person into a monument of morality; or, not giving in to envy and greed despite the good things granted to others makes that person a hero of dignified contentment. In the same way, in order to maintain concord and alliance, individuals’ using their willpower to act in spite of themselves will make them into monuments of virtue.

Some might act with incredible malevolence against you despite their claiming to be believers. They might throw stones and thorns on the path you tread. They might render your roads impossible to walk on and destroy the bridges in front of you. They might wish to completely isolate you from society. However, if you are to become a paragon of virtue for the sake of concord and alliance, you must overlook all of these acts and keep walking, saying, “This too shall pass.” When the bridges in front of you are destroyed, you must make new bridges from ropes and wood somewhere else. Without falling into separation from God, in spite of those who willfully took the path of separation from Him, you must keep walking with God’s permission and grace.

The day will come when some of those who did these evils to you will regret their actions. When they come with regret, it is very important that they should find you where they are standing. Even when they voice their regret, what falls to you is to give a gentlemanly response and say, “Good heavens! We have no knowledge of this. We always felt that you were near us.”

In truth, you will know that they had drifted kilometers away from you from jealousy and envy, that they had made remarks as: “Bring the movement to a halt. Do not let them survive. Finish them off!” You will know that they committed all of these wrongdoings without any serious and reasonable explanation. On the contrary, the motive behind this was the feeling of rivalry, jealousy and envy. Even inside the most innocent one of them, there was the feeling of competing. They were trying to gain a bigger share of the pie. For journeyers to the Truth, overlooking all of these evils and standing where they had been as if nothing had happened will be a great virtue.

Understanding human nature correctly

It should not be forgotten that it is not always possible to keep up concord and alliance; that certain disagreements may arise all the time, for human nature is prone to this by creation. Hence, even if we personally run after the loftiest ideal for the sake of concord and alliance, we should realize that we might encounter most unexpected attitudes and behaviors so that we do not lose hope through the profound disappointment we feel when we face heart-rending events.

For the sake of preserving the spirit of unity and togetherness, some may act like the Rightly Guided Caliphs and establish close ties of fraternity with those around and virtually form a structure as sound as steel. Such a concord and alliance was once formed between the Companions of the noble Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. However, as different understandings and different philosophical considerations were included in the issue in later periods, it is not possible to say that the same purity was maintained.

Every person has some certain weaknesses. Some may display particular behaviors in order to upset the general harmony of the collective they are in. Some may commit certain wrongs and sins to harm the general harmony. Some may fail to melt their ego like a cube of ice in the pool of the collective and fail to gain a consciousness of forming a whole. What falls to us in the face of all of these is to evaluate issues with a big conscience, not to drive people away from us by being furious with their wrongs. On the contrary, we should try to win them, make efforts to help them up, and thus take these people entrusted to us as far as we can take them.

Many verses of the Qur’an command believers to respond to evil with goodness, and to be forgiving and tolerant. Thus, we need to act in accordance with these principles taught by the Qur’an, and overlook faults as much as we can. Otherwise, we make most people run away from us, and this harms the acts of goodness we try to realize for the sake of God’s good pleasure. If we wish to retain concord and alliance, we should not dismiss anyone on account of their mistakes and faults; on the contrary, we should seek and find ways to reach everybody’s heart, and try to help them up by embracing them with compassion.

[therealdragonnerdagain]

Dear Fellow Black People

Life is too short and being angry about white supremacy is a waste of energy.

I'm writing this because I'm tired of watching black people trying to reason with delusional white racists on the internet.

I'm writing this because -- for the sake of our own sanity -- black people need to stop giving a shit about white people and just make the best of our lives. I'm about to tell you why it will benefit you mentally and spiritually to focus on living your life the best you can and just ignore white people. True to Universe 25, white people are kicking and thrashing against their own crumbling empire. They knew this was coming because it happened to black people first -- In fact, it's how they took over the world from us. We don't have to do shit but watch their downfall.

This is why you should stop giving a shit:

White people enjoy having white privilege and are never going to give it up. Never. Yes, even the "good liberals." Some of them virtue signal because they are ashamed of the overt racists among them (Nazis, KKK, etc) but are in reality complacent with subtle racism (Look at their reaction to Get Out) and try to normalize shitty thoughts and behaviors by saying things like "everyone is racist" (no, everyone isn't) and "humanity in general is evil" (no, humanity is not generally evil). It's an attempt to make us all as bad as they are so they can continue to be crappy people without question.

Stop explaining racism to white people. They don't understand it and/or pretend not to understand it just to exhaust you, and the ones who do understand do not give a shit. We know that racism is an IRRATIONAL hatred of an entire group of people (what have black people as a group really ever done to white people?), but white people will never see our resentment against them and all the shit they’ve done to us as rational. They will always be forever enraged that we dare to not complacently enjoy oppression even while they deny us employment, healthcare, nutrition, decency, respect, and continue to demonize us in the media.

White people are angry about Black Panther because the movie didn’t just troll us: it trolled white people too. Most white people are aware that black people (the moor) originally ruled the world and that white people were once at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They do not like being reminded of that. Black Panther acknowledges that white supremacy is coming to an end and that white people are losing everything they unapologetically slaughtered other people for. At the same time, the movie demonizes black Americans and mocks Africans by reminding us of what was lost and what we can never get back. Because clearly, China is the next world power.

White people are on a mission to take us out with them as they die, and they can not be reasoned with. They are rabid dogs so focused on subjugating and oppressing us scary, threatening black people that they can’t even see how China is the real threat. China has been slowly placing price tags on white asses for years now. Before long, they will run everything. Their population is exploding, while white people are disappearing. It would be in their best interest to kiss China’s ass, but they are too busy shitting on black people, making racist jokes about Latinos, fighting Arabs, and fighting each other.  

You can't get through to white people because they actually believe everyone else is as bad as they are. They actually, truly believe this. They lack any and all ability to empathize with people who are not white (this is why they don't care about police brutality, why they don’t understand Black Lives Matter, why the #MeToo movement was seen as “aggressive” by them because it was black-led, and why they are always "blind" to systemic racism), and the vast majority of them can't even empathize with animals. They are the only people who enjoy killing things for sport and taking pictures with the corpses. They are the only people who disrespect nature and don’t have an issue raping it dry. They are 10% of the world's population and have managed to remain statistically the most violent. They can not be reasoned with. People who see you as less than a person will NEVER listen to a thing you say.

They constantly project, and this is why they continue to brutalize, murder, and rape us with the belief that we are like them and will do it to them. This is also why they fear black people gaining true wealth and power: they think all the hate they gave will come back on them. For this reason, weed will always be illegal in most predominantly white states, and even in the states where it becomes legal, its distribution (and therefore its wealth) will still be monitored closely so that it only monetarily benefits white people: no one will be allowed to grow pot in their house.

White people are literally a different species to us. This is why they don't see us as human, when ironically, they are the ones who aren't human. White people are the only "humans" who can't trace their evolution back to Africa. This is why they are so against teaching evolution in schools but mask it behind a Christian agenda. Yet they pretend that "we are all African" to get away with the shit they do. They are not African. They are not human. They are a different species entirely, which is why they refer to our blood as "monkey blood" because it’s primate blood and theirs is not. When two people get married, they have to get a blood test to see if their child will survive. Otherwise, the fetus will be rejected by the mother's womb as if it is a disease or a foreign object. Why? Because two different species have mixed over the years that should not be mixing.

White people are a different species entirely and it's been widely believed for years that they are actually hybrid descendants of the violent and savage Neanderthals that slaughtered their way from cave to cave (Sound familiar? That's basically white history in a nutshell). They even have fairy tales of how they came here from another planet. They rationalize their existence by saying they are descendants of angels and Tall White Aliens. Even white people don't believe they are human.

What kind of race hasn’t evolved to survive their own planet’s sun? If white people were from Earth, they would not crumble in the sunlight. They would not have stories about vampires and subterranean Martians. They would not be so diseased and frail. Because they would have evolved – as we did – to survive this planet.

The fact that we are a different species has been used to justify white people’s shitty treatment of us. Bio warfare (the invention of an AIDs virus whose origins they conveniently can’t trace and/or blame on black people), discrimination, brutalization, lynching, raping, slavery. The appropriation of our culture for their monetary gain. Constantly dictating what “human” is and telling us how to dress, think, and feel. Holding us back from our dreams. Stealing our genetics like accessories but shaming us for naturally having them. You can’t wear natural hairstyles to work or school and are expected to torture yourself with chemicals (perms) to appease them, so it’s literally illegal to be black. Brainwashing our community with Christianity. Dividing us with colorism. Keeping us poor, uneducated, and desperate. Distributing drugs among our people. Murdering every. Single. Civil rights leader. We. Ever. Had. Then having the gall to use MLK to lecture us about peaceful protests that they always slaughter our people for anyway. Then at the end of it all acting innocently appalled by our anger when we don’t quietly accept being treated like shit.

Four hundred years of consistently pulling devious shit against black people have proven their hatred for us is very real and is not going to change. It doesn't matter how "progressive" some white people appear. Most are doing it for political reasons, to sooth their own egos or to separate themselves from extremists like the KKK. White civil rights activism isn't about black people at all. It's about white people and their politics. The easiest way to look good is to pretend to give a shit about black people, right NatGeo?

White people are disappearing. They are 10% of the world's population and only maintain control because they control all the wealth. We could rise and kill them all (but we won't) which is why they are so terrified. Again, they are projecting. They think we are as bad as them, that we'll rise up and kill them all when their numbers are low, so their police brutalize us, and they encourage interracial dating in an attempt to survive through our genes, and they SUDDENLY give a shit about the environment because they won't be able to survive it in about 200 years the way our melanin-induced skin can. This is another reason why they want to get melanin in their genes.

Universe 25.

White people know they are on their way out. They have known a long time. Like I said on another post, they love writing stories about their white nightmares.

The Planet of the Apes was about a world ruled by apes (black people) and the horrified white man (Heston) who finds himself a slave there.

