Anarchism and Islam with Andrew

but I appreciate the role playing. The Saturn's it set between either eight sixty seven or ten sixty six and fourteen fifty three, which is considered the end of the medieval era due to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. Yeah. So you know, at a certain point in playing the game, after I've played in pretty much every corner of the map, I was looking for a new religious movement to spread across the map for fun. Of course, this is something

I do with my free time. And I started reading about all these different strands of Islam that they have in the game, like the Commissians and the Ebadis and the Sufreez. Yeah, and that led me to stumble across the move Tasialism and the Naja Dad. And please bailed me with the pronunciations of everything about to pronounce in this episode, but move Tassilism and the Naja Dad. I started digging into this stuff, and that led me to make the decision to talk about what I've been learning

before I begin. I know, even the idea of religious anarchisms is somewhat controversial, particularly the discrepancy between the anarchist slugan of no gods, no masters, and of course the history of various faith based class struggles. MY stance on it is complicated, But whatever my stances, I don't think we could deny the reality that religious anarchisms have existed in the past and still exists today.

neoliberal globalization. There were always religious people, and I'm not a religious person, And I went to a school where there was a priest, and the priest had been a member of the anti apartheid movement, in South Africa and was wanted them and had left for doing violence to get which, like it's pretty based and so like I have a lot of time for a lot of religious people, it's always been kind of an area of I guess interest to me this like religious anarchisms.

a minarchism than an actual anarchism. Sure, right, but it's still interesting to see I guess, the seeds of anti authoritarianism through history.

of the Abbasid Caliphate would become corrupt and tyrannical. Now, the two me and stream opinions were that of the activists who believed in stage in a violent revolution to install a new legitimate leader, and the quietists who believed impatiently, perseverant under attorney or passively resistant. It's funny how we see these kind of ideas about change rearing their heads again and again and again throughout history, despite various different contexts.

The other people were like, yeah, let's go get it, and the other people who are like, yeah, let's rock back a little bit and take things with more passively. So that's interesting right now. Abubaka, the guy who was the first caliph, he made it clear in his inauguration that obedience is not incumbent upon his followers if he contradicts the will of Allah. And for those who don't know,

Allah is God in the Islamic religion. And yet the dominant position in Islam has been the quietest position even to this day, the activist position is less popular. Some would say some people have this side that the only manifestation of Islam can be the one seed in the autocracies of Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. But even back in Islam's heyde there were Muslims willing to resist

the tyrannical control of even religiously or ordained rulers. So back to Bastra in the eight hundreds, there was also a third category of solutions proposed, which we can call anarchists in the general sense, but not really in the actual sense. Most of the Muslim anarchists believe that society could function without the caliph. They proposed a kind of evolutionary anarchism where private property was not abolished per se, but because the ruler was considered illegitimate, the titles of

property the ruler granted would also be considered illegitimate. They also argue that the caliph must be agreed upon by the entire community, which is no easy task considering how Islam divided between Sunnis and Shia's almost immediately after the prophet Muhammad died. However, without this consensus, no logismate clief could exist, and it was widely accepted that a law

did not impose obligations that were impossible to fulfill. So then it was reason that then there was really no obligation to establish legitimate clief if no consensus could be found. So there's a little loopool. Basically, we need full consensus. We're never going to get full consensus. Oh well shrug, you know, yeah. And then in the time, in the context rebe this is, you know, medieval times, you're seeing a lot more. You're seeing several different political configurations and

formations and ways of organizing society. So some of them at the time, we were seeing their neighbors, the Bedwinds, and the bed Winds were living without rulers like normal. So they were like, well, why can't we live without rulers like normal? And so they use that as a justification as well. And so they also had many proposed solutions, ranging from a radical decentralization of public authority to a

complete dissolution of public authority. One particular genre proposals involved replacing the calief with elected officials, either completely independent of each other or joined together in a federation, and these elected officials would be temporary and only remain in office when legal disputes arose or when an enemy invaded. When the problem was resolved, they would lose their position and

society would return to quote unquote anarchy. There was even a minority sect which calls for the complete abolition of the state, called it Nashda, and they argued that if there wasn't sufficient agreement established this in aclief, there can never be enough to establish law at all. They wanted not just political independence, but intellectual independence, because according to them, individuals should be able to reason for themselves and have

no one above them but Allah. Basically the religious anarchist slogan one God, no masters. Yeah, right, but it'll get a twisted of course, all this radical stuff applied to them within their group alone, So if you weren't part of their group, you could still be enslaved or killed. So it's kind of a selective, Yeah, it's a bit

selective in their freedom mindedness. Then in eight seventeen, so a couple of years later, the center of religious power and the Muslim world collapsed with the fall of Baghdad. The chaos of civil war ensued, but in the absence of public authority, they would naturally emerge an order out

of the chaos without central planning. As we've seen it again and again and again throughout history, people self organized to protect themselves and their positions collectively in times of natural disaster, in times of crisis, people come together without having a state, having without a state having to organize them and tell them what to do and how to

do it. Such has been the case for centuries. And speaking of centuries, we're going to jump ahead a little bit to the twelfth century where we could see a sort of a pseudo nihilist anarchist movement called the Kalandaria, a movement of wandering ascetic Sufi dervishes from Andalusia and Spain to Iran, Central Asia, India and Pakistan. Many of the Khalandaria had body persins and tattoos in explicit defiance of Islamic traditions. They regarded such practices as haram. Here's

a bit of an interesting story. One of the earlier divisions of the Manatimir was once being followed by a crowd of admirers, and then reactions to their praise, he paused, pulled out his pep i urinated on the ground. So as a sort of a radical it's almost like what seems that Greek guy.

