Hasham

Student of poetry, student of philosophy. Poet, Witness. Words in Madrigal, Lovers Lit, Amsterdam Review and others. 🖤

[Jash Dholani @oldbooksguy]

thinking about this banger from ancient rome

[Hasham @loveinignorance]

@aliner “A jacket hangs from a question mark.”
💜

[Alina Stefanescu @aliner]

Boots in the corner kick in their sleep.

- Stuart Dybek, “Their Story”

[Hasham @loveinignorance]

To find our personality by losing it — faith itself endorses this destiny.

—Fernando Pessoa

[Hasham @loveinignorance]

Let me take it in, let me surrender, let me yield.

Amen

[Hasham @loveinignorance]

He is the great demolisher of walls,
and his work goes on in silence.

—Rilke; trans. Edward Snow

O Allah, you have ‘afflicted’ me with this siege, so you could demolish all the walls that I had built around me. Let me not fight what is essential work, the work needed.

[Blunt @Shinamuller]

Assalamu Alaikum, friends.
This honourable scholar has described the oil wells of the Gulf as fountains of prosperity and declared Iran guilty of forty years of poverty. The statement is so clear and so simple that anyone reading it can be swayed. Yet truth is seldom simple. Truth is often written on pages we prefer not to see.
The Gulf states extracted oil. Of that there is no doubt. Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait brought the wealth lying beneath the earth to the surface and made their citizens prosperous. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani labourers work in these countries. That too is correct. But what kind of employment is this? The kind in which a Pakistani worker is made to stand in an office room over the slightest matter and is struck across the face. This is not employment. It is the trade of cheap labour. Pakistan’s industries are dying and its young generation is knocking at the doors of the Gulf. This is not prosperity. It is a rentier system that produces nothing of its own and merely sells what it finds.
Now raise your eyes towards Iran. Iran faces the harshest sanctions in the world. Selling oil is difficult, opening a bank account is almost impossible, even medicines cannot always reach. Yet it has given its people a health system. Universal health coverage stands above ninety per cent. Life expectancy has risen from fifty-five years to seventy-four or seventy-five. Child mortality is lower than the global average. It manufactures ninety per cent of its own medicines. The number of medical universities has grown from nine to sixty-eight. In nanotechnology it ranks among the first five countries of the world. In biotechnology it leads the Islamic world. Women form the majority in literacy and higher education. This is not poverty. This is the story of self-reliance in a forest of sanctions.
Now turn to the madrasas. Here history reveals its bitterest truth.
In Pakistan traditional Islam was Sufi in spirit, moderate and rooted in local customs. Both Deobandi and Barelvi currents existed in their places, yet Wahhabi or Ahl-e-Hadith influence remained limited. Then the nineteen-seventies arrived. Revolution occurred in Iran and the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia began spreading its ideology on both fronts. Money came. A great deal of money.
According to American diplomatic cables and independent researchers, roughly one hundred million dollars reached Ahl-e-Hadith and Deobandi madrasas in southern Punjab every year. Some estimates place total Saudi funding worldwide between seventy and one hundred billion dollars. In Pakistan the number of madrasas rose from two hundred and forty-four to nearly twenty-four thousand. Thousands of them were built or run with Saudi money. Ahl-e-Hadith madrasas in particular benefited.
This money was not only for buildings. It brought an ideology. The hard-line interpretations replaced the Sufi khanqahs. Local traditions were declared innovations. Hostility to Iran was made an article of faith. The result was that Pakistan’s religious atmosphere changed. The moderate Islam that had flourished on this soil for centuries gradually receded. Madrasas that were once centres of learning often became ideological training camps.
This destruction was not merely educational. It was social and political as well. A young generation was taught an Islam isolated from the world, rigid and filled with lists of enemies. The roots of Pakistan’s internal extremism are planted in this very soil.
And then Yemen. Since March twenty fifteen the Saudi-led coalition has carried out more than two hundred and seventy-four thousand air strikes. Civilian deaths number in the tens of thousands. More than two hundred and twenty-three thousand deaths from hunger and treatable diseases, the majority of them children under five. Hospitals, schools, water reservoirs, electricity grids and ports have all been destroyed. This is the other face of prosperity.1/2

