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Naming the Erasure: See-ing and Not-seeing a Genocide

It seems unbelievable that more than eleven months of the ongoing genocide in Gaza have passed, with thousands of Palestinians killed, injured and displaced. In January 2024, South Africa’s presentation to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) underlined the extraordinary circumstance that external knowledge of a genocide and its occurrence are both happening together in real-time in front of the world’s eyes. Yet, despite this, there is also an ongoing and concerted whitewashing, censorship and denial of the genocide by most western countries and the shared silence in their national media and political arenas. How do we make sense of this gap between those who see the violence, with its historic and ongoing presence every day, and those who do not, and in fact, actively deny it?

Islamophobia in the UK

The Islamophobic pogrom in Britain occurs in the midst of an ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza. Since October 7th, the British establishment has described pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide protests as “hate marches,” condemning them as antisemitic while continuing to support genocide by a colonial-racial settler regime, offering it military and diplomatic backing.

Pakistan’s Anti-Zionism

While the subject of normalisation with the Zionist ethnostate surfaces periodically in Pakistan, its resurrection in the wake of Trump’s orb-lit visit to Saudi Arabia in 2107, has manifested a new energy. Secular, pro-Zionist liberals eager to overturn Pakistan’s non-recognition of Israel rejoiced at Trump’s initiation of a process that would culminate in the Abraham Accords of 2020.

Sitting in the Room with History

The terrible spectacle of Muslim sites, viz. a home, a shop, a mosque, besieged by a motley crew of police personnel and civil servants like the ruthless army of the past times, ready with their JCB bulldozers—a metaphor for the battering rams of the imperial armies of yore, sums up the Indian state’s relationship with the Indian Muslims.

Towards A Historiography of Terrorism

On the 10th April 2024, three children under the age of 10 were killed as they travelled with their families to visit relatives for Eid ul-Fitr. Another young child later died as a result of the injuries she sustained in this same attack. Their murder provoked almost no outcry in the Western media. It was justified by many commentators on grounds of their lineage: the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) had killed them, the story went, because they were the grandchildren of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas (an organisation proscribed by the UK government, among others). For many commentators in the so-called West, these extra-judicial killings (which also included several other members of Haniyeh’s family) constituted a small-scale victory over the discursively established category of violence referred to under the moniker ‘terrorism’. Outside of Westernese frameworks, however, many asked a simple – if controversial – question: could the murder of a four-year-old girl really constitute the annihilation of a terror threat?

Policing Palestinian Protests

On the 14th of March 2024, as part of his role as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove’s new definition of extremism was released. Ostensibly the new definition is being posited as ‘guidance’ for a ‘common-sense’ approach to tackling extremism.

Islamophobia in the UK

The Islamophobic pogrom in Britain occurs in the midst of an ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza. Since October 7th, the British establishment has described pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide protests as “hate marches,” condemning them as antisemitic while continuing to support genocide by a colonial-racial settler regime, offering it military and diplomatic backing.

Pakistan’s Anti-Zionism

While the subject of normalisation with the Zionist ethnostate surfaces periodically in Pakistan, its resurrection in the wake of Trump’s orb-lit visit to Saudi Arabia in 2107, has manifested a new energy. Secular, pro-Zionist liberals eager to overturn Pakistan’s non-recognition of Israel rejoiced at Trump’s initiation of a process that would culminate in the Abraham Accords of 2020.

The Struggle for Pakistan

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About Us

This website is a platform for bringing together and putting forward the different elements of Critical Muslim Studies as a field of thought and study. Critical Muslim Studies is not confined to a single discipline, or scholarly work, or methodological approach. It is an epistemological orientation that starts from the idea that the hierarchy between the west and the non-west is no longer assured…

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