Ibn Maghreb

Can one act conﬁdently in the present only if the matter in question was already preﬁgured in the past? By deifying the past, we disrespect the other siblings of Time - the present and the future plus all that is in between and happening
What drives the need to venture out only if such a step was found neatly packaged in a long forgotten manuscript in the year 1215?
Perhaps it's prolonged grief from all that has been lost and that we continue to lose in the present day

2025-01-07 08:55:52

More tech has meant more casinofication of the markets and I think those who argue for more market efficiency with tech are understating the cataclysmic fallout from 2008 which provided the cultural catalyst for financial nihilism that millennials and zoomers now take for granted
Casinofication however is not the same as market efficiency. The wisdom of the crowds model is quickly replaced by algorithmic hijacking of mobs who are inherently financial nihilists. Crypto has taken off (including BTC) because of financial nihilism - not because of utility
These are powerful dynamics - we understate and underestimate the cultural thesis of financial nihilism that spawned the success of the crypto market today including BTC. It was not utility, cypherpunk conversion or anti-state libertarianism that saw its market cap explode...

2024-11-06 10:51:14

Notes On The MAGA Wars
He hath returned and vanquished all despite the threat of overwhelming lawfare. Yet now begins in earnest the fierce contest to define what exactly the Last Trump administration will stand for and what will it be its legacy.
Trumpism unwittingly and through organic unrest, leveraged postmodern mimetics online crashing into meatspace to vanquish the late and ailing media fiefdoms of the post-Cold War Administrative State. His uncanny charisma became a lightening rod not just for populist dissatisfaction from the dilapidated and impoverished slums of Middle America but also from within the Imperial elite from New Technocrats like Theil and Musk. Under Trumpian mimetics a MAGA working class coalesced around him, resonating with his promises to rescue Americans from corporate liberalism - mass migration cynically encouraged by traditional business elites and the insincere gutting of the country's workforce which was euphemistically called "free market economics". Sovereignty was demanded to return within the physical borders of the country and to no longer be diffused across the various Imperial nodes and vassals that may indeed benefit the project of Global American Empire but only brought ruin to the average American.
Coming late to the party is the class of New Technocrats from Surveillance Valley who have a long culture of funding both sides and ensuring multiple parallel networks of influence across partisan divides. Lately, they have become disillusioned with the incumbent elites but for entirely different reasons. The likes of Musk and Theil do not believe in the redundancy of American Empire nor do they necessarily disagree with the hyperfinancialism of the American Dollar that has left average citizens poorer, unable to afford a housing but nonetheless expanded the footprint of GAE. They simply believe the incumbent elites are no longer fit to lead, no longer in possession of the tools to guarantee American Imperial supremacy and believe they are now owed the keys to the Empire.
Amidst all of this are the various online meme factions that grew around the counter-cultural appeal of the explosive Banon-variety of Trumpian populism. An anthropology of both cyber and meatspace Trumpism is required and necessary to understand the formations of the Cybernetic State to come in the 21st century. The shattering of the divide between what is "Online" and what is "Real Life".
Beyond gross dissatisfaction around the performance of the Transatlanticist elites and their management of GAE there is little uniting these various trends and networks that have coalesced around Trump.
To take one small example, the MAGA working class are inherently bioconservative, skeptical of scientism, weary of hyper-intellectual utopianism and the optimistic faith in rule by intellectuals. The Surveillance Valley MegaCorp believe the exact opposite - mystical transhumanism, the complete disruption and breakup of biological form, unabashed faith in science and believe in rule by CEO/Founder.
The MAGA working class still cling on to the myths of Old American Republicanism - the mythology around the self-sovereign libertarian ethic of the Founders but the SV MegaCorp believes in Neo-China and it's clearly reflected in their choice of business model- free use in exchange for personal data - "free products" under the Panopticon. Under the SV MegaCorp you will be a permanent data serf, unable to own anything, a constant "subscriber" and must bow to miracles of Big Pharma 2.0. This is just one example of a clear conflict, there will be other areas and fields where there will be open warfare within the new Trump administration.
For the American Muslim, now is a time of chaos but also opportunity. Abandon Islamoleftism, embrace mercenary deal making, positioning, establishing supra-electoral party networks of influence and engage wholeheartedly with the various Trumpist factions for cold self-interest. For the next few years inshallah, enjoy the MAGA Wars.
And truly God knows best
https://theiqrafiles.com/notes-on-the-maga-wars/

