No one can know anything - the same people who got Russia/Ukraine wrong, Sino-American relations wrong will also get the Iran-Israel dynamic wrong too - the age of unipolar nothing ever happens is well and truly over now The heuristic of nothing ever happens was contingent on unassailable American power - that time has passed - now things are difficult to read - they have been for a few years now

Qutb as a literary force is necessary reading for Muslims. His larger disocurse on Sovereignty however is mired in second or third order concerns about legislation and the symbolic importance of Sharia It is what at times makes him difficult to read or follow when trying to put his scholarship in conversation with practical issues of statecraft - there are large unfounded assumptions about a sacred history of statecraft that sets one up for failure

The problem with Zaytuna or CMC isn't straight-forward "they are selling out" although tempting to reach for such a conclusion. Muslim academic institutions have a role to play - I think more than condemnation its about educating the Muslim masses about the hostile "Other" What I mean is that these institutes and similar liberal arts intiatives have a persistent weak spot - failing to identify clearly the enemies of Muslim aspiration and breaking down their ideologies so the masses are aware. Hindutva, strains of technocratic Zionism etc

BRICS going for the jugular with commodities, natural resources and energy - getting Iran, Saudi and the UAE aligned in the same bloc was something unable to be done by the Americans. BRICS have an effective lithium monopoly and all critical energy transition metals The only ones down on BRICS are the ones who are still viewing the world through arrangements of debt and hyper-financialisation, naively think this is sustainable for decades to come

We need contradiction to return to Islamic expression. Parallel and contradictory strands of the Islamic Secular diverging and clashing. Iqballian Cypherpunk Ethic may be what is required for the individual soul But my research and reading into the Islamicate Cybernetic unfolding in the GCC leads me to believe on a larger macrolevel that a Muslim mastery of cybernetics must be considered inevitable - there is no other option

This is economic illiteracy posing as critique

https://twitter.com/theprimalplot/status/1688081400187191296

For e.g. see the interesting evolution and overlap between British Imperial and Mughal fiscal policy researchgate.net/publication/28…

If you read purely as a book of ethnography and field work in exploring how Western Muslims are trying to access networks of scholarship then its useful for outsiders (not Muslims already plugged in) - so that is an acheivement

https://twitter.com/YBirt/status/1676364895003049984

The rest of the book unfortunately is simply incoherent to put it politely -
for e.g. it's written with little to no regard for the ongoing political, economic and technological developments in the GCC, and

Disagree with everything Francis Fukuyama stands for but he's brilliant and most of all forthright and honest about his project - will look back at him as the greatest amongst the Imperial Court's philosophers - because he follows his core thesis to areas where he may not like That's a type of religious devotion I can at least recognise. Fukuyama now understands that to undergird "liberal democracy" one must have a Technique in the administrative/deep state - americanpurpose.com/articles/valui…

Saudi-Iran detente, Emiratis leaving US led maritime patrol, Gulf countries along with Iran setting up their own maritime task force to guard the region's waters, Qatar back into the GCC fold and a lot more for those watching the region - couldn't have thought this five years ago

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1667995516213288962

Islamist romanticism is not what does this is about - what is it about then? A collection of Muslim polities able to demonstrate competent governance across a number of different fields. The flavour of this emerging regional network will be strictly technocratic