Notes On British Muslim Politics

I read with some interest this piece about British Muslim electoral prospects by Muhammad Jalal amidst the freefall decline of British political culture - needless to say there is tremendous opportunity at stake for Muslim communities to make a carve out an interesting niche for itself amongst the Deep State Uniparty composed of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat. It is a well researched piece and I wish to expand on it. Related to this were two threads on X here and here where I tried to gather what some core themes of a conscientious Islamicate politics for the diaspora could look like.

There are some points in the piece that are absolutely foundational in forming a new understanding of diaspora Muslim politics in the UK. First a simple psychological recognition that the Uniparty political spectrum presented to us at the ballot box between Labour and Conservative is a case of intra-elite factionalism that has little to do with Muslim interests. I would not deny there are substantive differences between Labour and Conservative, but I would argue these differences are part of a much larger understanding that shares conceptions about Britain's place in the world, the eminence of the institutions of the Deep State (intelligence agencies, NGOs, non-profits, lobbyist groups, astroturfed activism, projecting soft power abroad under the shade of Washington's imperial might colloquially termed as Atlanticism, the centrality of the Banking cartel and an ambition to shape future transnationalist institutions of governance plus much more). Even the Brexit moment was not a display of intrinsic mistrust of the overreach of the bureaucratic and administrative Deep State in principle - it was rather a disagreement as to who was Sovereign over such a beast rather than a disagreement with the beast itself. There is also the very real possibility that a new understanding of the European Union emerges in wake of large populist simulations by various factional elites, especially vis a vis the (Muslim) Other.

There are of course very real and fundamental differences but one must understand that these are all within the confines and church of the Deep State and moreover within the structural reality of Britain's place as an imperial vassal of American Empire. No political party or leader in the UK and indeed part of the European political mainstream would ever dare contest such this very basic political consensus.

In addition, the Houellbecqian fantasy of a "Muslim Party" where we reverently campaign on behalf of God's Party - a Hezbollah made up of believers from Bradford and Croydon is thankfully something that is also rightly dismissed by Jalal. I would also personally point to the post 9/11 experience of the Respect Party - an odd moment in history where a loose coalition of Muslim Diaspora bureuacracy (the Muslim Association of Britain) and the fanciful delusions of internationalist socialism that served no one really apart from its crop of iconoclastic and charismatic activists. Within twelve short years the party voluntarily deregistered and dissipitated, once catapulted into the heart of the national conversation using the fumes of righteous anger in the heart of believers over the cruel injustices of the Iraq War.

So no to a UKIH(ezbollah), no to Respect - the options seemed to be thinning out rather rapidly. However, let me elaborate on a potential unifying platform that not only has the resilience and endurance to channel Muslim sentiment at present but even offer some possibility for good-willed non-Muslims to join in regardless of their formal political affiliations.

A formal political party structure would only undermine and actually constrain the ambition and sentiments of the larger UK Muslim community. It also ends up trying to play the games of "The Discourse" by its own broken rules. In the post 9/11 era it has become abundantly clear that what liberals euphemistically term as civic culture, public reason and the "national conversation" is really a smokescreen for algorithmic and technocratic manipulation of mass sentiment using invasive and surveillance based technologies. At this point it is very worthwhile looking into the work of Shellenberger and colleagues who have shed light into this massive and gargantuan "Censorship Industrial Complex". A complex that is often buttressed and funded by the work, human capital and ambition of the intelligence arm of American Empire wishing to dictate the contours of political speech using the subtle hand of technological mastery. It is this very censorship industrial complex that decimated Corbyn's attempt at remaking the Labour Party and replaced it with Starmer's reheated Blairism 2.0.

In recent days, more light has been shed on this with details about how Israeli, British and American intelligence personnel set up a remarkable network of censorship - see Greenwald's presentation and the original article by Shellenberger and co. There are also of course other leaks in the post 9/11 era worthy of consideration, the Panama Leaks, Snowden's whistleblowing and Assange's Wikileaks.

Each breach represents a peek into the true reality of how liberalism actually functions and imposes or rather deftly manufactures consent for the American war machine. Liberalism at the heart of it is not just a quaint philosophical ideal by Mills, Kant or Rawls - it is an ambitious and ruthless technocratic program of social and political engineering that has its roots in the emergence of American Empire during the early 20th century. This history of the genesis of American Empire is intimately tied to the ascendance of Progressivism itself.

Once we get to grips that liberalism as an idea is technocratic, premised on vast unparalleled invasion of privacy in an effort to shape a particular "self" (a techno-nafs) that is compliant with policies such as blanket support of Israeli genocide and this finds its highest expression of the State itself then it becomes clear what is the enemy at play. It is not personalities that are here one day and gone the next such as Suella Braverman. Nor is it clumsy and clunky rhetoric or racial gaffes like Johnson or the centrist rhetoric of the likes of Starmer, Cameron or Blair. The enemy is the Deep State itself leveraging technology.

A platform of Muslim independent MPs that has a philosophical commitment that focuses on radical devolution, localism, incorporating libertarian themes, calling for greater public oversight, scrutiny and perhaps even cutting down the footprint of the Deep State is something not just Muslims have an interest in, but also non-Muslims - it also is remarkably common-sense avoiding the pitfalls of the British Left. It is a politics of conscience and conscientious objection - because at this current time with our numbers that is all realistically British Muslims can aspire to living in one of the central colonies of American Empire. Empowering communities as a distinct unit of political culture as opposed to simply nodding along with legislation that may seem benign but in actuality is enlarging the footprint of the State into our lives.

The Online Safety Bill is one such thing that must be contended and opposed fiercely, because it will inevitably morph into a larger censorship panopticon that will disproportioanately impact Muslim minorities. The fight for encryption is a fight for an independent conscientious Muslim voice in the UK. I would point out at this juncture that is not a call for romantic neo-Luddite Amishism - I rather contend that we are at an unusual point in history where there is an inherent tension in the competing technologies governing our lives and interactions. On the one hand is a very real possibility that the centralisation that was rampant in the 20th century with the creation of legacy mainstream media, NGOs, university departments, astroturf activism and so on is now getting a software patch with the aide of Big Tech. On the other, technology accelerates, and in that acceleration is potential for chaos and unpredictability. Accelerated technology can lead to decentralisation undermining the network control that liberalism is addicted to and actually requires for its own survival. Unlocking privacy preserving, decentralised technologies - promoting and using it over Big Tech undermines the material and structural chokehold of technocratic liberalism - it is a way of bypassing the Cybernetic State.

Expanding on this are some important preliminary priorities - reigning in and advocating against hyper-financialization that is what passes off as capitalism today but should be considered an awful mutation which is what permits the military expansionism abroad even if the economy seems to be imploding in real time. Wherever possible, whatever policy or legislation seeks to grant State or State-adjacent bodies more power, more privileges, more funding and less accountability should be opposed as a matter of principle. This also must include State welfare - if we wish to object to the Deep State we must say no to hand outs and bloated/inefficient government services that only seek to make us slaves.

It is a historical anomaly of sorts courtesy of the power of technocratic liberalism (Fukuyaman End of History) that we have had two financial collapses in the last twenty years and are on the cusp of another and yet Western publics remain remarkably civil and compliant with the status quo of parasitic banking corporatism. At some point this anger will bubble over. The costs of technocratic liberalism are not to be taken lightly, but rather any Muslim political engagement should seek to shed light on it, in the hope it exacerbates significant political unrest and turmoil in American vassal states like the UK. Out of this turmoil who knows what may emerge.

Ibn Maghrebi

And God knows best