The Dragon Age franchise talks about Universe 25 in Inquisition. Solas is an ancient elf who watched elven civilization crumble due to wars over resources and imbalances in the social hierarchy. He foresees it all happening again to humans and it’s painfully obvious in his conversations with Varric and Sera. At first, Solas encourages Sera to actually do something to fight the system, then he quickly realizes that Universe 25 – the collapse of a system built on social inequality and/or experiencing a population explosion that divides resources – is inevitable and agrees that Sera is “fine as she is.”

Black Panther is just the latest version of these white nightmares, only white people have it wrong. When white people finally succumb to Universe 25, it is not black Africans who they need look to for salvation. The end of Black Panther preaches peace between the races and uses MLK to try and brainwash us into being kind to white people when Universe 25 finally happens to them (it’s sad that they think we’re so stupid that we can’t see through that shit) but in reality, it is not black people on whose mercy white lives will depend. That’s what the racists (some of them anyway) don’t get.

White survival is about to depend entirely on the Chinese.

White people will not be able to stand up to the Chinese, which is why they are pushing interracial dating. They want to elevate biracials to white status – just as they did with the Irish and the Scots – to improve their numbers, but it won’t be enough. So they are probably going to turn to Latin people next, who already consider themselves white and white adjacent. If they stopped being dicks to Latin people, Latin people might save them. Most Latinos are so anti-black and so thirsty for white status, you bet your ass they would do it.

 The reality is, white power has lasted this long because white people have done this before. They bred with the original indigenous black people across the globe to create most of the beige races that exist today, to survive, to continue to rule us. They will continue to do it in desperation but are slowly coming to the realization that their genes are actually weak and that they are, in fact, helping to create a world full of brown people. This is why some of them – the extremists -- are actually against interracial dating.

This is also why they won’t legalize abortion: they desperately want white women to keep having white babies and they desperately want black women to keep having black babies they can use as canon fodder in their wars.

But Universe 25 is inevitable for any civilization that experiences a population boom and starts fighting for resources. White people literally caused this population boom by raping black people to create new races.

It was already predicted long ago that white people would only rule for 600 years. They have 200 years left, and if they aren’t killed by Global Warming, they will still eventually fade away because they were never meant to survive this environment.  

White people can’t be saved from themselves. Just let them slowly die out. Let them fall in the grave they dug for themselves.

Black people are dying out too. We are the originators, the indigenous people of Earth who once populated and ruled the ancient planet, but before long, we will be gone, and it will be a planet of beige-colored people, a genetic mush of multicolored eyes and hair.

I pity that future generation, the people who will descend from us and who have to clean up our mess. Everyone will probably look the same at that point, so there will be no racism. But there will still be sexism, religion, pedophilia, terrorism, war, disease, social inequality, and poverty, because the white gene and its thirst to dominate and control will survive inside the black one.

You think I’m joking or that I’m being “racist” when I say this, but it is the reality. Black people originated true equalitarianism, a concept most white people can not even begin to grasp because their culture revolves around patriarchal power structures (in direct opposition to black matriarchal power structures), competition, selfishness, greed, “might is right,” and rewarding predators.

White people are doomed to be ruled by China. And even if white people all disappeared as they fear, we would still have to live with anti-black Chinese, Latinos, Indians, Arabs, and basically anyone who isn’t black because basically anyone who isn’t black hates us.

White people can not save themselves and are determined to take us down with them.

Let white people be. Let them be. Eat popcorn. Watch their turn at Universe 25. Watch. File your nails. Laugh. Stop stressing out over shit that’s about to be over anyway.

What can black people do in the meantime? Rediscover our spirituality. Communicate with the Source. Take care of ourselves and our communities. Be good to each other (end colorism). Practice LoA to enrich our personal lives. Move forward. Don’t look back. Detach. Observe the changing world powers from a safe distance.

Nytimes and other assbackwards websites will tell you not to ignore white people. Those are the sunken black people who can’t be saved, who have no idea what’s going on, who their ancestors were, or what happened in the past. Ignore them too.

Let them go. It is not worth the stress and life is too short to spend wringing our hands over racism.

It is out of our hands.

[englishproblems]

Are you an idiot? Black lives matter has never done anything hateful or violent?

I am not an idiot. I feel that should have been evident in the logical argument of why you should care about other people in my response to your last question. 

For simplicity’s sake, I will copy your two other asks that you submitted here and respond to them all rather than do them separately as they are all related.

I’ll start with the question from above. Again, I am not an idiot. I don’t assume that you are an idiot, even though I disagree with you. I ask that you do the same in the future conversations. 

Black Lives Matters is a movement in response to hate and violence. This movement started in response to black men being murdered in the streets without due process or any sense of justice. They are not a hateful group. They just don’t want black people to be in fear of being murdered every time they leave the house simply because of the color of their skin. And don’t bring up “black on black crime” as most crimes are intraracial. In other words, most victims are killed by people of their same race.

If you’d like more information on what Black Lives Matters actually stands for, as if the name wasn’t obvious enough, check out their website and their principles. You won’t find hate there. 

Now onto your third point, “No one is oppressed in America.” I truly don’t understand how you can have that perspective in this current climate. Philando Castile was murdered because his tail light was out. Trayvon Martin was killed for wearing a hoodie. Tamir Rice, a 12 year old boy, was killed for playing in the park. Of course, all these people were killed because they were doing all these things while committing the terrible crime of being black. No white person in the same situation would have been killed. Dylan Roof, the white supremacist and mass murder who killed nine black people, including a pastor and a state senator, was handcuffed and led to the police car wearing a bullet proof vest to protect him. Countless innocent black people have been killed, but this mass murderer is protecting from violence. 

You cannot kidnap and entire people, enslave them, and legally classify them as second class citizens for centuries and claim that no one is oppressed in America. That’s before we get into the oppression of women, of other races, the queer community, the differently abled community, and anyone who has multiple layers of these identities, such as a black women, a gay Korean-American man, a transwoman with depression, etc. There is oppression in America. To believe otherwise is ludicrous and shows your lack of awareness of the world around you. The only people who aren’t oppressed are white cis gender able bodied men. 

And your last point that there was violence and arson during the BLM protests in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Milwaukee- I concede that you are right. Police cars were overturned and set on fire during all these protests. These protests and this anger each time came after a black person was murdered by a police officer, something the black community has seen happen for years before the media took notice. Most of the time, any violence or looting that occurs during a Black Lives Matter protest is separate from the protest by opportunists who take advantage of the chaos for self serving purposes. They do not represent Black Lives Matter. I ask you again to look at the BLM website and their principles. 

The terrorist act in Charlottesville, VA was prompted by the removal of a statue of a Confederate general, a sign of white surpemacy. They brought guns and weapons. They poured kerosene on a woman in a wheelchair who, had she not been protected by a group of people standing around her, would have been set on fire by their torches. In the Vice News documentary about Charlottesville, Christopher Cantwell, a white supremacist shock jock who came to the rally to speak, admitted to carrying a pistol and “trying to make [himself] more capable of violence.”

The protestors came bearing swastikas, they gave Hitler salutes, they chanted old Nazi slogans, and they murdered Heather Heyer. Theirs is an ideology of hatred and genocide, and they believe that the world would be better if people different from themselves were dead. This is what a hateful group looks like, not Black Lives Matter. 

You do not need to agree with all of the tactics used by the antifascist counter-protestors in Charlottesville, but you do need to stop equivocating. To equivocate is to say that being for genocide and being against genocide are both equally valid political stances, that being for racial subjugation is ok, that being anti-semitic is a valid platform, that believing that some people different from yourselves deserve death is just another idea in the marketplace of ideas.

If you don’t agree with what I’ve said so far, then we have fundamentally different ways of viewing the world. I don’t know how to explain to someone that they should care about other people, all other people not just the ones who look and talk like them. If that isn’t something you fundamentally, unwaveringly believe, then I do not know how to have a conversation with you about the fatal oppression in our country and the ways we need to fix it. 

tl;dr  Oppression in the country is real, and we should care about how our fellow human beings are treated no matter what their identities are. Black Lives Matter is a movement that started in response to hate. The white supremacy terrorist attacks are based in hate. We need to stop equivocating the two sides of the Charlottesville terrorist attack. To equivocate is to say that being for genocide and being against genocide are both equally valid political stances, that being for racial subjugation is ok, that being anti-semitic is a valid platform, that believing that some people different from yourselves deserve death is just another idea in the marketplace of ideas.

[brainwad]

And that much I get and sympathize with. It's when Magneto (or, some versions of him, anyway) decide wholesale genocide is the way to go that he crosses the line. Like, I'm all for taking out oppressive bigots, but he didn't stop there, and believed it was totally okay to murder and subjugate people based on how they were born, rather than something they did. His attitude is totally justifiable, but not his willingness to slaughter innocents.

Granted, many writers have magneto targeting politicians and antimutant activists specifically, but he just as often seeks out wholesale genocide based on a belief in racial superiority. Despite the pain and anger which motivates his decisions, any moral high ground is leveled by his choice to inflict pain and suffering on countless innocents, essentially making him the same as those who hurt him.

The saddest part is, since he's written by so many authors, for every time he's presented as a justified man of righteous fury, there's an equally canonical presentation of him as a hypocritical extremist motivated by blind hatred.

Compare that to Professor X, who's pretty much always written the sane way, even if audience interpretation varies.

goyim get really up in arms when jews say “magneto was right”, but it takes a lot more breath to say “magneto’s response to humans oppressing and killing mutants is also a direct response to the fact that he lived through the holocaust, where he witnessed jews being oppressed and murdered as well. although his reactions may seem violent and extreme to those whose families WEREN’T targeted by nazis, a lot of jews connect with the sentiment of fighting back against their oppressors without having to be merciful and gentle to people who want them dead”

[fantasyofmemory-blog]

The “Grievance Studies” hoax exposes postmodernist charlatans

On October 2, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian published an article titled “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship,” incorporating the results of a year-long effort to publish hoax articles, deliberately comprised of bunk facts and irrational and reactionary conclusions, in academic journals associated with gender, racial and identity studies.

The results expose the intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics and postmodernist philosophy. Their proponents, who dominate university humanities departments worldwide, are charlatans who have published or given favorable “revise and resubmit” comments to the most absurd and vulgar pseudo-scientific arguments.

