Invent your image caption
Today I want to showcase an Islamist. An actual one.
I think she is one. I dont know, since she sings in Wolof (I think, don-t know for sure).
People are so sure of themselves with regard to Da-esh and “radical islamists” and the Paris attackers, that that would be an outgrowth, however bad, of religion. Of Islam. Do they know what Islam is?
I don-t. Actually, I dont have a religion, I dont believe in “Gods”, except those Gods that we have made, that are part of ourselves, that are simply the ends of our minds that greet back to us from the world into which we extend.
Are these Daesh murderers in any way and shape “Islamic” except that they call themselves so? I believe not. I think so because they seem very familiar in what they do. Downright European.
But I wanted to present this lady. Do people understand that Islam is an amalgam of things that spans three continents (not counting recent mixings) and that is as different at one end of the world from the other as a rose is from a cherry tree which both are in the same botanic family?
Aida Samb is in Senegal, comes apparently from a family of musicians, and I know nothing of her except that she seems to follow a certain Sufi islamic school, which is rather widespread in Senegal, the Mourides, relating back to Ahmadou Bamba, of which more below. The song here is apparently a hommage to one of the holy places for that school, a place called Touba (or Tuuba). I say apparently so much because I dont understand one word of it, I dont speak Wolof.
please listen to it, if you dont mind, its a different language, that is not an evil.
Ahmadou Bamba was an interesting person, see wikipedia.
In the political sphere, Ahmadou Bamba led a pacifist struggle against French colonialism while trying to restore a purer practice of Islam insulated from French colonial influence. In a period when successful armed resistance was impossible, Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba led a spiritual struggle against colonial culture and politics. Although he did not wage outright war on them as several prominent Tijaan marabouts had done, he taught what he called the jihād al-'akbar or "greater struggle," which fought not through weapons but through learning and fear of God.
As Bamba gathered followers, he taught that salvation comes through complete submission to God and hard work. The Mouride order has built, following this teaching, a large economic organisation, involved in many aspects of the Senegalese economy. Groundnut cultivation, the primary cash crop of the colonial period, was an early example of this. Young followers were recruited to settle marginal lands in eastern Senegal, found communities and create groundnut plantations. With the organisation and supplies provided by the Brotherhood, a portion of the proceeds were returned to Touba, while the workers, after a period of years, earned ownership over the plantations and towns.
It sounds a bit like Touba is to them like Monte Cassino is to the Benedictines. It also sounds they arent so interested in bombing themselves in to martyrdom but in improving (their) life through work, and in their personal relation to their god, eh, or was that protestantism?
Followers of the Mouridism movement, an offshoot of traditional Sufi philosophy, aspire to live closer to God, in emulation of the Prophet Muhammad's example. Today, Ahmadou Bamba has an estimated following of more than 3 million people and parades occur around the world in his honor, including in various cities in the USA.
I cant lionise them and dont want to project good fantasies into them, I know nothing about them. Apart from what one finds by chance, if one looks around in the net. They certainly will suffer from their own faults, but, it might be pointed out that the marabouts in Senegal actually dont want to dictate political politics — even though there too politicians tried to bribe them onto their side — and told the politicians about the separation of church and state — from their side. How about that for Islam?
I know nothing about them. But everyone can find what I write about here. One only has to want to look.
This is not a threat. These people are not enemies. These people are our best allies in any, physical or mental, struggle with Daesh and consorts. They are our allies if we actually want something else than the orgy of death that European civilization has refined skills in and that now Daesh mirrors back to us. The challenge is on us, not them, to reform. Islam needs reform? Aida Samb should reform?
(She might tell us that there too, Saudi and other Gulf money is filtering into the mosques and supporting something rather more unpleasant. And we might wonder if there are not better uses for our money than bombing the results of Saudi money).
There was an interesting article today in Le Monde, which has become a kind of safe haven for my sould these days. A philosopher was interviewed, of who outside France noone likely has heard of, which in their eyes likely doesnt matter that much. Its in French. I dont speak french in reality. Let-s see.
Q: “We are at war”, said the president (of the Republic, cf Hollande) since the attacks of 13 november. Can you find yourself in this war declaration?
--Bernad Stiegler: No. What means “we”? They are at war, not I. The war is economical, thats their war, and it makes victims, and about those I lie awake at night, not because of the terrorists, but because of the perspectives of my children. Its not the war against Daesh that matters, but the worldwide economical war, that will send us all into civil war if we dont fight back.
Employment will vanish, notably for the young people. And hopelessness brings violence. One does not produce reasons for hope anymore these days. The attentats of 13 november are suicides, and that is not meaningless: Suicides are on the increase throughout the world, and especially amongst the youth which knows that it will face chomage (joblessness) for very long times.
Neither Hollande nor Sarkozy are giving the least of a perspective to these youngs. It is against this stupidness, this folly that I am at war. A war also against myself — we are all subject to this tendency that seeks to find scape goats, tries not to reflect (think), tries not to know. That is the barbarism, that is what Daesh wants to achieve: to create the civil war. [As a state of relations between people, -me] There will be more attentats if one doesnt change the politics. ...
[...]
Q: So it is on the ruins [created by] ultraliberalism that the radicalisation takes place?
B. S.: Yes. One frames the radicalism as a question of religion, and that is a scandal. The largest part of the recruits of this radical Islam do not have [come from] a religious culture. It is not on the base of religion that one does these acts, but on the base of desperation. ...
Just as before there are things to dislike in his speech as well. But I think he is right in a central point: Death cults like Daesh is what one gets if serious (not just a la coquette) hopelessness=desperation spreads amongst the youth. And who spreads desperation amongst second generation children of a societally excluded and despised group in our lands?
Assad?
There are two Daesh-es, in fact i think more and more one should keep them apart since they are different things, they work with each other but they are separate and need separate answers. There is Daesh-Syria, the original and proper militia of people/groups there, think the fabled ex Baath men .. however abominable they are a feature of the fertile crescent and can be adresses by the people there, policies about the situation there, the whole range from diplomacy to arms, as politicians are doing.
And there’s Daesh-Europe. the thousands of european bred and european grown up youth who are attracted by the IS, join them. cycle through Syria, and come back to us. One hears factoids. 25% of them come of families that do not even have Islam in their family ! Whatever form of Islam. Just none! More, in proportion, apparently come from somewhat better situated families that from real poverty. Most (I think it was upowards of 2/3) get their radicalisation online. Online, not in these fearsome mosques!
Actual religion lives in mosques … actual religion, as the word says, binds people, gives them a way to relate .. to the past and now; to their traditions and now, and through what they believe are gods, to themselves:
The though doesnt go out of my head that the Paris attacks have shown us what we get if we lose sight of building a better world. The attacks are not a reason for fear, they are a reason to redouble our efforts to create viability for this world, integration for youths to hold on to. We need Islam in this, we need its help to save us from ourselves — from Daesh.