[Ben Purkert @BenPurkert]

here's some Denis Johnson to completely fuck up your workday 😈

[nazanin @onapittance]

Lenin citing Engels on the disappearing English proletariat: “there is no workers’ party here, there are only conservatives and liberal radicals, and the workers merrily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the colonies and the world market.” Could’ve been written today

[Venus ونوس @seyedehvenus]

reminds me of Fidel’s landing in New York 1979

[degrowth entrepreneur @xoayquanh]

Lula said shape up fucker

[Shani @FearlessWolfess]

This history matters: blasphemy laws are not some timeless, uniquely Islamic legal necessity. They evolved through ancient religious-state systems, medieval Europe and colonial law. British India’s 1927 §295-A was later inherited by Pakistan; §§295-B and 295-C were added during Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation in 1982 and 1986.

So let’s stop hiding behind “interpretation.” When the state criminalises alleged blasphemy and prescribes the ultimate punishment, ambiguity becomes a weapon, accusations become dangerous, and vigilante violence can be rationalised as religious duty.

Abolish blasphemy laws. Defend freedom of conscience. And FREE Junaid Hafeez.

Junaid Hafeez has spent 13 years behind bars; his death sentence has remained under appeal since 2020. Today’s hearing must lead to a fair, evidence-based decision—and **Junaid Hafeez must be freed. {[(Dawn][1])

And let’s stop pretending this is only a question of “interpretation.” Pakistan’s religious-offence framework has colonial roots: §295-A was inserted in 1927; §295-B was added in 1982 and §295-C in 1986 during Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation. In 1991, the Federal Shariat Court decision removed life imprisonment as an alternative under §295-C, leaving death as the prescribed punishment. ([Pakistan Code][2])

When the state writes death into a blasphemy law, ambiguity becomes deadly, accusations become weapons, and vigilante violence can be falsely dressed up as religious duty.

Abolish these laws. Protect faith through conscience, not coercion. Free Junaid Hafeez. ([Human Rights Watch][3])

[1]: https://t.co/t0drFqanT4 "LHC hears Junaid Hafeez's appeal in blasphemy case, seeks prosecution's arguments on admissibility of digital evidence"
[2]: https://t.co/dzSLUGTzkd "THE PAKISTAN PENAL CODE"

[3]: https://t.co/ozfpRfYi7i "“A Conspiracy to Grab the Land”: Exploiting Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws for Blackmail and Profit | HRW"

#FreeJunaidHafeez

[ابراهيم ناجي Ibrahim Naji @Ibrahym22Nagi]

Only pedophiles support Saudi Arabia.

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

No, Mr. President. We should not “annihilate” the people of Iran.

That is a war crime. That is barbarism. And it is something the United States must never be associated with.

Let’s be clear: Trump’s war in Iran is illegal and unconstitutional. Congress must end it NOW.

[🇾🇪✌{YEMEN} @Yemen22311]

Dear Americans, your President has completely lost his mind.

[Camilo Romero @CamiloRomero]

“Brasil no cabe en el patio trasero de nadie”: Lula en la ONU, previo a la intervención de Trump.

Lo dijo todo. América Latina en un solo sentimiento: dignidad.

[V. Joshua Adams @vjoshuaadams]

Adorno bumper sticker: “The bourgeois want art voluptuous and life ascetic; the reverse would be better."

[Tooba Syed @Tooba_Sd]

Women having any kind of agency over their lives are seen as a threat to the family and societal values. This young girl got married by her own choice and was killed by her family. Every action of women taking control of their lives is considered immoral and dishonourable.
Absolutely no seriousness towards the threat 50% of this country’s population faces! It’s literally taking lives but the state and the society continue to look away.

[ᒪᗩᑎE @lanechanged]

It's insane how we're letting decrepid old white men who won't even be around in 10 yrs destroy this planet for profits they can't take with 'em.