DEMOCRATIC TYRANNY AND THE ISLAMIC PARADIGM: Preface to the French Edition by Hajja Aisha Bewley

[Democratic Tyranny and the Islamic Paradigm, along with many of Hajja Aisha's works are available at diwanpress.com]

    Having been requested to compose a short preface to this French translation of the text, I realised that it gave me an opportunity to address the current state of politics and the rather dire situation in which democracy now finds itself. We are living in a time of upheaval, a time of inflection, after which things could go in a number of directions, some extremely unpalatable. Democracy does now strikingly appear to be in retreat, a fact recognised even by those at the top of politics. The current American Vice-President, J.D. Vance, stated categorically in an interview that the current order will meet its ‘inevitable collapse’. Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and political activist, has said that he does not believe that liberty and democracy are compatible. The list of critics of democracy today goes on and on. A large number of people have finally realised that democracy as practised leads to a tyranny controlled by an oligarchy. Its critics are growing. Its stalwart defendants tend to be part of what Curtis Yarvin has termed ‘the Cathedral’ – the interconnected bureaucratic network of academics, media elites and government bureaucrats who set the bounds of acceptable opinion and police it. The bureaucratic element of this situation is sometimes referred to as ‘the Deep State’, the Swamp, or the Blob. The natural response to this is expressed in the desire to dismantle this edifice or to ‘drain the swamp’. Then the question arises: what political structure should then replace ‘democracy’?

 

THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY by Hajja Aisha Bewley

This is the transcript of a talk given in Leeds in 17th May 2016

Every day the topic of issues of identity are mentioned as being the root of many problems in society. And it is absolutely true and it is not a new problem. Every generation looks at changes in society and says the same thing. But in modern times, these problems are accelerated and intensified due to the pace of change and the constant feedback through media, and particularly social media. The focus is intensified. Political identity, cultural identity, and now even gender identity, which is most likely a symptom of the intensification of the general crisis in identity. 

RESSENTIMENT AND VIOLENT EXTREMISM by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley

A discourse given on Thursday, 6th February 2020 

In his book, Age of Anger, the author Pankaj Mishra incisively demonstrates that the present wave of atrocities attributed to Islamic extremism cannot be viewed in isolation and must be seen as part of a historical continuum that originated in the 18th Century in the sweeping intellectual, social, economic and moral dislocation brought about by European Enlightenment thinking. 

This ushered in a new way of looking at the world and instigated profound changes in the political and social landscape, which are still being felt to this day. The new worldview found early political expression in the violent convulsions of the American war of independence and then, shortly afterwards, the French revolution, in which the idea of “terror” as political policy was openly advocated. Violent political acts based on these ideas continued throughout the 19th Century in various guises – often taking the form of revolutionary and nationalist movements – and in the 20th Century in anti imperialist, anti-colonialist and nationalist movements in Africa, America and Asia. 

THE REAL AIM OF RSE by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley

Speaking on the Today programme about communities who were objecting to their primary-school aged children being taught the presently proposed form of relationship education, Sir Michael Wilshaw, the ex-Ofsted chief, made the following astonishing, and profoundly shocking, statement. He said, “These people, who have very conservative views, sincerely held, have also got to understand that they’re living in this country with the values that this country holds and they’ve got to balance these two issues.” This remark has the unavoidable corollary: “if they don’t do that they shouldn’t be living in this country.” Who on earth does this man think he is speaking about and speaking to? Who are “these people” he’s referring to? Well, Sir Michael, I am one of them. I wholeheartedly espouse the views they put forward and completely uphold the objections they are making. My family arrived in this country in the entourage of Eleanor of Aquitaine; are you suggesting I should go back there?

THE EXPATRIATION OF SHAMIMA BEGUM by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley

The Home Secretary has stripped Shamima Begum of her British citizenship on the basis of the fact that, although she was born and brought up in the EastEnd, her parents were born in another country. Hundreds of thousands of young and not so young British citizens, including the Home Secretary himself, are in exactly the same situation: born here of parents who weren’t.

Quite apart from the rights and wrongs of the specific circumstances in Shamima’s case – her departure for Syria as a fifteen-year-old girl, her life in Raqqa under ISIL, the recent statements she, as a traumatised young mother, has been induced to make in Interviews conducted by very experienced journalists in search of a sensational story – the most worrying factor in this situation is the apparently extremely fragile legal nature of British nationality. This has also been highlighted in very recent times by the disgraceful Windrush fiasco and the revoking of the citizenship of a number of dual nationals on account of crimes they have committed.