Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Farewell Faleh Abdul-Jabbar

Stay out of it Like Houda Sharawi, Jamila Bouhired, Nawal Saadawi, and thousands others, many more today are fighting all sorts of oppression. Fatma Ramadan (an Egyptian trade unionist) Narges Hosseini (currently detained for her protest against compulsory 'hijab') Tunisian women protesting against the IMF Iraqi women protesting against new law that would allow child marriage Western women, you who consider Arab and Muslim women unfit and want to "empower" them, and  claim "to defend human rights", stay out of it. Arab countries and people have had enough of  - imperialist states wars and destruction   - support of stability and dictatorship  - co-opting uprisings,  - hypocrisy  - the "rhetoric of 'freedom' and 'democracy' - marketing this or that Arab/Muslim woman to your public - promoting a Clooney or a Jolie as embassadors  Invest in a regime change at home, and in empowering women exploited in workplaces and co

A Poem by Dareen Tartour

"Virtually all existing countries have to face difficult questions over how to relate to past instances of violence, injustice and oppression – often publicly sanctioned." I still think that moving statues to museums is a much better way. How to diffuse controversial   monuments So, a statue of Mussolini is considered controversial?

Syria: Statement from Detainees in Homs Central Prison

Matzpen , 1967: “Our right to defend ourselves against annihilation does not grant us the right to oppress others,” the ad stated. “Conquest brings in its wake foreign rule. Foreign rule brings in its wake resistance. Resistance brings in its wake oppression. Oppression brings in its wake terrorism and counterterrorism. The victims of terrorism are usually innocent people. Holding onto the territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims.” And in large font at the end: “Let us leave the occupied territories now.”

“ This will repeat in other places ,” Dr. Monzer Khalil, a health official in rebel-held Idlib, said a day after treating victims of the recent chemical attack. “If Europe and America are honest, to preserve the values they are defending, they should fight this oppression. There should be political pressure on the regime.” >> One of many ways to perpetuate oppression is for "the oppressed people" themselves, consciously or unsonciously, to believe in crap.

The left's hollow anti-imperialism over Syria

Women's resistane in Syria

A clarification by Richard Seymour " When a wing of the left criticises "identity politics", they usually mean the kind of politics that reduces oppression to representation and that, as such, is apt to celebrate the inclusion of a right-wing fundamentalist woman in Trump's team because she is a woman and hence "diversification". They want a more substantive attack on racism, sexism, oppression of all kinds. When a wing of the liberal centre criticises "identity politics", they usually m ean to criticise what they think of as the overly clamorous and over-hasty demands of women, gays, African Americans, migrants and others for justice. This, they claim, puts 'progressives' in a difficult position when it comes to building coalitions (with racists, homophobes, etc) and achieving real reforms. When the Right attacks "identity politics", they mean any concession whatsoever to the idea that anyone other than white bourgeois me

Class in more intersectional than intersectionality

Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil Published in 2002, but ...

As Palestinians mourn their Nakba, the UK must acknowledge its responsibility