These include: a purported 1,000-hour study of dog “humping” patterns at dog parks that concludes by calling for human males to be “trained” like dogs to prevent rape culture; a long-form poem produced through a teenage angst poetry generator about women holding spiritual-sexual “moon meetings” in a secret “womb room” and praying to a “vulva shrine;” a proposal to develop feminist robots, trained to think irrationally, to control humanity and subjugate white men; and additional articles relating to male masturbation. Another proposal, which was praised by reviewers in a paper that was ultimately rejected, encouraged teachers to place white students in chains to be shamed for their “white privilege.”

There is an element of humor in the fact that such drivel could win accolades from academics and journals. The “dog park” article was even selected as one of the most influential contributions in the history of the Gender, Place and Culture journal!

But the implications of the study are deadly serious. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have confirmed the right-wing political essence of identity politics and postmodernist thought, based on anti-Marxism, irrationalism and the rejection of the Enlightenment and objective truth.

Most chillingly, the authors also submitted a re-write of a chapter from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, with language altered to reference female identity and feminism. The paper, titled “Our struggle is my struggle: solidarity feminism as an intersectional reply to neoliberal and choice feminism,” was accepted for publication and greeted with favorable reviews.

“I am extremely sympathetic to this article’s argument and its political positioning,” one academic wrote. Another said, “I am very sympathetic to the core arguments of the paper.”

In the wake of their public disclosure, Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have come under attack by the proponents of postmodernism and identity politics, who claim the hoax is a right-wing attack on “social justice” disciplines.

Typical is the argument of Daniel Engber, who wrote in Slate: “How timely, too, that this secret project should be published in the midst of the Kavanaugh imbroglio—a time when the anger and the horror of male anxiety is so resplendent in the news. ‘It’s a very scary time for young men,’ Trump told reporters on the very day that Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian went public with their hoax. Both express a fear of false attacks on men, whether levied by regretful sluts, lefty liberals, radical academics, or whoever else.”

In reality, the hoax has exposed the fact that it is the proponents of identity politics who are advancing views parallel to the far right. While they are enraged with those who voice concern about the elimination of due process and the presumption of innocence for the targets of the #MeToo campaign, they are unbothered by the fact that the writings of Adolf Hitler are published and praised in feminist academic circles.

Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian are self-described liberals who are concerned that the present identity hysteria is “pushing the culture war to ever more toxic and existential polarization,” by fanning the flames of the far right. As a result, identitarians are “affecting activism on behalf of women and racial and sexual minorities in a way which is counterproductive to equality aims by feeding into right-wing reactionary opposition to those equality objectives.”

In contrast, the authors’ aim is to “give people—especially those who believe in liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice—a clear reason to look at the identitarian madness coming out of the academic and activist left and say, ‘No, I will not go along with that. You do not speak for me.’”

The hoax’s authors are correct to link the identity politics proponents’ hostility to equality with their opposition to rationalism, scientific analysis and the progressive gains of the Enlightenment. But the roots of this right-wing, irrationalist, anti-egalitarian degeneration are to be found in the economic structure of capitalist society.

The academic architects of postmodernism and identity politics occupy well-paid positions in academia, often with salaries upwards of $100,000–$300,000 or more. As a social layer, the theoreticians of what the World Socialist Web Site refers to as the “pseudo-left” are in the wealthiest 10 percent of American society. Their political and philosophical views express their social interests.

The obsession with “privilege,” sex, and racial and gender identity is a mechanism by which members and groups within this layer fight among themselves for income, social status and positions of privilege, using degrees of “oppression” to one up each other in the fight for tenure track jobs, positions on corporate or non-profit boards, or election to public office. A chief purpose of the #MeToo campaign, for example, is to replace male executives and male politicians with women, while ignoring the social needs of the vast majority of working class women.

The weaponization of identity politics is directed down the social ladder as well. By advancing the lie that white workers benefit from “white privilege,” for example, the proponents of identity politics argue: the spoils of Wall Street should not go to meeting the social needs of the working class, including white workers, who face record rates of alcoholism, poverty, opioid addiction, police violence and other indices of social misery. Instead, the world’s resources should go to me. It is this visceral class hatred that serves as the basis for absurd and reactionary arguments like those advanced in the hoax papers.

Nor have the politics of racial identity improved the material conditions for the vast majority of minority workers. Inequality within racial minorities has increased alongside the introduction of affirmative action programs and the increasing dominance of identity politics in academia and bourgeois politics. In 2016, the top 1 percent of Latinos owned 45 percent of all Latino wealth, while the top 1 percent of African-Americans owned 40.5 percent and the richest whites owned 36.5 percent of white wealth.

The influence of postmodernism in academia exploded in the aftermath of the mass protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. Based explicitly on a rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class and opposition to the “meta narrative” of socialist revolution, it is not accidental that identity politics and postmodernism have now been adopted as official ideological mechanisms of bourgeois rule.

In recent decades, a massive identity politics industry has been erected, with billions of dollars available from corporate funds and trusts for journals, non-profits, publications, fellowships and political groups advancing racial or gender politics. Identity politics has come to form a central component of the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy. Imperialist wars are justified on the grounds that the US is intervening to protect women, LGBT people and other minorities.

The growing movement of the working class, broadening strikes across industries and widespread interest in socialism on college campuses pose an existential threat to the domination of postmodernism. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have struck a well-timed blow against this reactionary obstacle to the development of scientific socialist consciousness.

Eric London via WSWS

[rabbiandrewrosenblatt]

Dear Poland. . .

This week’s installment is a joint message from Rabbi Rosenblatt and Dr. Neiman about an emerging issue that has troubled many in our community.

Many in the Jewish community are utterly shocked by the passage of a Polish law that makes it illegal to associate the government or state of Poland with the Holocaust. For example, those who refer to places like Auschwitz as Polish death camps can go to prison for up three years. The rationale for this law is that the death camps in Poland were created by Nazi Germany, not by the Polish government or Polish people.

The government of Poland is not the first to try to distance itself from an association with the atrocities of the 20th Century. Japan’s government has yet to explicitly accept responsibility for its colonial occupation of much of Asia. Turkey’s government denies that there was an Armenian Genocide. We should be shocked that Poland would take a similar tack by denying the overwhelming evidence of its role in the largest, most murderous act of anti-Semitism in modern times. However, we believe people should be shocked for the right reasons. We should be shocked that the Poles think that this law is going to fool anyone.  

As Edna Friedberg of the U.S. Holocaust Museum argues, the Poles were no more the mere victims of the Nazis, than they were exclusively villains to the Jews. The Polish role in the Holocaust is complicated. Poland was occupied by a brutal Nazi regime that made Poland the geographic centre of Nazi dirty work. On the other hand, as Polish historian Barbara Engelking describes, many Poles were willing accomplices in the murder of Jews. Some did so for sport, and others for profit. They would engage in ‘Jew hunts’ to break the monotony of life. Poles often hid Jews who gave Polish ‘hosts’ their valuables. When there were no more valuables to surrender, the Poles would turn in their so-called ‘guests’ and collect a reward from the Nazis.

Friedberg explains the difficulty in characterizing the Polish response to the Holocaust in a single stroke. “It is not uniformly one of complicity or innocence.” There are more Poles recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations than from any other nationality. The Nazis tried to decapitate the Polish leadership, removing tens of thousands of intellectuals, priests, politicians and other authority figures. 1.5 Million Poles were deported to Germany as slave laborers and 2 million non-Jewish Poles and soldiers died in the course of the war. The Żegota was a Polish committee organized to provide false papers to Jews and secure their rescue. Some estimate that the Żegota had a hand in saving almost half of the Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust.

 The Polish government wants to make it illegal “to publicly and untruthfully assign responsibility or co-responsibility to the Polish Nation or the Polish State for Nazi crimes [emphasis added].” They may be technically correct about the Polish government, but are they certain about the veracity of a claim of innocence with regard to the Polish Nation? Furthermore, it is facile to refer to these crimes as Nazi crimes, as if anything originated by Nazis is solely the responsibility of Hitler.

No matter what the intention of the law, we believe it fundamentally misses the point of what might be in the best interest of the current Polish government. The law looks like an attempt to whitewash the past, to engage in a form – however benignly motivated ­– of denial of an essential part of the Holocaust. Historically, limiting free speech like this makes a government look regressive and afraid of the truth. Will tour guides to Polish sites be prosecuted for telling the history of the Blue Police – those 20,000 Polish officers who were responsible for the liquidation of the ghettos in Poland? Will Jewish historical tourism to Poland become a crime? If anything, this law will be the dog whistle to white nationalists around the world.

Author and bullying expert Barbara Coloroso argues that evil cannot be enacted on a large scale without the active and passive consent of both ordinary people and those who are in charge. In Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide, she makes essential distinctions between different actors in the Polish chapter of the Holocaust. The Nazis were in her terms, instigators and perpetrators. The Polish government and police played various official roles as perpetrators and active supporters. Ordinary citizens acted in various roles as perpetrators, active supporters, passive supporters, henchmen, and witnesses [who did nothing to stop the violence]. Coloroso traces how the same dynamics existed in the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, and Darfur.

Timothy Snyder is a Professor of History at Yale University. In Black Earth: the Holocaust as History and Warning, Snyder argues that stripping groups of their citizenship is a key enabler of governments that perpetrate genocide. During World War 2, he notes, Poles were keen to set up governments that collaborated with their occupiers to persecute Jews. This happened under both Soviet occupation and Nazi occupation. It was possible to kill Jews and take their property, precisely because there was a duly constituted national government, and Jews were not considered to be subject to their laws. An exception that proves the rule of European collaboration with the Nazi genocide was Denmark. There, the government under occupation resisted turning over Jews. The Nazis allowed the Danes to let Jews escape en masse.