crossed that out. Yeah, I think we I think we get we get the get the idea of course, again not really anarchism in the classical sense or in an actual sense, but manifestation of one trend within or one streak within an anarchist movement. Steak jump ahead against the nineteenth century. Now with perhaps the first anarchist to convert to Islam. Ivan Agrelli born in Sweden in eighteen sixty nine. Aguilli was interested in philosophy, spirituality, ideology and literature, and

he explored new ideas ravenously. He joined the Theosophical Society in France, and he met anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin in London in eighteen ninety one. He also began reading the Quran around eighteen nine too, and converted to Islam in eighteen ninety seven. And GWELLI wrote about Islam and anarchism fairly frequently, but he didn't really connect them together. However, there was another one, another anarchist to convinced Islam, Isabelle Everhart.

She Grubb in Geneva and converted to Islam around eighteen ninety six or ninety seven, and she challenged both Eastern and Western norms through her writings and practice practice, pursuing a nomadic lifestyle in Nigeria, joining a Sufi order and expressing her unconventional spirit by dressing as a male when she felt like, taking on a male name, and pursuing a lifestyle of purported promiscuity journalism, smoking Kief and Junian

across the North African desert by horse. I think she would also be considered a figure of queer anarchist history. I wasn't able to find anything about how she identified personally, but apparently so. I don't know if she was a cross dresser or if she was trans or something else entirely.

and working offer in the building sector. By in eighteen seventy six anarchists they had organized a branch of the Syndicalist International Workers Association, and the early eighteen hundreds at the Comana Testa and other Italian anarchists joined the Urabia Prize in against the British, and this was perhaps the first time that Muslims anarchists fought a military campaign side

by side other uprising was squashed. Anarchists were less harassed in the Octoband Empire than in many other parts of Europe. Later on, in nineteen oh one, anarchists co founded a free popular university, the University Popularity Libre or UPL, in Alexandria. It provided free courses on subjects like tool stories and Cunan's ideas, the arts, pragmatic topics like working negotiation strategies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However, common if you

were indigenous to the region, tough luck. Indigenous muslim and indigenous Muslims and Arabic speakers went really part of the UPI's program went really included pretty much marginalized from the education entirely, and the UPL crash became more and more aimed toward and controlled by upper class interests. So that sucks.

could be used to resist some Islamic traditions. And there were also several individuals today who have explicitly and publicly self identified as Muslim anarchists, not Muslim and anarchists, but specifically Muslim anarchists, including ab Dinner Pradu and Mohammad jan Venus. That's cool. So that's a sort of a basic rundown.

But I think inevitably with these sort of topics you sort of fraught ideas, something like an Islamic anarchism, they're going to be some challenges and criticisms, right, Yeah, I would like for one, you know, it's a fairly new concept,

the idea of Islamic anarchism. Like I went over, there were certain trends that can be described as anarchic, amphibian, generous, but the idea of Islamic anarchism as in something born out of the after development of anim schism and through anarchism as a political philosophy, it's fairly new and it challenges a lot of the traditional Islamic teachings on authority

and governance. So some scholars practitioners have pointed out that with the emphasis of social order, the emphasis of authority of the state and the role of law, this idea of rejecting hierarchy and authority as advocated by Islamic anarchists

is you know, heretical practically. There's also some criticism that with Islamic anarchisms rejection of all forms of authority in hierarchy, it undermines the concept of tweed, which is the belief in the oneness of God, and by you know, rejecting that by undermining that concept and promoting individualism and self rule,

it sort of goes against that teaching. Of course, like I mentioned earlier, there's also this challenge to the idea that is anarchism or Islamic anarchism could be compatible because of the slogan and no cause, no masters right. Of course, Islamic anarchists and other Islamic socialists would argue that Islam should be seen as a liberating force that can help

individuals achieve freedom from a Prussian exploitation. The same argument is made with a lot of other strands of religious anarchisms as well, and so to bring things to a sort of a close, I'd say that, you know, like every religious anarchism, like every political philosophy, like every religion,

like everything. Honestly, people pick and shooes. You know, in Islam you can find elements of quietism as well as activism detached to mysticism, as well as pragmatic daily concerns, traditions of violence and traditions of non violence, moderation and extremism in anarchism, tensions exist between pacifism and insurrectionism, cyndicalism and individualism, nationalism and anti nationalism, collectivism and individualism again. And I'm not a Muslim, I'm not a religious anarchist

of any variety. But I think that there is room for even if I may not agree with it in all cases the conclusions some people draw. I think there's

room for these sorts of dialogues to be had. I think there's a room for exploration to the history of all sorts of historical movements and ideologies and religions and ideas, because I mean, there's a whole legacy of billions of people who have lived and died long before us, and I think I find it interested, at least as a thought exercise, to see how they came to their conclusions as well. So I hope this episode was start provoking, enlightening and interesting to those who tuned in.

get to or not. But like one of the things that you saw in the Spanish like not really the Civil War as much, but in the Second Republic was the socialists and and like left liberals explicitly selling out like Moroccan Muslim people and North African people more generally whatever their faith, and anarchists being like, no, we should express solidarity with these people, like even if we if they are aren't and some of them were part of like they were anarchists in Spanish North Africa of course,

but like even if they weren't, being like, we should have post colonialism, and when every other kind of left stripe didn't, it's kind of one of the failing sort of public not to So, yeah, they've been these conversations, I guess for a long time. It was interesting to hear about those Sufi's in Spain and think about how long those conversations have been going back and forth, you.