Actions are (judged) by motives (niyyah), so each man will have what he intended. Thus, he whose migration (hijrah) was to Allah and His Messenger, his migration is to Allah and His Messenger; but he whose migration was for some worldly thing he might gain, or for a wife he might marry, his migration is to that for which he migrated. It may be the case that irony was once a powerful tool in the hands of the oppressed, exposing the hypocrisy of those in (political or religious) power. Sadly, this does not hold anymore - not in rich capitalist parliamentary democracies, in any case ..read more

The stuff I was writing here 15 years ago reads like a virgin writing about sex, and there's a damn good reason for that. Not that it's worthless, but it's theoretical. 15 years of practice has taught me humility, and a struggle with shame and despair. Perhaps it can all be recycled to the good. We'll see ..read more

  "Society is doomed for one very simple reason: it takes dozens of men working months with millions of dollars in materials to build a building, but only one dumb-ass with a bomb to bring it down." - Jason Pargin writing as David Wong, John Dies At The End What the unreliable narrative voice of this excellent horror-comedy novel has discovered here and is presenting as a realisation of the awful truth is simply the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy. It is the nature of this universe that things are much easier to destroy than to build, that anything worthwhile decomposes into ..read more

Been reading a lot of Idries Shah lately. He was clearly a truly enlightened being and a con-man, and it's pretty clear from his works that he justifies the role of the Teacher as being to tell whatever lies are necessary to get the broad masses to accept the important stuff. You could call him the Lenin of Sufism, like Lacan is called the Lenin of Freudianism, with all the good and bad that entails.   Anyway, all his stuff is free to read online; I'd suggest you start with The Sufis, which is an interesting combination of "a good introduction to the literature" with "hilarious Rob ..read more

    I think I'm a Communist for the same reason that G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis were orthodox Christians* - an irrational blinding love for what this world could become, and an intense seething hatred of what is ruining it. Not for nothing is "Tikkun Olam" a slogan of the Abrahamic religions and the insurrectionist movement. Where those worthy gentlemen saw a personal transcendent God, however, I see the possibilities (even as far as going to the stars) of the consciousness of humanity as a species, with a duty of care towards the rest of Earth's biosphere; and where they ..read more

Losing My Religion The Leninist parties of old asked unquestioning obedience from their followers, forcing their members and, after gaining power, their subjects, to conform to their every twist and turn in order to attain their political goals. Just read The Little Red Book for an illustration of this. When the prospect for world revolution faded, these goals were watered down to the military goal of defeating the enemy. When the Cold War ended, the enemy had to be defeated not by military, but by economic means. Which really meant shaking the hand of the devil - capitalism - in ..read more

  A quite significant stage in my "growing up" occurred when one of my personal heroes - a revolutionary writer on music who single-handedly persuaded me that Marxism was useful - sneered at me as a "victim of the culture industry" because I liked Pink Floyd. Well, he may be pleased to know that I can't enjoy Pink Floyd any more since Roger Waters became a tool of evil. But that sheer nastiness about someone else's joy is pretty symptomatic. I'm seeing it in a lot of online circles today, curmudgeons mocking the (largely Black) urban masses of the United States actively dancing in the st ..read more

    No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remarks: “Theoretic controversies are only for academicians.” Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” The entire strength of the modern labour movement rests on theoretic knowledge. - Rosa Luxemburg There are two ideological oppositions to this Luxembourgeois project of bringing science and workers together: the elitist or technocratic argument that workers can't ..read more

So who am I, and why have I spent 14 years on-and-off on this poorly read blog? The first thing to assure you is: I write pseudonymously (though pretty transparently) because these are very provisional ideas which are considered "oddball at best" in polite society. You can find out my "street name" with some basic internet detective skills, and if you're not a dick I'll say hi to you. I am a materialist and a Marxist. I do not believe in the supernatural at this point in my life, but I have no reason to argue with the beliefs of those who do as long as they do not stray into science-denial ..read more

I first read this when I was 15, and while a lot of my beliefs and practices and even self-image have changed since then, it is still one of the central ideas upon which I base my life: The practice of magic also demands the development of what is called the magical will. Will is very much akin to what Victorian schoolmasters called "character": honesty, self-discipline, commitment, and conviction. Those who would practice magic must be scrupulously honest in their personal lives. In one sense, magic works on the principle that "it is so because I say it is so." A bag of herbs acquires the ..read more