We believe our reaction to Poland needs to maintain a strong tether to the truth and complexity of the Polish story. The Torah says, ”לא תתעב מצרי כי גר היית בארצו – do not be cross with the Egyptian for you were a sojourner in his land.” To this Rashi adds, “the Egyptians gave us refuge in time of need.” The Torah is teaching an important lesson about characterizations: appreciate the complexity of even the oppressive relationships. In particular, while one generation of Egyptians was welcoming, another was cruel. In other words, it’s complex. We must remain cognizant of both Hitler’s willing partners and of the many righteous Polish gentiles. We remember the Nazi subjugation of Poland, and the fertile anti-Semitic soil in which the Germans sowed their hatred.

Furthemore, the Torah in this week’s reading teaches, “לא תהיה אחרי רבים לרעת ולא תענה על רב לנטת אחרי רבים להטת­ ­– do not be a follower of the majority to do evil, and do not answer the majority by bending to their mistake.” Sometimes it is important to reject groupthink, to reject the simple, binary characterization of good versus evil when there is an unvoiced exonerating argument or evidence. Our political and ideological discourse has too often devolved to a false dichotomy of good guys and bad guys, of sanitized and dishonest political correctness, and cruel sensationalized examples that should not be extrapolated to a whole group. We don’t accept Jewish stereotypes, nor will we condone Polish stereotypes.

This is captured in the words of Holocaust survivor Aaron Elster, who was sheltered by sympathetic Polish farmers.

I was grateful for them, but I was afraid of them because they were constantly demeaning me, and threatening me, and telling me what a terrible thing I did to come there to cause them that kind of problem … That’s what she constantly said to us, my sister and I. ‘If the Germans catch you, you’re gonna say who helped you and they’re gonna kill us.’ So it was a dichotomy of things: She wanted to help but she wanted get rid of us, she couldn’t get rid of us, you know.

The historical Polish relationship to our people is painful and complex. It has Polish heroes and villains. It is a story of many governments and average people who behaved in self-serving ways and altruistic ways to do both good and extraordinary evil. Your history is complex, Poland, and your choice is simple. If you maintain this law, you will become in 2018 the very government that you deny you were in 1939. Instead, we call on the Polish government to understand that the only way to keep their good reputation is to be honest about the truth and complexity of the story, to learn from it, and to prevent it from happening again.

[oxe-ix-a-milliox]

I grew up with the notion of upholding social justice in the name of religion.

O’ you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even though it be against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, be he rich or poor, Allah is a Better Protector to both (than you). So follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest you may avoid justice, and if you distort your witness or refuse to give it, verily, Allah is Ever Well-Acquainted with what you do.  Quran, An-Nisa’ 4:135

From a young age we are taught inherently, Islam is a religion of an activist.

On the authority of Abu Sa`eed al-Khudree (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say,

“Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then [let him change it] with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.” [Muslim]

It is a religion that exemplifies compassion, empathy, community and unity. It is a religion that stands for and upholds justice in all its domains

“And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the Cause of Allah, and for those weak, ill-treated and oppressed among men, women, and children, whose cry is: “Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help. ” Quran an-Nisa’ 4:75

Social justice and religion to me were a monolith. It was not until my transitioning into university where both concepts were introduced as dichotomous; in that there is no fixed definition of what exactly social justice means in the western perception. Particularly, I came to understand, there is no quintessential meaning, contextually and historically influenced, of what social justice is. It is an elastic and malleable term. Its definition changes over time depending on the whims and desires of those forging its meaning, to fit their biases; their religious, social, cultural, political and economic dogmas.

Innocent until proven guilty, or guilty until proven innocent? Is one ultimately destined to become a product of their environment? If so, who is to blame? The individual for succumbing to societal norms? The societal norms for shaping them into the individual that they are? A third factor? All the previous factors contribute to identifying the blame? If ones’ environment is the only ‘truth’ that they know, or think they know, why do they accept or reject it? In that case who is to ever be held accountable for injustices? As humans, it is in our nature to seek explanations, and we desperately want to affiliate injustices to a specific cause; do we blame the harborer of evil or the nurturer of it? Do we blame the factors that come into play, or the individual for playing into those factors? To humanize or to dehumanize? Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “All things are subjected to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

From an Islamic perspective, Allah has given us a mind to think and rationalize with, a characteristic of our human brains which He has distinguished us from His other creations. He gave us free will, furthermore what we decide to do is ultimately up to us regardless of our environment.

Verily, in this is indeed a sign for people who think. (16:69)

Do they not think deeply (in their own selves) about themselves (how Allah created them from nothing, and similarly He w1ill resurrect them)? … (30:8)

…. so that their hearts (and minds) may thus use reason… [22:46]

…in all this] there are messages/signs indeed for people who use their reason. [2:164]

Those who remember Allah (always, and in prayers) standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and think deeply about the creation of the heavens and the earth…(3:191)1

……….. So relate the stories, perhaps they may reflect. (7:176)

Do they not reflect? There is no madness in their companion (Muhammad). He is but a plain warner. (7:184)

…. Such are the parables which We put forward to mankind that they may reflect. (59:21)

I like this article about “Taking Stock of our “Thinking” Abilities: http://www.iqrasense.com/muslim-character/taking-stock-of-our-thinking-abilities.html

Going back to how our environments shape us though; how is it that society develops these societal norms? From an elementary sociological perspective; in its most basic delineation, the ideological function of normalization is to naturalize perceptions and concepts and make them undeniably ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’. Normalization is the concept that ideas, beliefs and all notions are a human construct; there does not exist a specified, exact, set way for having anything be deemed ‘normal’, other than the fact that humans have made it out to be that way.

From a Marxist perspective, our ideologies are produced, they are the dominant beliefs that are going to regulate and perpetuate or reproduce the social relations of production though our ideas. In a sense, the theory of normalization can be seen as a divergent branch of the idea of essentialism; which is that there are essential definite characteristics that exist in the identity and function of any specific entity, that remains static, transcending all factors of change in time and history of the human experience. Ideology describes the way our relations, beliefs and behaviors - what we do-, are structures by forces that transcend any individual agent. However, our concepts and beliefs do not just represent our world: they produce relations and forces of power.

Foucault disagreed with the notion of essentialism. He thought there should not be a definitive method to anything. He attributed the phenomena of normalization to his theory of biopower; “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations”.  Norms create “normal” versus “pathological” subjects. They, “stratify, classify, and organize groups of people. Norms prescribe and influence conduct, and encourage self-discipline, and fluctuate across time and space.” Essentially what Foucault denotes is normalization is maintained through biopower’s decentralization of the agency of an individual body.

Ideologies forged by the ruling class have epistemological and tangible effects. They are a catalyst in the production, diffusion and naturalization of the ruling class ideas. Bannerji views “identity” as dialectical and political, in that some forms of identity are projected onto us from the ruling class; as the ruling class construct facets of identity to maintain power in social relations. An issue arises when the identities issued onto us by the ruling class are essentialized and established as “normative” and static. As a result, identities that do not adhere to those norms are considered deviant and wrong.  Bannerji refers to this concept as epistemological violence, where violence and hatred towards the opposing divergent group is justified, despite identities being a social construct that have been cast upon people.

The word identity, as defined by Oxford dictionary, means, “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” In life, an identity gives us a sense of purpose and meaning. How is it that we create this identity of the self? Personally, I think it is through the phenomena of labeling. A process by which one gains titles in their life, defined by societal social constructs. These labels are either earned or preordained based on the circumstances of ones’ relative existence in a time and place on earth. In psychology the labeling theory, “is concerned with how the self-identity and behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them, and is associated with the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping.”

Then there exists the notion of becoming an identity. For Barthes, myths serve the ideological function of naturalization. Their function is to naturalize the cultural -in other words, to make dominant cultural and historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely ‘natural’, ‘normal’, self-evident, timeless, obvious ‘common sense’- and thus objective and ‘true’ reflections of ‘the way things are’. Barthes thought of the myth as further perpetuating the ideological agenda of the Bourgeoisie.

Barthes adopted from Louis Hjelmslev the notion that there are different orders of signification. The firsts order of signification is that of denotation. The second order of signification is connotation, and it uses the denotative sign as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified. Because we still treat languages as literal and un-complex, it attempts to naturalize the object. Related to connotation, there is what Barthes refers to as myth, we typically associate the idea of myths with classical fables cosmologies or anthropologies, this is not what Barthes is referring to. For him, myths are essentially the dominant ideologies of our time. So, in proposing this, he essentially argues that the orders of signification can combine to produce ideologies; this is classified as the third order of signification.

Barthes takes Marx’s concept of ideology further and claims the productive has two denotative and connotative meanings; these two things and certain signs, can combine to produce myth or ideologies, an idea that we take for granted and think natural. Barthes thinks of them like metaphors. They express and use to organized and conceptualized a shared thing within the culture. Myths serve the ideological function of naturalization, the function of myth is to naturalize the cultural, it’s to make dominant cultural historical values seem entirely natural and normal, to seem self-evident, timeless and common sense. He saw myths as serving ideological interests of the bourgeoisie. Barthes declares: bourgeoisie ideologies… turn culture into nature.” We take for granted and believe it to be true. He goes into questioning, what is the production of meaning? The primary level of signification, consist of a signifier. The combination of images and text how they come together to produce meaning to produce connotation.  Binary circling in these ads. Capitalism is predicated on the myth, separation between the material aspect of the commodity and the surface aspect, private public, the quicker we make the association as sign the faster we naturalize it, is the meaning of production.

Power is not an independent concept in the way every concept stems from another and branches out into new concepts that form ideologies of their own and so forth. It is connected to an intricate web of theories and ideologies, but in my perspective, I learned that power in the sense of this worldly existence is empty. Power is a vessel with loose features anyone can mold to their own meaning. It t is not promised, fixed, or permanent. It exists in its duality of being a vehicle for good or a vehicle for bad.

If we come to a general consensus of the definition of power among ourselves, there will branch from it many divergent definitions that apply on a case to case biases.  With the contextual historic developments of time, people’s initial thoughts and values of an idea tend to change and begin to formulate their own definition of the concept. It all depends on one’s perspective. The phrase, ‘the power of (insert any word)’, reflects this. There can be power in anything and everything.

humans exhibit certain behaviors or actions simply because certain notions were presented to them. These notions are presented through the collective influence of religious, political, social/ethical, and economic aspects.  