2024-10-12 11:53:36

The Sufic Dark Forest
#nostrnotes
The Sufic Dark Forest is a recognition that in a world built on the cannabalising logic of parasocial monetization which enters into a Faustian bargain with Panoptic Technocapital; virtue is fragile. Virtue is precious. For the good to be enjoined, the Ishmaelite must jealously protect the integrity and beauty of what is good. Obfuscating and evading algorithmic coercion through cryptography and encryption is not so vice can be performed in atheistic anarchic spaces that are doomed for oblivion.

2024-10-12 10:00:36

Denial alone cannot be the basis of the post-Adamic moment which approaches us. Standalone platforms harnessing LLM capabilities will not be as destabilising as the fusion of biology and dataism.
I mention dataism specifically because most bio-computer initiatives, currently being evolved or developed by companies that have an inherent commercial bias on leveraging behavioral data that can be analyzed and incorporated into business models and algorithms. Dataism is premised on the assumption that biological behavioral patterns through cyberspace are a commodity that can be bought or sold and synthesized into "business models" for optimization and "priming".
However beyond biological data there is the more fundamental question of what happens when man is synthesized with machine and the Adamic form is absorbed by the augmented cyborg. Fiqh can certainly respond and react to developments as they unfold. But it cannot be relied upon to evolve a proactive spirit, an orientation ahead of time. At least fiqh in its current iteration and configurations of political economy and bureaucratic stasis vis-a-vis its orientation and troubled relationships with the nightmare modern states of the post-colonial Islamicate.
Now is the need for evolving post-Adamic Tasawwuf, where cyborg can be tamed to serve God - a sufic taming of the man-machine synthesis that denies biological dataism, panoptic supremacy.
#notes

2024-09-03 14:24:26

"The bruddas working to connect Amethyst, Orbot, Citrine, Amber, 0xchat and Cashu to forge salvation from Musk's Intelligence Agency Psy-Op Zio-Hindutva Bot Network (Twitter)" https://image.nostr.build/29319edd4300f36640225b90f843d6c5911a059d75ce11330dcb24558f8a0e85.jpg

2024-09-01 10:22:51

Over the last ten years there is negligible Muslim presence on the Fediverse and similar open protocol ecosystems - massive one on Meta. A people who simply do not want Sovereignty in any shape or form in any domain.

2024-09-01 10:14:05

The Restrict Act will make the Brazilians and Brits look like amateurs - pale imitations of the Original American Panopticon. A consequence of American triumph during the Cold War was the subtle distillation of surveillance into the fabric of liberal constitutional norms away from culture war polemics so that it became the ground on which everyone stands on.
Genius lay in outsourcing and obfuscating nodes of surveillance which the Soviets struggled with - outsourced to private companies, business, enterprise. Musk, Zuckerberg and Gates are the defacto intelligence commissars of liberalism with fans, stockholders, NGOs etc
Third world surveillance states implode because they are inherently fragile - everything is locked up by some configuration of a military junta. The Chinese learnt from the Americans and accelerated to its logical conclusion - techno-national splinternets that sustain commerce
Surveillance is better when done proactively like by Silicon Valley or the Chinese State - private sector partners that offer positive from ecommerce, to media to app based ecosystems and baking the Panotpicon in. If you want to use these "free" products you have to tick T&Cs
Unless your State can develop an Instagram or Google Pay clone, you cannot play the Surveillance Games at the level of the Americans and Chinese - you otherwise end up like Brazil, Egypt or Iran - clunky, heavy ans reactive

2024-08-09 16:24:05

Been playing around with 0xchat - @nprofile…2uug - good way to bake in encryption on top of the existing Nostr client and relays. Good to protect metadata and to add privacy layers to Nostr. Secret chat allows for encrypted DMs which adds perfect forward secrecy. Also comes with an e-cash wallet.

