OK. This is a message that still doesn't seem to be getting through, in spite of the urgency, the videos, the gutwrenching horror of it. HUMAN BEINGS ARE DYING - repeatedly, and largely with impunity - because of white supremacy. In case you were wondering whose job it is to fix this problem, IT IS WHITE PEOPLE'S JOB to dismantle white supremacy.
If you are white, that might make you feel uncomfortable, or attacked. Don't take it personally. Sure, it wasn't you that crushed the windpipe of George Floyd. But innocent people are suffering because of weaponised whiteness, and you need to take a stand and show you want nothing to do with it. Fight the urge to make excuses, to say "but I'm not a racist" because you're not a neo-Nazi, or because you listen to black music or have brown friends. There is literally no way that anyone can be raised in the racism-drenched societies that we live in and come out immune. We need to cure this disease ourselves. It's not up to the people suffering from its poisonous fallout to cure it for us. They're already struggling to survive, to be seen, to have their lives valued on the same measuring tape as everyone else's.
White supremacy is a slippery devil; it doesn't want you to know it's there, but it's operating on a subconscious level ALL. THE. TIME. Writing laws. Driving inequality in education, labour markets, even marriage prospects. Making things like lethal restraint on a black man for allegedly using a counterfeit note seem like normal policing.
White people, it is up to us to DO 👏THE 👏 WORK. Dismantling means primarily to remove the mantle from, to expose. The very first step is to educate yourself. Here is a small selection of books (via the amazing @sofia.reading) to get started with. Follow @rachel.cargle, @laylafsaad. There are tons of extraordinary activists on socials but these pages are doorways. Sign the colorofchange.org petition. Donate to NEKIMA who are working against racism in Minneapolis. Write a message on the profile of the mayor of Minneapolis, @jacobfrey1. Just make some f@#£ing noise. Vamos p'allá ✊🏾
Eid Mubarak people!!! It's been a crazy month, amazingly quiet and blissful without school runs, plus for 20 days my older 2 kids were with their dad, so I have been much less stressed than in previous years (I'm afraid that parenting while fasting is not my forte 🙈 I wrote a post about it on Cavemum last year, see link in bio). This year I spent more time awake at night, did 7 livestreams (which I'd never done before), attended (at least I was in attendance in my own house!) several Zoom dhikrs, missed three webinars (somehow the days are just upside-down, with work and kids and fasting), missed every single zoom Qur'an recitation 😭 but managed to do some prayers and Qur'an readings that I'd never managed to do in previous years. I also wrote poems, recorded songs and poetry readings, made videos (to be released shortly inshallah), did an art journal (totally new for me, and so much fun), and spent WAAAAAAY too much time on social media, to the point where I'm worried I'm getting RSI 😕 BUT it's been a fruitful month and I hope to draw on these resources again and again in the coming year. Ramadan is like digging a well to quench future thirsts...may this day be full of beauty and blessings for all of you! This is a post I made for @azahara_international. Blessed be xx 🎉☕🍒🎆🍰✨💚 #eidmubarak #eid2020 #eidulfitr
I'm afraid I didn't manage to livestream this evening. Depending on when you sighted the moon, tonight might be Laylatu'l-Qadr...or maybe Laylatu'l-Qadr is any odd night all through this month, all through the year, any night when peace descends, when breasts expand, when love is revealed not to be a silly, fanciful thing to reach for and crave but the actual ground of all existence, the impulse that brought materiality out of nothingness, that keeps the planet spinning through all its phases and ages, that makes us wake up in the morning and think, this is a day on which I can do something good. I can make it real.
How much time and energy are you pouring out compared to how much you're filling your own cup? How often do you check in with your intention to see if your work is really in service to the Good, and not just an exercise in vanity? Is your life a work of art in homage to the Artist? A window cut through materiality to see Light?
In holding authority accountable, calling out prejudice and fighting injustice, remember there's a whole world INSIDE that's just as in need of that scrutiny. And the world OUTSIDE is just as in need of constantly building and rebuilding, radical hope, compassion, kindness and joy, revolutions in our hearts that spill over and make this world truer.
#notetoself #physicianhealthyself
P.S. I want to livestream qasidahs tonight as it might be Laylatu'l-Qadr but I'm shattered from not sleeping. Will do my best. Send up a prayer for me woudja. Thx