Power in its political and ideological sense is forged by the ruling class in society. As culture changes over time, it is necessary to maintain control throughout these changes. So, to avoid revolutions and attain the public’s consent in maintaining order during these transformations, the dominant class make cultural accommodation and because of their position and function in the world of production, they construct new cultural trends in which the public will want to adhere to; thinking it will elevate their social status. Since the subordinate group see element of themselves in the culture, they will start to take on the elements they see of the dominant class. They will want to emit and reflect the culture.

The unintentional subservience that the general public has given, is mostly attributed to the social image the influential group has made of themselves by way of material possessions. Trapped in this cycle, there is no room to change and grow, but resistance is still possible, albeit very difficult. Essentially, power is everything and nothing.

Our individual personal experiences in life shape our biases. Every individual has their own unique view of the world in that their daily experiences are exclusive to them; contributing to their own frame of reference, which shapes how they perceive and interact with the world around them. This frame of reference is comprised of their socialization, and it shapes the individual into who they are, their beliefs, their character, their morals and values. Evidently, one will never know and feel for another person the way they feel and experience for themselves.

This is where the notion of privilege becomes a factor in one’s definition of justice. As one inherits their privilege from their lived experiences and for the most part, are unaware of their capability and capacity of oppression.

Now having said all this, since in the western context humans define what social justice is and what is right from wrong, it’s flawed. Humans are flawed.  Just as how the holocaust was normalized and how slavery was normalized and how all these atrocities that happened were deemed right at the time.

I have my doubts towards empathy (to some extent) because one's’ experience differs from another’s; even when both experience the same calamity. The way one goes about finding solace is totally unique to them. An individual’s connection to a specific predicament is also unique to them in that they cannot understand another person’s connection to it. Everything is personal; even when one faces a calamity or a loss it is always measured to how it will affect their progression of life. Subsequently, being the defective creatures that humans are, can we ever come to a fair definition of what justice is? Most humans are self-centered; our biases are our reality. We can rarely think or speak in relation to anything outside of our own experience because we lack empathy not having gone through it ourselves, and even when we have, it is to our own unique disposition, because even the experiences we share, our take on it is unique to ourselves. When we fail to relate on some level, that is where sympathy comes in and we feel the need to justify to ourselves why the other person is feeling or acting the way they are. Even when we empathize we are bias and when we sympathize we do not fully grasp the concept, so either way, we are never fully knowledgeable or detached enough.

If we come to agree on a general definition of justice among ourselves, there will branch from it many divergent definitions that apply on a case to case biases.  With time, if people are not reminded of the initial values of the movement they tend to diverge and begin to formulate their own spin of the movements beliefs and that usually progresses into a whole new concept.

Social justice to a person or a group of people sharing the same burdens under similar systems of oppression, will, as a collective, have a very similar concept of what justice and oppression are -for the most part- based off their unique lived experiences navigating these identities as they are a direct result of their socioeconomic + political position in their given society.

“people whether or not they are conscious of it will try to view the world in a way that is favorable to them, in a way that is most comfortable with their pre existing belief systems; religion, moral values, etc a phenomena social scientists refer to as implicit bias which occurs at the subconscious level.” -Far  

With religion, there are limits and boundaries that give structure to the meaning to the definition of justice. It is not to be obscured by imperfect human logic. God is The All-Wise and The All-Knowing, so, for me as the creation to try and question the One who created logic and reason with my feeble mind is futile. Among God’s names is The Most Just, The Peace, The Judge/ Arbitrator, The Truth. His Names, Attributes and Characteristics are not comparable to human like existence. Neither of them are conflicting or contradictory to the other and they can exist simultaneously, they do not negate each other as human concepts do. For me justice is still what is defined in my faith.  

“Shisui, who was like 8y/o at the time said, “I don’t even know if there is such a thing as justice in this world. We fight believing our own justice, but if the enemy is doing the same, who’s right?” We can assume enemy in this context can be anyone, if everyone has their own interpretation of justice and acts according to it, does that disparage my own views? I love how you related this all to Allah SWT and his attributes and I wholeheartedly agree trying to understand justice from a secular perspective is honestly like looking for a light switch in the dark, it is He SWT who understands that which we do not, the most Just and Merciful, who has created the bounds and clearly identified the limits and the chastisement of the transgressors, the belief alone that He is the Originator and Creator of human understanding restores humility and it is then that we will realize it was our own ignorance that led us to believe we were in the dark when we were really just closing our eyes.” -Far

Feminism has become an umbrella term with many diverging dogmas.  Not to drown in the nuances, but the label at times becomes convoluted and its definition changes over time depending on the whims and desires of those forging its meaning. Moreover, it is important to distinguish feminism as an identity verses as a political belief system. It is important to question the claims of equality.

“To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels—sex, race, and class, to name a few-and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.” (Hooks 1981, 194)

The notion of intersectionality is limited in the religious sense. With religion, there is the belief that right and wrong have been ordained by God. What is just and unjust have been decreed by God. Furthermore, the fact that He is The Creator, is enough for me to submit to His will as He ultimately Knows best for His creation. For me to disagree with his commands stems solely from my own ignorance.

In the conditions of the Islamic declaration of faith la ilah illa Allah, لا اله إلا الله there is no God worthy of being worshipped except Allah

1.العلم (knowledge) to understand what لا إله إلا الله means

- prophet taught it for 13 years if your توحيد tawheed (monotheism) and عقيدة ‘aqeeda (belief system) is correct and sincere, everything else just falls in place

2.اليقين (certainty) no doubt about what Allah has decreed and no doubt in what the prophet peace and blessings be upon him has said

- By the star when it descends, Your companion [Muhammad] has not strayed, nor has he erred, Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination. It is not but a revelation revealed, He has been taught (this Quran) by one mighty in power [Jibrael (Gabriel)]. Dhu Mirrah (free from any defect in body and mind), Fastawa [then he (Jibrael - Gabriel) rose and became stable]. [Tafsir At-Tabari]. 53: 1-6

3.القبول (acceptance) full submission by the tongue and heart to whatever is implied by the shahada

4.الإنقياد physical actions translating that you truly submitted

5.الصدق (truthfulness) to speak with honesty, and truly meaning it

6.الإخلاص (sincerity) what are your motives and objective of being there

7.المحبة to love the shahada and its implications and requirements and what it stands for. To believe in the messenger of Allah and in all that he told us and conveyed to us; to follow and or emulate his sunnah (way of life) following and believing in Hadith obeying in whatever he has commanded.  he said to do authentic sunnah, but people now say “it’s just sunnah”. What makes us different than muslims in the past who were successful and ruled the world, was taht they upheld the sunnah because it was sunnah, while we ignore the sunnah because it is sunnah.

there are ayah’s directly defending the prophet and what he says for he does not speak of his own inclination, desire, whims and wishes everything is a wa7y

There is the Quran verbatim word of God, hadith Qudsi meaning narrations from Allah, and hadith Nabawi meaning words of the prophet. Not believing in them will result in the disbeliever to be afflicted with fitna, trial/ temptation, or 3atheeb a'leem, a painful torment.

Having said this, Islam means submission, contrary to the popular misconception that it means peace. to be a Muslim is to SUBMIT FULLY to Allah and what he has ordained; for He created us and He Knows what is best for us as His creation. He needs not anything from His creation, He is All Sufficient, rather it is His creation who are in need of Him, it only makes sense that we live life in accordance to how He asked for us too, because He loves us and knows what is best for us. So, in anything and everything I do, I must do it for the sake of Allah first.

Sheikh Ibn Uthaymeen says in his Sharh Al-Aqeedah Al-Wasitah, 1/180-181, Islam is not a religion of equality but of justice. Here’s the excerpt:

Source: https://abdurrahman.org/2011/08/18/islam-is-not-a-religion-of-equality-but-of-justice/

There are some people who speak of equality instead of justice, and this is a mistake. We should not say equality, because equality implies no differentiation between the two. Because of this unjust call for equality, they ask, “What is the difference between male and female?” So they have made men similar to women. The communists said, “What difference is there between the ruler and the subject? No one has any authority over anyone else.” Not even the father over his son?! So they said the father has no authority over his son and so on.Instead, if we say justice, which means giving each one what he or she is entitled, this misunderstanding no longer applies, and the word used is correct. Allah does not say in the Qur’an that He enjoins equality. He said (interpretation of the meaning):

“Verily, Allah enjoins Al‘Adl (i.e. justice)” (Qur’an, 16:90)

“And that when you judge between men, you judge with justice.” (Qur’an, 4:58)

Those who say that Islam is the religion of equality are lying against Islam.Rather Islam is the religion of justice, which means treating equally those who are equal and differentiating between those who are different. No one who knows the religion of Islam would say that it is the religion of equality. Rather what shows you that this principle is false is the fact that most of what is mentioned in the Qur’an denies equality, as in the following verses: “Say: Are those who know equal to those who know not?” (Qur’an, 39:9)

“Say: Is the blind equal to the one who sees? Or darkness equal to light?” (Qur’an, 13:16)

“Not equal among you are those who spent and fought before the conquering (of Makkah, with those among you who did so later.” (Qur’an, 57:10)

“Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives.” (Qur’an, 4:95)

Not one single letter in the Qur’an enjoins equality, rather it enjoins justice. You will also find that the word justice is acceptable to people, for I feel that if I am better than this man in terms of knowledge, or wealth, or piety, or in doing good, I would not like for him to be equal to me.Everyone knows that it is unacceptable if we say that the male is equal to the female.

There exists contextual historical dynamics which classify the markers of identities that people give meaning to: nonetheless, in the Western framework, they are contracted externally then are unwarrantedly applied. Essentially, labels hold no significant meaning as they change with the whims and desires of those who forge their definitions. It is predominantly a social construct; a construct premised on the identities of those who fabricated it; with the aim of fear mongering and creating a social divide. People are constrained to look a certain way, speak a certain way, behave a specific way, embody certain values and thus they become a product of historical continuity. They are restricted to a confined act by which society expects them to uphold. The harm harbored in labels is then rooted in the social constructs of society to create systemic discrimination.

