Important statistics about languages in the world system: http://newint.org/features/2014/06/01/languages-the-facts-infographic/
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Unfortunately, since the end of direct colonial rule in 1956, most members of the Moroccan elite have adopted the habits and ideas of their old French masters. They wear their clothes, read their books and newspapers, use their language, and basically conceptualize their existence from Paris rather than Rabat or Casablanca. Openness to others is a good thing. Pretending to be another is a pathology. Ya Rabb! During these blessed days of Ramadan, I implore you to heal us all of our spiritual and physical illnesses! Help us be at peace with ourselves! Free this community from the sicknesses of Eurocentric fundamentalism and its codependent reactionary counterpart, Islamic fundamentalism! Guide us gently and quickly through the process of deep decolonial liberation!
La dichotomie laicité et religion est basée sur une idéologie raciste. Elle présuppose une perception du monde neutre, objective, rationnelle, en contraste avec une longue série de visions du monde biaisées, subjectives et irrationnelles : les religions. Ce n'est pas une coincidence si les systèmes de pensées et les habitudes de vie qui dominent parmi les européens de l'ouest et leurs descendants (physiques ou idéologiques), c.à.d. les occidentaux, sont présentées comme étant neutres, contrairement aux idées et aux habitudes des autres peuples. Un costard cravate, une jupe, une blouse, un soulier de type occidental sont considérés neutres, comme si ces vêtements n'étaient pas le produit de forces socio-culturelles et historiques particulières. Lorsque portés par une personne en position d'autorité, comme un employé du gouvernement, il ne seront pas considérés comme imposant une vision du monde aux interlocuteurs de cette personne. Les nationalistes québécois du siècle dernier défendaient leur langue et leur culture contre un groupe culturel plus puissant, les anglophones, et ils contestaient le pouvoir écrasant d'une institution religieuse, l'église cathollique, sur la société. Combattre l'hégémonie des Anglais et de l'Église était alors une prise de position favorisant l'émancipation de personnes dominées en rapport à leurs oppresseurs. Lorsque cette même logique est appliquée aujourd'hui à l'égard de personnes de groupes culturels et religieux minoritaires et largement marginalisés, comme par exemple les femmes musulmanes au Québec, elle devient instrument de domination et de persécution plutôt que de libération et d'émancipation. Les européens de l'ouest et leurs descendants sont héritiers d'un système colonial (impérial, néocolonial, etc.) vieux de cinq siècles, qui les place au sommet de l'ordre mondial actuel. Les groupes qui épousent des modes de pensée et des pratiques qui se sont principalement développées à l'extérieur de l'occident sont dominés politiquement, économiquement, socialement et culturellement par les représentants d'idéologies eurocentriques intégristes comme le Parti Québécois contemporain. Soyons clairs, plusieurs musulmans au Québec sont tout à fait conscients que les Français qui ont quitté leur patrie initiale pour coloniser l'Amérique avaient des motivations, des idéologies et des modes d'action plutôt semblables à ceux qui ont colonisé des pays à majorité musulmane comme ceux du Maghreb. Bien que le Québec n'ait jamais colonisé l'Afrique du Nord, la majorité au Québec fait appel à un héritage lorsqu'elle veut imposer à une femme québécoise d'origine Marocaine, par exemple, de ne pas couvrir ses cheveux d'un foulard en travaillant pour l'état. Elle devient une indigène et ses oppresseurs des colons. Le fait que certaines autres québécoises d'origine marocaine puissent être en faveur de cette interdiction et que certains québécois d'origine française soit contre, ne change rien à ce constat. Les individus sont plus complexes que les courants historiques majeurs. Il y a toujours des convertis, des métissés, etc. Pour ce qui est de l'argument égalitaire homme/femme dans ce contexte, il est également raciste. À moins que nous n'obligions tous les hommes de la fonction publique à porter des jupes, des boucles d'oreilles et du maquillage, ou encore à aucune femme de n'en porter. Certaines femmes considèrent que leurs cheveux font partie de leur nudité, contrairement à ceux des hommes. Leur exiger de dénuder leurs têtes en publique serait l'équivalent de forcer des femmes à se baigner en monokini dans les piscines et sur les plages du Québec, puisque les hommes le font. La nudité, la pudeur et leurs rapports à l'habillement sont complexes, influencées par des contextes sociaux, culturels, idéologiques, psychologiques, etc. Les hommes et les femmes s'habillent rarement de façon identique, quelque soit leur appartenance ethnique, culturelle ou ideologique. L'habillement est toujours l'expression individuelle de courants plus vastes. Il n'est jamais neutre. Decolonialism from a Sufi perspective favours compassion over anger, love over hatred, healing over confrontation, and forgiveness over retribution. Despite the end of most formal colonial administrations many decades ago, the colonial world-system rooted in Western power has been perpetuated to this day. The process of decolonizing individuals, communities, nations and international power structures is far from over. Yet it is underway. The world-system is sick with inequity, indignity, arrogance and humiliation. The disease runs deep in the hearts and minds of oppressors and oppressed. Everybody is trapped in their race, their class, their proper place. The terrifying and the terrified; all need to heal.
