Islam and Anarchism

Discourse around Muslims and Islam all too often lapses into a false dichotomy of Orientalist and fundamentalist tropes. A popular reimagining of Islam is urgently needed. Yet it is a perhaps unexpected political philosophical tradition that has the most to offer in this pursuit: anarchism. Islam and Anarchism is a highly original and interdisciplinary work, which simultaneously disrupts two commonly held beliefs - that Islam is necessarily authoritarian and capitalist; and that anarchism is necessarily anti-religious and anti-spiritual. Deeply rooted in key Islamic concepts and textual sources, and drawing on radical Indigenous, Islamic anarchistic and social movement discourses, Abdou proposes 'Anarcha-Islam'. Constructing a decolonial, non-authoritarian and non-capitalist Islamic anarchism, Islam and Anarchism philosophically and theologically challenges the classist, sexist, racist, ageist, queerphobic and ableist inequalities in both post- and neo-colonial societies like Egypt, and settler-colonial societies such as Canada and the USA.

Mohamed Abdou is a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist activist-scholar. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Cairo. His twenty years of activist research and experience centers on Palestinian, Indigenous, Black, and people of colour liberation, and draws on the Indigenous Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, as well as his participation in the Egyptian uprisings of 2011.

Preface Acknowledgments A Note on Transliteration and Translation 1. Introduction: Panegyric Desert of the Present The Destructive Legacy of (Neo)Liberalism and Colonial Modernity in the Production of Neo-Orientalist and Neo-Fundamentalist Muslim Subjectivities A Match to a Powder Keg Islam and Anarchism Are Dead: Muslim Anarchists in Turtle Island's Newest Social Movements Positionality: Who Is Speaking? A Sum Exceeding the Whole, Everything Divided: The Argument Condensed 2. Authoritarianism, Capitalism, and Capitalist Nation-States: Anarcha-Islam's Playground and Ethical-Political Consciousness On Decolonization and Reindigenization, and the Crises of Fleeting Tahrir Moments Thus Spoke God: The Method of Anarchic Ijtihad Deleuze and Guattari's Oedipal Triad: The Nation-State (Daddy) – Capitalism (Mommy) – and Me/Us 3. Anarcha-Islam: An Anti- and Non-Authoritarian Islam Anarcha-Islam's Osteological Left-Side Arise: An Anti- and Non-Authoritarian Islam Modern Uses of Waṭaniyyah, Qawmiyyah, and Dawla, and Decolonized Vestiges of the Umma and Imamah in Arab and Muslim Lexicons Muslim and Non-Muslim Glossaries of Indigeneity Towards a Resurgent Umma: Anti-Blackness and Anti-Indigenous Politics 4. Anarcha-Islam: An Anti- and Non-Capitalist Islam Anarcha-Islam's Osteological Right-Side Awaken: An Anti- and Non-Capitalist Islam: Micro- and Macro-Economics As Patients We Come to Each Other's Aid 5. Uprisings: On (Im)Possibilities and Militant Resistance The Delusional Myth of Nonviolence Violence, Jihad, and Qital in Islam: A Single Blunder Can Fuel a Great Fire From the Deception of “Nonviolence” to Red, Black, and Brown Power Liberatory Victory 6. Conclusion: There Are Only Middles, No Beginnings and No Ends. Between BLM, NoDaPL-INM, and Tahrir Notes Index