In example, the western perception of feminism was molded via simultaneous presence of being in the cis white colonizers’ world. The history of the existing patriarchal systemic policies that disenfranchised women, such as the narrative of domestic wife and the suffrage era to name a few historical contexts, all contributed to the shaping of western ideals of feminism.

same goes for the concept of blackness. i wrote this awhile ago so it might be little repetitive but bare with me

This concept of becoming, where humans exhibit certain behaviors or actions simply because specific notions were presented to them. These notions are presented through the collective influence of religious, ethical, political, social, and economic facets of life. This notion of becoming reminds me of Bannerji’s concept of ideology and how identities are formed. Race is a social construct, specifically, blackness has no set binding defining physical, moral, or behavioral characteristics. The western concept of ‘blackness’ has become so essentialized that we look down upon and criticize diasporic East/ West Africans who do not self-identify as black. Having fought through, and continuing to fight, the epistemological violence against the western concept of ‘blackness’ contrasting ‘whiteness’, and all the tropes and stereotypes that accompany it, there is this sense of entitlement. That is that, we have been through this struggle to reclaim the narrative yet ‘they” [‘black’ Africans] still reject it. What we fail to realize as western black folk is that our experience is not a monolith.

“Black”, there is no essence or substance to that noun. There are no classifying factors to the names; to the identities that people hold, they are externally contracted then unwarrantedly applied. Where the label originated from is debatable, but, there is no essential ‘blackness’ to speak of, moreover, the construct was premised on the identities of those who named it. Labels are reductive and dismissive to the humans they ‘define’. There is no essence nor contextual value for the use or practice of labeling, it is largely a social construct.

There are several effects in the use and implementation of the labeling. Chiefly, it creates an ‘us versus them’ narrative, this feeds into the divide, it plays into the isolation and alienation of a people, it gives reason to justify violence against a certain targeted demographic of people. ‘Black’ has become synonymous with everything bad. These tropes and negative stereotypes about black people, forge social standards that contribute to the vilification, degradation and dehumanization of blacks on a global level, making it very normative to depict them as uneducated, uncultured, uncivilized people in literature and media. Racism is so entrenched in social systems that it has become systemic in creating the conditions that can result in violence, harming black people.

The law does not interpret itself rather it is always interpreted by human beings, and this gives way to structural violence. With an acceptation of Australia, blackness is traced back to Africa, and with time the two have almost become interchangeable. Africa is not a sole entity, there are 54 countries each with their own history and plethora of cultures, there are many diasporas, the experience is not just one experience, this is to say that blackness or Africanness is not a cohesive entity. Each individual is shaped by their own nationality and diasporic experiences and those who live in an extremely racist society are those who clamor hardest for blackness where they are viewed as a minority and are discriminated against in every way because of their skin color. However, race is a social construct, specifically, blackness has no set binding defining physical, moral, or behavioral characteristics. Nevertheless, when society assigns roles, labels and expectations to a specific race, it becomes an issue that can be traced back to the science of enlightenment, relating to lightness which comes from within white western Eurocentric dichotomous thinking, or rather idiocy. When society chooses for people with a specific type of appearance to be portrayed deleteriously on huge media platforms, and for the consumers to think its normative is a major issue in our enlightened, developed and postmodern world.

Because the west was dominated by white Europeans blackness was foreign, and the most defining feature of a sign is its opposition to other signs. The western idea of blackness was molded via simultaneous presence of being in the white man’s world. The history of colonialism, the narrative of slavery and the segregation era all contributed to the shaping of the western ideals of blackness.

It would be more conducive to have black people redefine blackness themselves, in ways that facilitate collective growth and healing and progress, there needs to be widespread engagement in this dialogue and in taking the measures to actively redefine blackness because the implications of not having these conversations are devastating as it marginalizes people from their own narrative. As for non-black societies, they need to accept that the black community is to be the forefront of the movement; their own movement of self-identification, they need to be silent and accepting of the narrative the black community shares with them of their own struggles. Non-black societies need to be accepting of the harm they have caused and willing to help undo the damage they have contributed to.

Not only does the use of labels cause a differentiation between ‘blacks’ and’ whites’, but it also contributes to the division of the ‘African’ diasporas born elsewhere. It plays into the erasure of individuals and their distinctiveness by homogenizing the whole of the diaspora under one constricted umbrella term, stripping them of their individuality and imposing new identities onto them normalizing the behavior of othering and vilifying them. Labels such as that of ‘Black’ or ‘African’, in a superficial way, are an external process of constructing an identity, ensuing stereotypes, and forging a destructive divide between human beings. People then are constrained to, look a certain way, speak a certain way, behave a specific way, embody certain values and they become a product of historical continuity. They are restricted to a confined act by which they are mandated by society to emit, and if they do not uphold these enforced stereotypes then there are consequences that are ensued.

I came across this blog post recently https://www.amara.io/single-post/2017/05/18/BLACK-or-AFRICAN and I really like what she says here

“Sure, I grew up listening to Nas, Tupac, Snoop Dogg, and 50-cent (thanks big bro for introducing me to rap music), and I read James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright in college. However, I know that isn’t enough to claim Black American culture as my own. My ancestors weren’t the ones who suffered centuries of injustice, who pioneered the civil rights movement, who created jazz and hip hop, and fought tirelessly for the rights that so many minorities in America now enjoy. But I will say I have adopted Black culture and I have a deep love and appreciation for it.”

where the writer highlights the notion of becoming black but knowing her boundaries of not claiming black as her sole identity. just to expand on that, i feel like a lot of people these days don’t know how to differentiate between being black as a race from as an identity, and black as an identity is what African American’s pioneered out of their struggle for liberation, having lost their sense of identity, culture, heritage because of their enslavement by oppressive whites. a lot of immigrant Africans first or second gen are confused by the notion of blackness because they are faced with the western perception of blackness and what it is as an identity vs their own black families view of blackness (almost none existent) especially once they join SJ or woke culture circles. and it’s from their lack of knowing themselves and their heritage and culture and such, being torn between two cultures and not really fitting in either one fully, that they face this struggle. also another contributing factor is from having distant familial bonds and weak diasporic community; people who do not interact with their larger diasporic community in the foreign land they dwell in. blackness as an identity is something foreign to black Africans because they do not need to identify as black. whereas black Americans clamor the hardest for claiming their blackness because of the oppression they face by being black. black Africans will say they are not black, because they associate blackness with African Americans identity and struggle.

There exists a hierarchy of identification, if you do not know yourself, then you do not know what you believe in and what you stand for. There is no bases or foundation to what you fight for if you do not believe in it. Furthermore, for me, the main priority is to get your identity in order. Know yourself, know your morals and values. Myself, I am a Muslim first and foremost, therefore, everything that I say or do, falls into that primarily. God says in the holy Quran, “Did you think We created you without any purpose?” Quran Al-Mu’minun 23:115

“I feel like because we are the Others in this world, our bodies are heavily politicized which is why many muslim youth turn to movements like BLM and feminism waves (liberal feminism, radical feminism, womanism, intersectional feminism honestly have u been keeping track?? My head is spinning just thinking of them), they become completely consumed by this collective action culture because they finally feel like they’re being #SEEN but in all honesty, seen by whom??? Who are all these intellectually engaged and socially conscious muslim kids so desperate to be acknowledged by when they proudly take on these titles?? It begs the question, is Islam not enough anymore that we must be constantly attach foreign and meaningless add-ons? In my opinion a lot of these titles are rather redundant after identifying as a muslim, the idea of being a muslim feminist to me is a bit absurd to an extent…I am a muslim I follow a religion that gave women distinctive rights in multiple facets of life 1400+yrs ago and u want me to call myself feminist for what?? Because y’all realized women should be equal to men last Tuesday?” -Far

at the same time the western perception of blackness is a monolith. to whites and the law, black is black is black, no matter where you’re from, whether you’re african american, or from the islands, or from the continent of Africa. this also contributes to the confusion people face of self-identity. If they’re labeled a certain way, and are forced into these narrow perceptions, most times they conform.

So many people suffer/ed and die/d under the guise of race, religion, ethnicity and gender. So now, I question in what way can we bring change that will snow ball and in time cause a greater positive change, and how can we give reparations to those who suffer/ed from these manmade constructs. Obviously though, justice is in the hands of Allah, but we still have to do our part when we can. I don’t feel it’s fair to say to people race is a social construct, sorry your people had to suffer and or die because of it, you essentially died for something not real and tangible, yes it sucks, but aren’t you glad to know it’s not even a real thing that you suffered for! and the thing is they know that! marginalized people know they’re being mistreated based on garbage reasons. I only say this because that’s the message I receive by not acknowledging that this construct is a lived reality of people and many suffer because of it.

this thing is so complex like, there’s the whole notion of people from the african continent saying they’re not african because they associate africa with blackness and the slave trade, then there’s the ‘not all africans are black’ and ‘not all black people are african’ discourse too

In my Precolonial African History course I came to learn the following: an excerpt from an essay I wrote. “Due to the rise of trade alongside the Indian Ocean, Arabic slowly integrated into the developing Swahili culture, with Arabic words seeping into their language, and Islamic ethics influencing the Swahili society. The Arabs brought with them a doctrine of classism in which coastal Swahili merchants gained wealth from the trade and gained prestige from their embracement of the Islamic faith. Arab tradesmen established an administration of hierarchy in the form of racism, marrying into the Bantu women, integrating into affluence and making “Islam”, a foundation of eminence. Inevitability and most unfortunately, the Swahili peoples inherited a sense of anti-blackness, because of the classism the Arabs had established, claiming Arab ancestry even long after the intermixing regressed and Bantu kinship remerged into Swahili society. The Swahili violently claim and cling to the notion of Arabness as it was associated with an affluent reigning class in society, who gained their riches from the trade and their reputation from Islam. What gave more reason to this genocide of race on part of the Swahilis is, seen as Islam, to them, was synonymous to being Arab, and being Arab held the reputation of successful trade, the Swahili adopted Arab into their nationality. Not all is for not though, even though the Swahili readily embraced Islam, there are still some facets unsoiled by the Arab merchants, “… [s]till maintaining significant aspects of their [the Swahilis] African religion and other Africanisms”

so basically racism was introduced by the arabs as a tactic for establishing and maintaining power in foreign land, and strengthen their trade, by making their good seem like it was worth more because it belongs to ‘the arabs’. then there’s that whole mess of associating islam with arabs and arabness. smdh like why the default image of a Muslim is synonymous to being Arab, why non arab Muslims feel they need to comply with or exhibit Arab culture in order to feel more accepted or welcomed into the Ummah, is because of those merchant arabs

Basically, all bad in this world is from humans

“Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from Allah; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul. and We have sent thee as a messenger to (instruct) mankind. And enough is Allah for a witness.” (Quran, Surah An-Nisa, 4:79).  