Healing the world-system requires action based on the knowledge of the heart rather than activism based on rational abstractions like equality, freedom or democracy. Not that these concepts are empty or refer to nothing; they are just inept when unqualified. Freedom of what? From what? For whom? Too often unqualified, these abstractions have become modern idols worshipped by the powerful and powerless alike. But love needs no qualification. Love is no abstraction. It is a force of knowledge that feeds ideas and actions as the water feeds the soil from which things grow. Without deep heart-knowledge our best ideas betray us and our liberators become oppressors. Sufism is a heart-science based on divine love. It offers a legitimate epistemic base for Muslims to complete the process of decolonization and engage with non-Muslims in a process of cooperative healing. Casablanca the winter is over and I’m still here
After three quarters of a year You handle so many contradictions with style I must admit You’re not bad looking From the right angles Even beautiful But you don’t hide your ugly sides well I guess you can’t Busy trying to cope with your own impatient cadence And the constant arrival of people Rich and poor Mostly poor Hoping for more Biting smiling selling screaming Casablanca I’m caught in your hectic dance Like any immigrant I’m ambivalent Good days and bad Today for a moment I broke out of you to notice the ocean As I often have over the months Still there So much bigger deeper longer in its breaths It could just take over and bust the whole place up And sometimes it does strike a few blows But mostly it respects the tiny shoreline boundary Accepting To remain a reminder for us Of other cycles Other scales of being Anyway, Casablanca, I’m still here Now watching your children clean beach chairs Preparing for the summer I haven’t taken you all in You escape my rational mind traps Too slow for you I have no choice but to return to poetry To know you I’ve got to tell you I see a lot of violence Barbarians everywhere At least it seems to me that’s how you treat them They are hungry Casablanca And speak the languages of your ancestors Your own deep thoughts use the same North African tongues No matter how much French you use And how many monuments you keep to praise the invaders your forefathers kicked out Just a few decades ago You are so colonial—it really upsets me—I don’t know whether to scream or cry But who am I? After all when my life broke down in Canada You welcomed me a refugee and have treated me hospitably ever since I came to you like so many others with ambitions and aspirations I must really try to be helpful Because you, Casablanca, and cities like you Probably hold the future of humanity within your ever-expanding bosoms Here is where we make it or break it All or nothing Casablanca you are exciting I think I’ll stay a while Inshallah Fresh plans are being drawn up to erect a modern complex on the site of what scholars of Islam contend is the birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed as part of a sweeping multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of the pilgrimage city of Mecca that has already ravaged many sacred sites and structures. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/redevelopment-of-mecca-bulldozers-bear-down-on-site-of-mohameds-birth-9142458.html http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Ramon-Grosfoguel.pdf The Multiple Faces of Islamophobia Ramon Grosfoguel University of California, Berkeley A few significant quotes: In the new cultural racist discourses, religion has a dominant role. The contemporary tropes about “uncivilized,” “barbarian,” “savage,” “primitive,” “underdeveloped,” “authoritarian,” and “terrorist” inferior people are today concentrated in the “other’s” religious practices and believes. By focusing on the “other’s” religion, the Europeans, Euro-Americans and Euro-Israelis manage to escape being accused of racism. However, when we examine carefully the hegemonic rhetoric in place, the tropes are a repetition of old biological racist discourses and the people who are the target of Islamophobic discourses are the traditional colonial subjects of the Western Empires, that is, the “usual suspects”. [...] It does not matter if the Western domestic political system is the British multicultural model or the French Republican model the fact is that none is working. Without overcoming the problem of racial discrimination, racism becomes a corrosive process that end up destroying the abstractideals of the each model. In the case of the Anglo-American world, multiculturalism and diversity operates to conceal White Supremacy. The racial minorities are allowed to celebrate their history, carnaval and identity as long as they leave intact the white supremacy racial/ethnic hierarchy of the status quo. The dominant system in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States is an institutionalized and concealed “White affirmative action” that benefits Whites on a daily bases and at all levels of social existence. It is so powerful that it has become normalized to the point of not being stated as such. In the French republican model, the formal system of equality operates with an institutionalized and normalized “comunitarisme masculin blanc.” If racial/gender/sexual minorities protest against discrimination, they are accused by the “communistaristes masculin blanc” in power to be acting as “communitaristes.” As if the elites in power were racial and gender blind/neutral, behaving towards everybody with a “universal principle of equality.” White supremacy in France operates with the myth of a “racially blind society.” “Racially-blind racism” is institutionalized and normalized in France to the point that makes invisible the discriminatory “communistarisme masculin blanc” in power. Check out this excerpt from a lecture give by decolonial thinker Ramón Grosfoguel : http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KT-xQqvNp48&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKT-xQqvNp48 It took a while, but here it is. This is a gift to my readers on the blessed occasion of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. I call it a gift because it represents my best effort to respect both the academic framework in which I needed to operate while still trying to remain faithful to my worldview. Of course, I am aware that the considerable limitations of my knowledge are reflected in my work. So, I apologize for all the mistakes and flaws it contains. Moreover, for those passages that are worthy of interest, praise belongs to Allah alone. If you wish to read the thesis, click here and go to the page where it can be downloaded.
Salam. I will soon publish my MA thesis on this website. In the meantime, here is the title and the abstract:
Title Doctrines and Practices of the Burhaniya Sufi Order in the Arab World and in the West Between 1938 and 2012: A Decolonial and Transdisciplinary Analysis from an Insider Perspective Abstract This thesis presents a decolonial and transdisciplinary examination of the doctrines and practices of the transnational Burhaniya Sufi order, in the Arab World and in the West. The main time period under consideration is from the foundation of the order in 1938 until 2012. In order to contextualize the particularities of this modern order’s emergence, this thesis begins by presenting its historical roots related to the history of Sufism in North Africa and West Asia. Then, the thesis offers a comparative analysis of certain national contexts in which the order was disseminated, from Sudan to Egypt, France, Germany, the United States, and Canada. The author concludes from his findings that the sheikhs of the Burhaniya have facilitated the expansion of their order in the West, and perpetuated a fairly traditional Sufi heritage in the modern world. They have done so by combining strong commitment to core doctrines and adaptability to contexts of practice. |
AuthorTransdisciplinary scholar of Islam and Sufism. Archives
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