This whole “Arabs colonized the Middle East” line erroneously conflates conquest and colonialism. I’ll write more on this when I have access to my notes inshallah, but modern colonialism involved (among other things) at least the total capture and at most the total restructuring of a society (especially education, family interaction, etc). This was simply not possible for pre-modern empires. Re: Islamic conquests, look at the rates of take-up of Arabic (extremely slow), of conversion to Islam (extremely slow); and in terms of dismantling/replacement of existing social/governmental/economic infrastructure/institutions, it was *the opposite* of European colonialism. Arabs/Muslims *adopted* the infrastructure and institutions of the areas they conquered. This is not part of the whole "Everything bad comes from the West/white people" discourse (which is not true). It's primarily a function of the way in which the modern state (with its industrialized, mechanized, routinized, networked capacities) was able to effect change at an unprecedented level. The British Imperial presence in India shows us this evolution. Prior to the early/mid 1800s, the British East India Company had little interest in shaping Indian culture/state/society. It made changes on the margins, but large scale transformation was not within the realm of the possible even if EIC officials had wanted it. The issue of sati in India is an instructive one. I'll paste my article on this below, but it shows 1) how the colonial project changed in the first half of the 19th century and also 2) how there were interesting if subtle ways in which Muslim rule differed qualitatively from European colonialism. The TLDR is: as British colonial capacity grew, its administration was more receptive to and expressive of outrage against sati. Eventually, it was banned in 1829 and, though the practice still continued, gradually that ban was actually implemented fairly widely. Muslim rulers in India had also found sati repugnant, but they had a Shariah commitment to ensuring the right to religious practice *even if Islam rejected it*, a commitment that was rooted in the Quran's permission for Christians and Jews to continue their religious practices even though Muslims considered them abhorrent. Regarding sati, Muslim rulers in India were only concerned that the wife/widow wasn't being coerced into her decision. I'll paste from my article below and give the link:

Shaykh Usman dan Fodio (d. 1817CE) on women's education: I have to say: To those whose only reaction to this quote was *outrage* at anything but an exclusive focus on wives being told to obey their husband: Of course Shaykh Usman is not saying 'Wives don't have to obey their husbands'... is that all you care about? 1/

@shazeea Salam, the article is a summary of an argument. If one is convinced by Western historical skepticism about a particular Hadith, one can accept it. From what I've seen of the argument (I haven't read Little's diss.), it seems farfetched that proto-Sunnis would would forge... 1/ @shazeea a hadith about Aisha being 9 as part of anti-Shiite polemics. It's just totally unrelated. The author is saying that the hadith was forged in Iraq in the mid 700s, but his denial of the Hejazi narrations of Zuhri to Ma'mar seems mostly to be from silence; it's clear that 2/

It’s hard to communicate how sick what the FBI has been doing in the US Muslim community for the last 20 years is. Here’s a taste: informants aren’t people from the community who come forward with info or even agents put into the community to keep their ears open… 1/

https://twitter.com/JonathanACBrown/status/1435933173666533385

… these would at least be reasonable steps. Informants are criminals - usually skeazy dirtbags who do things like credit card fraud - who agree to be informants to avoid prosecution. They also get paid $$, so for some it’s literally a career. 2/

Debates over Hadith & Sunna: 1350 years and counting. If someone doesn't like some hadiths or thinks the Sunna should be understood primarily through other means, like practice, traditions of moral/legal reasoning, principles, etc., this is just another round in a discussion. If one claims that Umar or Ali (r) would have rejected an authenticated, unquestionably relevant instance of Prophetic teaching simply because it was not from the Quran, that's... not a good argument. I don't expect one will find much support for this.

The Policy Exchange definition of Islamism is laughable; if you inserted 'Conservative' in the place of 'Islam' you'd get the definition of a normal political outlook, and if you inserted 'Jewish' or 'Zionist' instead of 'Islam' you'd be labeled an antisemite. Bushleague thinking So Islamism sees Islam as a 'comprehensive political ideology'? So what? Can a Zionist see Judaism as a 'comprehensive political ideology'? Or leftist see Frankfurt School Marxism as one? Or a Thatcherite Thatcherism? This is just plain old bigotry.

1. European discourse on “islamism” and Political Islam no longer means anything more than ‘manifests Muslim identity in a public space’ and/or ‘interacts with the political sphere’. 2. Hijabs and not wanting to swim in a mixed-gender pool are not political assertions that infringe on others’ rights. They’re just people being conservative. Thinking homosexuality is a sin is a person’s religious belief...

I’ve come to see the accuracy in Hughes’ main point (though Archer raises some good objections on secondary ones). ‘Islamic studies’ in the US seems more and more like the establishment’s immune response to ‘the Islamic threat’: ...

readingreligion.org/books/islam-an… 2. ... with actual Muslim scholars cowed into silence, the academy yields a crop of ‘progressive’ Muslim profs who teach a deconstructed Islam for the world’s urban progressive elite. ...

Sectarianism (Sunni-Shiah discord) is a sickness. Please don’t indulge it or engage in it. If you want to talk politics, talk politics. If you want to do hadith v. Ra’y, do it. اذكروا الله و رسوله صلى الله عليه Have mercy on your brothers and sisters. Someone asked if this is related to the desecration of the grave of Umar II (rA). It’s not. I only just heard of this. It just makes it all the more important not to get sucked in to the pit of sectarianism...

[Threaded]: Someone asked me to summarize the "Islamic studies" debate that happened. There were 4 intertwined debates... 1) Textualism/old-school philology vs. other disciplines like anthro and religious studies (aka 'Do you need to know Arabic?)

@shahanSean San'a: what do you get the (non-Yemeni) man who has everything? What every Yemeni man has: a jambiyya! (jambiyya belt sold separately) (shot from San'a market, 2007) @shahanSean [Break from Yemen]: Interesting photo from a bookstore in Dupont Circle, Washington DC, July 2019

I'm going to start posting photos from 20 years of travel in the Muslim world. Free for use by anyone who wants them.

https://twitter.com/JonathanACBrown/status/1156416096662167552?s=20