“Whoever does righteousness – it is for his [own] soul; and whoever does evil [does so] against it. And your Lord is not ever unjust to [His] servants.” (Quran, Surah Fussilat, 41:46).

“And the record [of deeds] will be placed [open], and you will see the criminals fearful of that within it, and they will say, “Oh, woe to us! What is this book that leaves nothing small or great except that it has enumerated it?” And they will find what they did present [before them]. And your Lord does injustice to no one.” (Quran, Surah Al-Kahf, 18:49)

“Islam does not ascribe evil to God. God allows tragedy and misery to take place in this world for reasons which often escape humans through our finite knowledge; as was revealed to us through the Quran and authentic Sunnah, it could be a test for those people, a form of purification, or warning for the rest of us to rehabilitate our lives. The Ultimate Truth is known only to God and our conviction is that God is Just and Good, even in those matters where we do not understand His Will. The Quran gives us a glimpse of this in the interaction between Moses (P) and a learned man (Khidr) in Surah Al-Kahf (18:60-82). (Note: this example also shows that some people receive more guidance and other gifts of Allah, regardless of worldly status as well, teaching us not only proper relationship to be had between God-human but also also human-human, such that we don’t become to proud or boastful and are considerate of different viewpoints that help us practice the Truth using our capacity for reasoning and understanding).”

Excerpt

“Man has free will and choice by means of which he does some things and refrains from others, and he believes or disbelieves, and he obeys or disobeys, for which he will be brought to account and rewarded or punished, although Allaah knows what he will do, what he will choose and what his ultimate destiny will be. But Allaah does not compel him to do evil, or to choose to disbelieve, rather He clearly shows him the path and He has sent Messengers and revealed Books, and shown him the right way. Whoever goes astray does so to his own loss, Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“And say: ‘The truth is from your Lord.’ Then whosoever wills, let him believe; and whosoever wills, let him disbelieve” [al-Kahf 18:29]

• “Verily, We showed him the way, whether he be grateful or ungrateful” [al-Insaan 76:3]  

• “So whosoever does good equal to the weight of an atom (or a small ant) shall see it.

• And whosoever does evil equal to the weight of an atom (or a small ant) shall see it” [al-Zalzalah 99:7,8]

• “And it will be cried out to them: ‘This is the Paradise which you have inherited for what you used to do’” [al-A’raaf 7:43]

• “so taste you the abiding torment for what you used to do” [al-Sajdah 32:14]

Allaah tells us that man believes and does righteous deeds by his own choice and free will, then he enters Paradise, or he disbelieves and does evil deeds by his own choice and free will, then he enters Hell.”

i have so many qualms with woke culture i’m done identifying with any labels that do not adhere to the principles of my religion, that do not pertain to my islamic belief and align with my faith. wallahi i’m washing my hands clean. they’re all so superficial and surface level, all breadth and no depth. they start out with some potential and then drown in the nuances, so much division and ‘sensitivity politics’ to keep up with, their definitions change over time depending on the whims and desires of those forging their meaning. so faulty wallahi. they lose their purpose and become so convoluted. For me to take up a movement that suggests supporting things Allah has deemed impermissible will only harm me.

Imām Ibn Qayyim: “Allāh never makes disobedience towards Him the means of attaining anything good.“ [Rawdat al-Muhibeen, (p. 360)]

Feminism as a movement will not empower women, Allah is the only One who can empower or render powerless

A hadith related by Tirmidhi. Abu-al-‘Abbas ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abbas (RA) reported: “One day I was riding (a horse/camel) behind the prophet, Allah’s Peace and Blessings be upon him, when he said, ‘Young man, I will teach you some words. Be mindful of Allah, and He will take care of you. Be mindful of Him, and you shall find Him at your side. If you ask, ask Allah, if you need help, seek it from Allah. Know that if the whole world were to gather together in order to help you, they would not be able to help you except if Allah has written so. And if the whole world gathered in order to harm you, they would not harm you except if Allah had written so. The pens have been lifted, and the pages are dry.’” Umm Salamah narrated that the Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “There is no Muslim that is afflicted with a calamity, and he says what Allah has commanded him to say: “To Allah we belong and to him we will return! O Allah! Give me the rewards (of being patient over) this calamity, and grant me something better than it to replace it,” except that Allah will give him something better to replace it.” The Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, “Allah the Most-High said, ‘I am as My servant thinks (expects) I am. I am with him when he mentions Me. If he mentions Me to himself, I mention him to Myself; and if he mentions Me in an assembly, I mention him in an assembly greater than it. If he draws near to Me a hand’s length, I draw near to him an arm’s length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.’”[Sahih Al-Bukhari]

A friend of mine was asking something among the lines of why’s patriarchy a thing, how’d it even get to where it is today and how is it maintained? From what was mentioned above about how ideologies are formed and maintained we know that patriarchy is a man-made ideology and it’s maintained through power. there’s a comment that a teacher of mine made stating women are the whole of society and men are half, women birthed a man and raised him to be a pillar of society, she was quoting Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, “women are one half of society which gives birth to the other half so it is as if they are the entire society”. I want to add to that, if the women are of no value in a society then of what value is society? if you want power and control, if you want to maintain corruption, you go after the women of society because once you break them, you are able to dismantle society as a whole. why the powerful and corrupt come after the women is because they know that the woman is the social fabric of society, they know that with women religion culture and language are transmitted, they know that through women soldiers are raised and they fight for a noble cause, and they will win. women are literally the social fabric of society, they are the voice of reason and they maintain the peace, so if you’re looking to overtake an entire people you go after their woman first, strip them of their status, strip them of their dignity, strip them of education. you poison the women the entire society is poisoned, children aren’t raised right, men can disrespect them and abuse them, and as long as the female is repressed and oppressed society will never be fixed. if you strip the women of her dignity and place it in the hands of a man then there’s little to no escape for her. women are soft in that they don’t stand for wrong or injustices, they will fight it, but if you don’t educate her and you have her fighting other woman and foolish insignificant things you tell her that her worth is in the male gaze, that’s all she’s going to fighting for, beautifying and adorning herself, you misdirect her into thinking what is bad for her is liberating and what is good for her is oppressing. a women can’t do everything you know, like even if she’s fighting the noble cause they will turn the men of her society against her and teach them to disrespect her and demean her. they will corrupt the men of her own society and tell them … you’re going to let a “women” do you like that? you’re a MAN! They attach stereotypes and tropes to the term women and everything feminine and female. They vilify it to take away the power within it, they do the opposite for everything that is masculine. divide and conquer. a women can only fight so much on her own. Then also with colonialism, her men fight in a war, suffer ptsd and there are no social facilities no resources to address these psychological issues so obviously it reflects in the family dynamics. substance abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse the women can’t fight a battle if her team is against her, so the men become useless in society and they put all the responsibility on a women. a women can only do so much by herself. and men becoming useless also creates a hierarchy of poverty, poverty is a disease wallahi and we seek refuge in Allah from it. in poverty, you can’t raise your kids right, in poverty your resources are limited, in poverty you’re focused on how to get your next bite nothing beyond that. In poverty you remain ignorant, your chances of an education or slim to none.

Now, since the men are useless and the women bare the brunt, from this is born the the men are trash rhetoric. Most times, it’s the boys who are targeted by social institutions. It’s them who are pressured to turn to the street life, it’s them that feel a greater pressure to turn to crime to survive, whether it’s to help provide for their families or for personal gains. They have an absent male figure, while our mothers are present in our lives as our female role models; men require their male figure too.

all these sjw movements are always measured against the heterosexual cis identifying, white middle class, able bodied man. That’s the norm, that’s default, that’s who benefits most from society. That’s what all movements base oppression off of. This thinking though encourage a type of very extreme secularism. It’s a very westernized concept. As much as I hate white people, Islamically I am not supposed to. Can you believe reverts are leaving islam because the way SJW people are treating them. These people are alienated by their own families for converting, and they’re ostracized by muslims because they’re white. like yes Allah chooses whom He guides and misguides and the misguidance is from ourselves still though. but we will be held responsible for ourselves and those we led astray

Islamically everyone in society has specific roles they are to fulfil, that’s just the way Allah made the world work, women demanding equality to men or vice versa, is just not what Allah wants, Allah has given us rights over men, and given men rights over us. it may be that one does not naturally fit the mold we were assigned but that’s one’s trial in life,

Sometimes God tests us for reasons we cannot comprehend and other times we’re fortunate enough to come to understand the reasoning behind His grand scheme. One thing’s for certain though, there is always a blessing in the affair of the believer! Surah 2 (al baqarah) ayah 216 “[A]nd it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know.”

Gender equity:

- http://www.islam101.com/women/equity.html

Ibn Baaz’s explanation on the misinterpretation of the hadith women are deficient in deen and reason:

- https://abdurrahman.org/2010/06/18/womens-deficiency-in-deen-and-reason-ibn-baaz/

Then there’s the whole issue of supporting homosexuality and the rest of it …

- https://islamqa.info/en/27176

- https://islamqa.info/en/38622

we need to learn how to properly address these sensitive cases and create safe spaces for them, where they can get the support and knowledge they need concerning their sexuality all within islamic guidelines  

People our outhere slandering actual sheiks and questioning the quran and denying truths. through the notion of feminism, slandering sheiks, like actual scholars, and it’s like sis… how you gon include scholars in your all men are trash rhetoric… like I get anyone can call themselves an imam a mufti a sheik or a a'lim these days but that’s on you for not knowing which ones to take knowledge from.  

