Ali Asad

Bob Dylan has always been a massive admirer of Israel while ironically writing songs like these. Eventually you realize just how much of western media and art have been tools to launder the image of the American - Israeli empire.

The greatest TV show writer of all time hated television and correctly recognized that it is a slop medium

I’m not a Marxist but one thing the marxists were spot on about was the importance of material economic reality in bringing about change. I think too much of our focus is on immediate political shifts (or even worse fleeting aesthetic elements) and not on what really matters. Mao understood this better than most and you cannot praise modern China without acknowledging his foundational role. In the absence of legitimate vanguardism to accelerate and implement this, those of us who can must play a role. With the ultimate end being the improvement of people’s lives and not for the sake of the mechanisms themselves. This is also part of why I am so interested and invested in trade. Perhaps the hope is that stubbornly cracking at these supply chains and trade agreements and facilitation and corridors and exchange can contribute to something positive beneath the surface of hopelessness and despair. Because what other alternative is there. It’s like Iqbal said وقتِ فرصت ہے کہاں ، کام ابھی باقی ہے This is the type of work that no one acknowledges. Actual real world, gruelling, relentless, thankless work that moves the needle. But the work needs to be put in. So get to work.

Most people aren’t aware that Pakistan imported a few batches of LNG from the United States when this crisis began. That was more expensive than our usual Qatari LNG but if Pakistan is unable to ensure safe passage of Qatari LNG through Hormuz then perhaps America it is.

Check out today’s Nikkei Asia article featuring my contribution on the stability of Pakistan’s supply chains amid disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and recent incidents

Everyone wants to eat the rich but do you have what it takes to eat the poor

Went carpet shopping

Left: Nietzsche on power Right: Iqbal in his poem Shikwa “hum to rukhsat hue auron ne sambhali duniya (we departed and others took charge of this world)” You would be surprised how little moralizing there is in Iqbal’s poetry. Just as in this poem, in spite of it being one long lament, there is very little complaining about the “others” who have taken charge or scrutiny of their behaviour. The complaint is simply about why they have been allowed to take charge. There is no “preaching of equality” as Nietzsche puts it. One of my major complaints with Muslims or other groups and individuals who identify as progressives or leftists or anti imperialists or what have you, is the endless critiquing of the wickedness of our adversaries as if they are supposed to behave any differently. Instead of dissecting why we have allowed things to become the way they are and what can be done about it. Evil groups will act evil. What a surprise. My biggest pet peeve is when you see a Zionist do something evil and someone inevitably says “can you imagine if a Muslim did something like that. How would the world react”. To me that reeks of pure pathetic weakness. I also find it interesting that he uses the word “sambhali” which is so matter of fact. It is almost playful. The Jewish Zionist does what the Jewish Zionist is supposed to do. The lapdog Christian Zionist does what the lapdog Christian Zionist is supposed to do. The hypocritical muslim does what the hypocritical Muslim is supposed to do. The capitalist…and so on. Not to say you can categorize these groups so easily or there isn’t often a disconnect between their beliefs and what group they claim to be a part of. The point is even in the most nihilistic of cases, people and institutions act according to their interests, incentives, beliefs, and the structures in which they operate. Expecting them to abandon those commitments simply because they are morally objectionable is naive.

I recently discovered that Lockheed Martin is listed as a top contributor in Standard Chartered’s shariah compliant investment portfolio. This is after the recent news that Palantir was a major holding on HSBC’s Islamic fund. These companies that are directly responsible for fuelling genocide and immeasurable pain & suffering are passing shariah screening. Let that sink in. We can keep expressing our outrage at these banks and institutions for being evil or we can finally take some ownership and question how we have enabled such equities to pass screening and how compromised some of the Islamic organizations and scholars in the space are for allowing this. I think it’s also time to look at the actual mechanism behind these Islamic screenings. The current framework prohibits things that are outright haram such as alcohol, porn, etc. But since selling weapons is not inherently prohibited, these evil mass murdering companies manage to get by. Which is a complete joke and contradicts the actual spirit of fiqh. Finally, and this is part of a larger point, things like this make it clear that we live in an increasingly chaotic post fiqh world because the underlying systems meant to operate within and regulate a holistic Islamic ecosystem have long been broken. So much of Islam is economics and so much of the Islamic system that we talk about is downstream of Islamic economics. So why do we expect anything else to function without it? And not only is it lost, it has been replaced by a monster. In our weakness we have allowed this beast to be imposed on us and are now too enslaved to do anything about it. Instead we continue to outsource everything to others and feel good about anything that has a halal sticker. When you transplant random pieces of classical fiqh rules into a predatory, globalized capitalist framework, things become warped. Look I’m not saying that we should ignore shariah screening entirely because shariah compliance is the bare minimum and abandoning that even out of nihilism means willingly becoming a part of the evil. We just need to question things at a deeper level and do our due diligence as individuals. Now more than ever as Muslims we need to be careful about where our money is coming from and where it is going. How much of the destruction are we contributing to? “The keeper of the city keys Put shutters on the dreams I wait outside the pilgrim's door With insufficient schemes” The increasing depravity of our world does not mean that us as individuals have a licence to willingly participate in that depravity as much as we want, and be excused because of its pervasiveness. In fact the opposite is true. The burden of the individual only becomes more heavy and sensitive.

Surely Shadab vs England today surpasses Razzaq 2010 vs South Africa as the greatest lower order innings by any Pakistani batsman ever. Just ridiculous.