While I appreciate the labor on this review, it’s quite unfortunate that the reviewer engages in surface level misreads, misinterpretations & misquotes w/o context so let’s check some facts:
1. Reviewer identifies me as postcolonialist. I’m not. I use/appreciate postcolonial scholarship but the whole book is a decolonial critique of postcolonialism. I distinguish between both based on Indigenous discourses, nuance which is completely ignored or elided.
2. Reviewer identifies me as Sunni. Don’t identify as such; never have/will. It's inappropriate of the reviewer to impose a label. I’m Muslim w/all the simplicity/complexities this entails. Despite the multiplicity of Islamic interpretations they’re all bound by 1 book–the Quran.
This allows me to build on &/or disagree w/dimensions in each interpretation while calling them out on reneged Quranic commitments of interpretation that don't 3. Reviewer imposes his own agenda of wanting me to write a historiography of anarchist currents/individuals..
w/in Muslim history/societies/thought. That’s not this project. This political-theological social movement work is meant to develop an anarchistic interpretation of Islam & vice versa that doesn’t exist; a gap I sought to fill. While I use historiography that’s not my primary ...
interest. Why I don’t work from with specific traditions (Sufism, or individuals – Sharaiti). That’s Anthony Fiscella’s work, who I assisted with editing the Muslim-Anarchist zine/pamphlet. It’s also why I address Muslim denominations via discussing the Sunni-Khilafat &...
Shiite-Imamate branches that offshoot-interpretations adhere to. Why i can methodologically build on the Islam’s multiplicitous interpretations, communities & circles that I’ve been a part of (Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, etc w/o pledging allegiance to any specific one).
Reviewer should probably check out my work on Muslims Zapatistas and the Sufi-Murabiteen movement that the former left. 4. Reviewer accuses me of being a pro-Asadist. Not true. The full transcripts with @coffeewcomrades & @sjbranson1 of @StrawFinal & others are available in
debunking this lie relating to Syria & Iran. I call Asad ‘the butcher of Damascus,’ critique the false binary of choosing between a Zionist-Wahabbi-Euro-American alliance & a Russian-Chinese etc alliance. Am I expected to support in this moment intervention that splits Syria,..
Iran, in the absence of alternatives? Does my hate for Sisi & the MB trump Egypt further divided, in the absence of alternatives? No. I had the recent honor of being invited to joining Iranian feminist/scholars in discussing this during ASA2022 given that my views don’t fall...
in either camp; neither do theirs. I’d rather offer support by working on disrupting US settlercolonialism that through proxy war usurped the aspirations of Syrians in the first place; review is dismissive of this tie between the local and international, unable to distinguish..
between Strategy & Tactic. Book is a critique of all nation-states (post and settler), the model, & all those in power. My strategic compasses are Palestine & Turtle Island & their mutual freeing following which the remainder will unfold.
Interview transcripts https://ia801406.us.archive.or... & https://coffeewithcomrades.com...
5. Reviewer is upset that I don’t buy into liberal-progressive ‘queer rights are human rights’ discourses that animate homonationalism & pinkwashing, feed into racial capitalism. Queer Indigenous, Black, & poc critiques have made the same critique as I.
Reviewer ignores my historical-archival & transnational ethnographic PhD research/articles (cited in the book) addressing queer Muslim and queer Egyptians. Most of my participants reject Euro-American coming out narratives, marriage etc. I critique prog. politics for that reason.
The PhD work is published in al-raida, feral feminisms journal and others. See http://www.alraidajournal.com/... https://feralfeminisms.com/wp-... https://www.academia.edu/38647...
6. Reviewer accuses me of being a supporter of pedophile Hakim Bey who I quote once in a cheap ‘gotcha moment’. It seems there’s an ambivalence to the complexities of the politics of citation. Yes, I’ve condemned Bey publicly and privately. I don’t rely on his work that’s cited..
by BIPOC & white anarchist scholars given its influence through concepts as TAZ, SPAZ, PAZ that helped anarchists re-envision squats & autonomous zones post-Seattle '99. Reviewer should probably look to white anarchists or even an anarchist mechanism for transformative justice..
as opposed to placing that burden on a poc. 7. Reviewer finds it disturbing that I refer to myself in the book as a ‘anti-militaristic militant jihadi’ having spent a whole chapter explaining what Jihad is vs. its orientalist interpretation which the reviewer is adamant to...
maintain. Ch. discusses the diff. between Jihad and Qital & talks about how nonviolence (which the reviewer buys into except when it’s imperialist interventionism elsewhere) is a liberal illusion. I draw on radical Black & Indigenous traditions that critique nonviolence...
& argue for the right to self-defense. Reviewer couldn’t be bothered with the argument. 8. Reviewer notes I don’t critique the clerical class. Astonishing given the book’s argument, & explicit passages in which I do (pgs. 81, 95, 98, 101 etc).
9. Reviewer states that I dismiss that Islam means ‘submission’ which he equates to ‘surrender.’ My introduction & pg 111 explicitly notes that linguistically/etymologically Islam does not mean ‘submission’; an orientalist interpretation. I discuss based on Muslim feminist
amina wadud’s work and others, how it actually means willful surrender. Ignoring the difference between both conveniently does away w/anti-authoritarian Quranic practicesthat show otherwise (Tawhid, Shura, Ijmaa, Maslaha, Khulafa in the plural etc). Reviewer claims I argue that..
we have no agency. Baffling given that we all have agency. If we didn’t this book wouldn’t be necessary, & neither would my work on queer Muslims. Muslim anarchist subjectivities wouldn’t exist without agency limited in choices that we may have. 10. Reviewer ignores entire...
discussions on what animates economic and cooperative relations from a Quranic standpoint vs. capitalism. There’s an outright dismissal of concepts as the Quranic forbiddance of interest (riba – regarded as a pillar of capitalism) in Islam, that property in principle...