Comments on: That Terror Thing IV

By: Lemi4

Lemi4 — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 03:28:41 +0000

17 months later and still a very relevant read…

By: Koonj: The Seagull » Blog Archive » Whoa - what just happened?

Koonj: The Seagull » Blog Archive » Whoa - what just happened? — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 21:56:25 +0000

[...] Honourable mentions: Baraka, Velveteen Rabbi and Islamophobia Watch, Chapati Mystery, and our dear IzzyMo whose blog I read religiously, Thebit, Indigo Jo, and YAY for HU, Nzingha’s Soapbox. [...]

By: Dervish » Blog Archive » Meme-ing again! The ABCs of Umm Yasmin’s Visits

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:33:18 +0000

[...] Here’s my list: A, I’m not sure quite how I feel about the RU486 pill except that I really object to Health Ministers enforcing their own personal morality on the Australian public at large. B: An A-list Aussie blogger. C: Yes, I actually went and read all the nominated blogs and posts before voting in the Brass Crescent awards. D: Hmmm, ‘coz I was trawling for Aussie links to put on my blogroll lastnight, I predict there will be quite a few Aussie bloggers in this ABC list. E: Looking for Dora the Explorer DVDs that my daughter loves so much. Decided I might fork out for an Adam’s World at our local Islamic bookstore instead. (I love Dora too, but she already has a lot of Dora already.) F: I was checking out this shady Christian lobby group with innocuous looking website after reading about donations to Family First (Christian political party). G: a broken link. The next working G is a regular read. H: Ahh now, this is the comments for a post by dear Umm Zaynab who lost her baby in utero, may Allah give her patience and relief. I: rather boring piece of trivia about a movie I like. J: briefly visited site from last night. (Err… sorry site owner if you come looking at this post from your logs.) K: Always happy to give Kalimat a plug now that the U.S. Baha’i Reich proscribed them. L: Another very briefly visited site. M: Errr… yes, I do visit my own blog, just to spell check and check layout of course. N: Broken link, thus the next working N. O: My bud Waleed Aly writes for this occasionally, but this visit was in reference to the American-imported myth that our educational institutions are too left-leaning. (We really should just admit we’re another U.S. state.) P: Shhh… the only real reason I keep the Homespun Blogger icon and blogroll on my page, is so that right-wing nutzoid bloggers have to receive hits to my site from their visitors bwaahahahahaha. (Yeah, I *know* it works the other way too, but at least I have a disclaimer.) Q: don’t have a Q site. R: I actually don’t remember visiting this site. And considering I’m logged on to me, using a browser that only I use (Abu Yasmin uses evil IE AND reads the Hun, I know could we be not more mismatched?) it could only have been me. Hmmm.. that ginger beer must be spiked. S: Sikhs coping it for looking too Muslim. T: Yes I’m vain. U: That reminds me, I’ll have to do it for this post. V: Nope, no V site. W: Hmmm… no, we mostly still eat my home-cooked food. X: Found this doing a Google blog search on Muslim converts if I remember correctly. Y: New (for me) Muslim blog read. Z: Sunni Sister made me click on it. [...]

By: kuffir

kuffir — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

‘The idea of the ummah is that the Believers are a community of equals- unified, uni-directional, a force of history…
This illusory community stretches from Cairo to Kashmir.’
step aside a little and ask why does the name Columbine keep cropping up? what was ‘their’ ummah?
‘The ummah becomes one more tool to give sense to their feelings of dispossession, alienation and uprootedness.’
an imagined community that stretches across continents is imaginable ..but the idea of particular feelings of dispossessions that dot three continents grasping at one specific tool does stretch the imagination.it does remind one of the community of gun owners- the guns were in the house so the children grabbed them! here, though not intended in that sense i suppose, the allusion to columbine makes sense.
to the communities outside the believers it is slowly beginning to become irrelevant whether it is ummah or the caliphate.
‘Islam, in fact, does not need me to defend it. Neither do I care to do so.’
i guess neither bush nor blair cares to accuse it either. if it wasn’t a clash of civilizations earlier, everyone is too confused to define it now.

‘They chose the jihadists and now we have to figure out why.’
we who?

By: pardesi

pardesi — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I *do* find it comforting to think that Islam has been perverted and hijacked by the nutters. Why don’t you put stock in that theory, Sepoy? Just because it’s an oversimplification?

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

The sense of community created by word rather than by experience is a common one, fundamental to all kinds of nationalisms and other identity coalitions. I’m not immediately convinced that Caliphate is the wrong term to express the politicized community which is the aim of many — though the extent to which it is the aim of terrorists, suicide bombers in particular, is indeed open to question — and which goes beyond, in vague but meaningful ways, the commonality and interrelationship implied by ummah. I’m not sure you’re wrong, either, but I have to read it again and think about it more.

By: Farzad

Farzad — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I’m going to echo Jonathan on this. I can accept downplaying the immediacy of obtaining the caliphate in favor of the dispossession of the ummah as more central to the jihadist narrative. But to discount it as macguffin?

The desire for a caliphate amongst Muslim youth (and full-blown jihadists) is based off of feelings of weakness and dispossession within the ummah. Many believe that by capping the ummah with a Caliph, it’s inherent wobbling will be steadied. Some jihadists seek to replicate the achievements of the Prophet (pbuh) and rashidun when they unlocked vast reserves of power within the Arab tribes by harmonizing their energy and directing it outwards.

Either way, and you point this out in the post, the narrative is presently too opaque for jihadists or Western terror experts to grapple with. Kuffir, I believe this shape-shifting quality allows it to span three continents.

By: bulleyah

bulleyah — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

dear sepoy,

regarding the narrative of ummah versus world -
how does a ‘progressive’ in the sense of a left leaning secular poet like faiz using religious terminology to counter draconian reginmes fit in -
i’m thinking of ‘hum dekhenge’

when all the idols are removed from kaaba
when thrones are flung up
and crowns are flung down…

a communist invoking the imagery of islam against a dictatoral, supposedly ‘islamic’ regime…

how does that fit into the Jihad versus Mcworld logic of the WoT?

Caliphate?

Sorry, i am slightly drunk at this pint. with rage. working late at night on a radio production. but as schwarznegger said at the auditions for amadeus, ‘i’ll be bach.’ soon.

By: OmarG

OmarG — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

>>The sense of community created by word rather than by experience is a common one, fundamental to all kinds of nationalisms and other identity coalitions.

Created by word… I could have hardly phrased it better. Prof Dressner, my wife graduated from UH Manoa, writing her senior honors thesis on the Hawaii Muslim community, with a focus on the history and sense of Ummah through oral history. Always nice to see another islander showing up on the ‘net!