Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Man must assert his native rights, must say ;  We take from Monarchs’ hand the granted sway;  — Shelley, an English poet     Separating the “human” from the institution, and the “family” from the “monarchy” has long been a successful tactic in preventing searching scrutiny of the institution. She faithfully served the British imperial project Related Insurgent Empire

There are two kinds of philosophy in the world: one of them is to the effect that there is nothing in the world which is ours, so we must remain content with a rag and a mouthful of food. The other is to the effect that everything in the world is beautiful and desirable, that it does and ought to belong to us. It is the second which should be our ideal … as for the first, it is worthless, and we must pay no attention to it.   Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī  (1838/39-1897), quoted in Kedouri’s Afghani and ‘Abduh , p. 15, 1966. Al-afghānī did not conceal his opposition to Ismai’l Pasha [the viceroy of the Ottoman sultan in Egypt], exclaiming in a speech he delivered to the fellahin [peasants] in Alexandria,  ‘Oh! You poor fellah! You break the heart of the earth in order to draw sustenance from it and support your family. Why do you not break the heart of your oppressor? Why do you not break the heart of those who eat the fruit of your labour?’ Ibid., p. 25

Excerpts from The Islamic Enlightenment

So what if Putin likes Dostoyevsky? Related “ Lithuania - together with Latvia, Estonia and Poland - banned all Russian tourists , arguing they should not be enjoying democracy and freedom in Europe while their government attacks those very values in Ukraine.”

From Imamate to the present

  If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism and urged the crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad. As a Kenyan , I feel nothing. This theater is absurd. Criticism of British empire intensifies Related Dozens of staff at King Charles’s former residence told they could lose jobs

  Táhireh / Qurrat al-Ayn  (1814/17-1852)

“The UN's labour organisation is keen to stress that slavery is not confined to poor countries far away from the Western world - more than half of all forced labour happens in wealthier countries in the upper-middle or high-income bracket.“ 10 million increase in numbers in five years

Gender, Power, Resistance Related A guide to students

A good panorama of the situation in the MENA region. However, I think that there is  too much focus on ‘democracy’ without a single mention of capitalism in a left wing publication. ‘Democracy’ is narrowly defined and although Alaoui highlights the role of counterrevolution, he never grounds ‘democracy’ in a socio-economic revolutionary’ context. The revolution broke out in December 2010 before its spread to other countries raising socio-economic slogans and issues, not ‘democracy’.  ‘Neoliberal’ for of capitalism is meant to be the culprit along the counterrevolutionary forces as if the working of capital itself is not counterrevolutionary. ‘Aid’ replaces debt as mechanism of subjugation. The question (the headline) itself begs the question: what is the relevance of the question since the author clearly speaks about the regimes as the leading force behind the counterrevolution? ‘Popular’ as in ‘popular forces’, ‘popular currents’, ‘popular mobilisation’, etc.  is often r...

The role the monarchy played in the service of UK’s imperial interests

The main ideas in the rest of the article : Hazony founded the Edmund Burke Foundation in Washington to strengthen ‘the principles of national conservatism in Western and other democratic countries’. Hazony, writing just after [Meir] Kahane’s assassination in 1990, made clear that he never subscribed to his violent political views, but he did adopt Kahane’s neo-messianic brand of theology. Hazony helped edit Netanyahu’s  A Place Among the Nations,  the book which set out the future prime minister’s programme. Netanyahu asserts (in the Hebrew edition) that ‘the Israeli left may be suffering from a chronic disease that has affected the Jewish people for a century: the Marxism that impregnated the Jewish leftist, far-left and communist movements in Eastern Europe.’  An affliction that might explain why, after the June 1967 war, some leftwing Israelis wanted to give back the conquered territories. Hazony takes Asa Kasher, a philosopher at Tel Aviv University to task: ‘Kasher ...

have not been invaded by Britain.

A very short introduction Related British atrocities in Kenya

We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes. — James Connolly Monarchy is a survival of the tyranny imposed by the hand of greed and treachery upon the human race in the darkest and most ignorant days of our history. It derives its only sanction from the sword of the marauder, and the helplessness of the producer, and its gifts to humanity are unknown, save as they can be measured in the pernicious examples of triumphant and shameless iniquities. The Right Divine of Labour To be first of earthly things; That the Thinker and the Worker Are Manhood’s only Kings — Connolly

According to  a 2014 YouGov poll , 50 percent of people in Britain believe that colonialism was beneficial to the colonies . Related Interview with Usta Patnaik Inglorious Empire by Shashi Thahroor

She is so strong in the imagination that even in death she is able to cancel class conflict: unions suspend strike action . … and some of the great people she met in her life.

Attacks on and violations of workers’ rights by governments and employers Related ‘Made in Tunisia’

“America on the Brink” review

Not a single word about UK’s imperialism. Poverty, excessive inequality, productivity …