Debate without understanding, polemic without insight: why are they so much in fashion? Because they are so much easier than the arduous but rewarding task of understanding, which would change our lives and our behaviour. Because they are spectator sports like boxing. We are there for the thrill of the knockout and the blood on …
Category Archives: Blogroll
I am nothing
The claim “I am nothing” is perhaps the most arrogant claim of all, for there is that “I am” even if it is followed by “nothing”. It is like the abstemiousness of those who give up “things”. There may be nothing in the hand, but take a look at what is in the heart.
Nothing
Can someone who is nothing come to know One Who is no thing?
The Manufacture of Ignorance – Abdassamad Clarke and Uthman Ibrahim-Morrison
“I refused to go to college because I wanted an education.” Gore Vidal There is a vital need to re-introduce the independence of the scholar, scientist and expert, acknowledging that there are already a substantial number of such people within the academic nexus who against all odds have held to the highest qualities of scholarly …
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The Elephant in the Room – Abdassamad Clarke
The elephant in the room is of course not Islam, since the Muslims are everywhere under occupation, being bombed, killed and driven from their homes by warfare or famine, often the consequences of geo-politics or globalisation. The issue that will not go away is the imperial power of the US as the foremost representative of …
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Occupy Together – Abdassamad Clarke
The poet W. B. Yeats strove to make a unity of his life. “Hammer your thoughts into unity,” was his expression of that. Few things are more important for us today, as things and causes are automatically shunted into categorical boxes where they are rendered impotent like a freshly slaughtered Egyptian chicken tossed into a …
The Time of the Bedouin – Ian Dallas
In the definitive political statement for the coming century, Dallas analyses the foundational substance of political democracy, revealing at its heart terror and totalitarianism. And there also, wielding substantive power, unelected and largely unknown: the finance and commodities elite. Drawing on a panoply of European thinkers from Ibsen to Heidegger, Dallas then delineates the coming …
An Ominous Return – Abdassamad Clarke
A meeting here in Norwich recently reminded me of how much we have to be grateful for in this little island nation. A South American visitor told me of how in her society to be stopped by a policeman for a traffic offence necessarily means to be asked for a bribe. When she came to …
A Little Immodesty – Abdassamad Clarke
Sometimes a man must cast modesty and humility aside and stand forth. My turn has come. In the late 80s I was calling for the abandonment of paper money and a return to gold and silver. It was published and it is there in black and white for anyone to read. Now the whole world, …
The Game is Up – Uthman Ibrahim-Morrison and Abdassamad Clarke
“I’m a Muslim and I believe in Divine fate and destiny, and it was his destiny and his fate… and now he’s gone… and may Allah forgive him and bless him… that’s all I have to say…” Tariq Jahan (bereaved father) Three young Muslims in Birmingham who had left their neighbourhood mosque in the month …
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