Shaykh Muhammad Bazmool explains how the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets:  

- https://abdurrahman.org/2014/09/30/the-scholars-are-the-

The status of scholars in Islam:

- https://abdurrahman.org/2013/09/18/the-honourable-status-of-the-scholars-in-islaam-by-ash-shaykh-abdurrahmaan-al-adani-audioar-en/

Contempt for scholars:

- https://abdurrahman.org/2015/03/09/the-dangers-of-belittling-the-inheritors-of-the-prophets-abu-muhammad-al-maghribi/  

- https://abdurrahman.org/2013/05/11/slandering-the-scholars-of-the-hijaaz-shaykh-al-albaanee-videoar-en-subtitles/

wallahi it really hurts me when people get engulfed in the negativity of woke culture, they become so cold, rude and hostile and that goes against islamic beliefs not to mention what it does to your psychological well being. it makes you think the world is against you and all your life you have to fight a cause you know you won’t win, then you start questioning your faith and Allah’s decree, and His Judgment and His Mercy.  so many of these girls i know have attempted suicide on many counts. they were already dealing with depression and anxiety and mixing with these groups of people has made it so much worse for them, yet they’re lying to themselves into believing it’s liberating, i am so hurt for them wallahi

And of the people are some who say, “We believe in Allah and the Last Day,” but they are not believers.

They [think to] deceive Allah and those who believe, but they deceive not except themselves and perceive [it] not.

In their hearts is disease, so Allah has increased their disease; and for them is a painful punishment because they [habitually] used to lie.

And when it is said to them, “Do not cause corruption on the earth,” they say, “We are but reformers.”

Unquestionably, it is they who are the corrupters, but they perceive [it] not.

And when it is said to them, “Believe as the people have believed,” they say, “Should we believe as the foolish have believed?” Unquestionably, it is they who are the foolish, but they know [it] not.

And when they meet those who believe, they say, “We believe”; but when they are alone with their evil ones, they say, “Indeed, we are with you; we were only mockers.”

[But] Allah mocks them and prolongs them in their transgression [while] they wander blindly.

Those are the ones who have purchased error [in exchange] for guidance, so their transaction has brought no profit, nor were they guided.

Their example is that of one who kindled a fire, but when it illuminated what was around him, Allah took away their light and left them in darkness [so] they could not see.

Deaf, dumb and blind - so they will not return [to the right path].

Surah Al-Baqarah 2:8-18

like teaching yourself self love is one thing, but to do it in a way that puts everyone else down is toxic and un islamic because that leads to arrogance

It was narrated by ‘Abd-Allaah ibn Mas’ood that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “No one who has an atom’s-weight of arrogance in his heart will enter Paradise.” A man said, “O Messenger of Allaah, what if a man likes his clothes and his shoes to look good?” He said, “Allaah is Beautiful and loves beauty. Arrogance means rejecting the truth and looking down on people.”

Allah’s apostle may peace and blessings be upon him stated in his last sermon: “All mankind is from Adam and Eve, 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 a black, nor a black has any superiority over a white- except by piety and good action.”

theres so much ahadith and quranic verses on this

“Celebrating yourself to to the point where you don’t hold yourself accountable to change, have goals, or accept advice is character suicide”. Hasib N “Believing in yourself & having self esteem is different from having no accountability & delusion. If you want to live on this earth where no one corrects you - even Prophets made mistakes which were corrected by God. Build some character, backbone, & learn how to kill ur ego & pride If u cant seek advice to review ur actions, God will send what humbles u, Moses asked God to not allow ppl to speak of him whats not true God responded I didnt allow that even for Myself, how can i allow it for u, U live on this earth Every day God sends signs Humble urself Count blessings Find & live w purpose, When u fill the void in ur heart w every fake relationship, love of material wealth, & vanity… to only feel empty when something is taken” - Hasib N

On call-out n doxxing culture:

this PDF  goes into a lot of detail about the diseases of the heart and you’ll find that woke culture and sjw make you develop a lot of these https://ahlehadith.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/diseases-of-the-heart-taimia.pdf

so many people get so wrapped up in SJ discourse that they just start spouting out none sense, not knowing wth they’re talking about even, straight up arguing for the sake of arguing with half baked arguments and alternative facts. Some get so passionate about what they are fighting for, that they fail to see anything else, only their perspective is right.

quote #1 haram policing is with public humiliation, criticism, lack of authenticity on the side of person policing and the end goal is to bully someone into something you believe to be good for all, you, the police isn’t implementing your own expectation of others.

quote #2 out of some predilection they need to advise, not once or twice but at all times about every supposed short coming all the time. While advising is done with pure and sincere intentions with no agenda to criticize and demean, but to get the message out. It is done privately and once or twice by well grounded persons and to other person who accepted a social contract as muslims. But after seeing that they have reneged on the contract to leave them be.

quote #3 “Well intention plays a role and is easily identifiable when the advising happens. Quietly, kindly, gently taken aside vs openly (to disgrace or humiliate), harshly (to demean and condescend), words that reflect for self-improvement vs scolding verbiage where you feel like you’re the devil . Mindset of Haraam Police is often to make one feel a sense of superiority, the ‘Im better than thou’ mindset, the God died and made me boss mindset. Unfortunately, many (esp those who follow certain paths fall prey to the ideology of ‘if i dont tell the person, the sin is on me” . Where they stop short is the how and when and where the ‘advising’ needs to take place. When one has wisdom, they use the best ways to 'advise’ . When one doesn’t have that wisdom, they scare people from Islam altogether and it causes more harm than good.“

“These movements transformed into something completely unidentifiable and contrary to its original purpose. tweets about how black muslims are “better” and I get where this is coming from but it has me spinning lol this mentality is sooooo toxic it only serves to debilitate ANY further discussion and progress for change. This mentality cripples us it’s incredibly unhealthy psychologically you develop such a superiority complex (which is just as fragile as an inferiority complex imo)” - Far

our muslim brother and sister have a right over us, yet people out here doxxing others over petty misunderstandings or their ignorance for shits and giggles and retweets. The Believer conceals and advises and the immoral one reveals and condemns. al-Fudayl ibn 'Ayyaad (Jaami al-'Uloom wal-Hikam 77)

https://islamqa.info/en/59879

^ why people get lost in the sauce and distant from the deen.

“And (remember) the Day when the wrong-doer will bite his hands and say: Woe to me! Would that I had taken a path with the Messenger. Woe to me! If only I had not taken so- and-so as a friend! He has led me astray from this Reminder (the Qur’an) after it had come to me. And Satan is ever a deserter to man in the hour of need.” [Qur’an: Chapter 25, Verses 27-29]

Click to read more: http://productivemuslim.com/maintain-productive-friendships/#ixzz4jOd5zYmd

the prophet peace and blessings be upon him said that you will be resurrected with whom you love:

Anas bin Malik (May Allah be pleased with him) reported:

A Bedouin came to Messenger of Allah (SAWS) and said to him,

“When will be the Hour (i.e., the Day of Resurrection)?”

He (the Prophet (SAWS)) said, “What preparation have you made for it?”

He said, “Only the love of Allah and His Messenger.”

Then Messenger of Allah (SAWS) said, “You will be with those whom you love.” (Al-Bukhari and Muslim).

and in another hadith he, salla Allah alyih wa salam said, that you should be aware of who you befriend because you’ll be on the same deen as them:

Abu Huraira reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “A man is upon the religion of his best friend, so let one of you look at whom he befriends.” Source: Sunan Abu Dawud 4833;

I was reading up on this concept of conformity in group behavior theory, it’s a phenomena where sociologists cannot explain why when humans are in a group they become conformists, even if it goes against their individual morals and values; they always end up conforming. they’ve done research experiments and countless tests each generating the same result but they do not know why.  (also read up on the butterfly, and the bystander effect)

this is why the prophet warned us to know who we surround ourselves with, because eventually you become like them

stones become malleable under the pressure of water with time, imagine, they are stones, and WATER changes their shape

and Allah says the state of our hearts are worse because unlike the stone they are not malleable once our hearts are hardened may Allah soften our hearts

even if a person has very strong resolve and is confident in themselves and in their beliefs wallahi over time they weaken, just as how in surah 2 albaqarah, Allah says in ayah 74, “Then, after that, your hearts were hardened and became as stones or even worse in hardness. And indeed, there are stones out of which rivers gush forth, and indeed, there are of them (stones) which split asunder so that water flows from them, and indeed, there are of them (stones) which fall down for fear of Allah. And Allah is not unaware of what you do.”

Anything man made will let you down, Allah’s divine decree will never.

“nothing really leaves you as empty as the realization that your heroes are just as human, fallible and prone to mistakes as you are. when you really respect someone’s opinion and they’re usually often right but this one time they’re wrong, it leaves you feeling lost and confused and you’re encountering a sort of cognitive dissonance due to this one interaction… it’s wild. primal. i don’t know where this need comes from but to believe in & to rely on other than God and one’s self seems decidedly human. where did we pick this up” -Ana

“There’s a really good article I read specifically on this topic, in it author Aisha Hasan states, “Islam’s progressive understanding of women is something inherent in the Deen that everyone know and act upon, and we should reinforce that, not make it a subset of being a Muslim. We would not call ourselves “Muslim anti-racists” or “Muslim anti-animal cruelty” because we know these are things Islam already stands for. Why are women’s rights any difference? She also mentions the honor that Allah SWT has bestowed upon us with the title of MUSLIM, by quoting surah Al-Hajj aya 78 the very last aya where Allah SWT says: “It is Allah who has named you Muslims, both before and in this revelation; so that the Messenger may be a witness for you, and that you be witnesses for mankind"” -Far

https://themuslimahdiaries.com/2017/03/10/why-i-am-still-not-a-muslim-feminist/

for myself, i question why take on new titles, just implement the teachings in islam, make it just as widely discussed in open spaces and ‘progressive’ circles as these movements are, make it just as available, learn it, implement it, share it, spread it