2024-08-08 14:59:26

The only outcome from the peasant riots in the UK is a massive expansion of Dark Blairism with the involvement of the 77th Brigade; we will see a tremendous media campaign for pushing forward an extreme version of the Online Safety Act bill with warrantless surveillance as the norm cheered on by millions. The legions of chavs, druggies and broken dysfunctional souls have only laid the groundwork for a more aggressive Panopticon.

2024-07-23 17:28:54

- reply

Like Amethyst and has TOR built in

2024-07-04 19:21:42

Very cool and interesting project - privacy conscious messaging app using nostr, signal protocol and ecash in a novel configuration https://www.keychat.io/

2024-07-02 11:12:32

Very nice using Minibits which has a lightning address and ecash tokens built in one, https://www.minibits.cash/ easy to use as a receiving lightning address with no kyc or details needed.
I don't think custodianship at this scale is an issue for communities that still have reasonable institutional structures in place that have retain trust and reputational prestige so long as they keep a healthy distance from the State.

2024-07-02 07:23:59

New Iqra Post
https://iqrapost.substack.com/p/iqra-014

2024-07-01 15:11:19

Looking at ecash as a privacy layer for p2p payments on top of BTC albeit with a custodial element with mints

2024-05-30 16:40:43

2024-05-07 10:16:49

There is an arresting paragraph in Hallaq's Impossible State where he talks about how the paradigm of the modern state finds no overlap or common cause with that of Islamic governance:
"Nor did Islamic governance know anything like the scale of surveillance generated by the modern state’s police and prison systems. These, so normalized and a matter of fact today, would have been horrifying to Muslims as specters of domination and cruelty. Nor, still, did Islamic rule so much as tamper with the sphere of education, which remained not only private but also nonformal and highly accessible, accommodating the entire spectrum of social strata"
There are a few times in the Impossible State where Hallaq touches upon the coercive and pervasive net of surveillance the modern state casts over everything it sees in an effort to shape the moral nature of its citizens. Nearly every time he does so he references Foucault's work which is to be expected given his intervention in this particular facet of political philosophy.
Hallaq though does not reference the Cypherpunks as a philosophical resource even though the two share striking similarities. One of the biggest drawbacks with Hallaq's work is there is not enough translation of how his astute theoretical analysis translates into the modern machinery of the State in terms of how it actually works. This does not detract from the merit of his work at all, but there is an opportunity that goes begging.
The modern State is a parasite that logs everything you do, leaving no sphere for an "individual" to truly emerge, it is a consumptive pathology that leaves no space for autonomy even though it dresses itself up in the rhetoric of High Enlightenment aesthetics. This inescapable fact that is now proven beyond reproach is the ultimate vindication of the Hallaqian thesis.

2024-05-06 14:41:48

"Exile occurs when society at large becomes estranged from right living and there is an absence of an ethical spirit and voice, when an era lacks a great moral figure or soul"

2024-05-06 14:13:02

An Islamicate articulation of the surreal and banal horror of machinification cannot begin in the absence of eschatological belief in the heart of the believer. In Sunni cosmology, as time yawns ahead of us and leaves behind the Prophetic era we are in continuous state of moral decay as we approach the Last Day. Sunni eschatology to those who regularly refresh their hearts with the reminders and literature around the topic will be familiar with the visceral and detailed descriptions of complete moral breakdown and decay and the increasing Prophetic advice that in such times we must withdraw, refrain and retire physically away from such evil whilst engaged in a war for spiritual purification by clinging on to prayer with the Qur'an as a shield. With such an eschatological superstructure one should not be terribly shocked or surprised by the accelerationist contentions (they are varied and diverse) about the march of technocapital and the havoc it would wreck. Nor should the Sunni be terribly surprised that the ruling political elites would exert tremendous oppression to expand and cling on to power.

2024-05-05 13:46:18

- reply

No role but mocking the importance ascribed to him when the his performance on Twitter will bring in new signups handing over data without a second thought - transgression is absorbed and repackaged back as a consumer choice

2024-05-05 06:36:31

Props to Elon - he's playing a different game. Rile up everyone into a chimp contest of r-tards claiming who is more based/racist etc all the while building the Everything App - monetizing the simulated conflict and keeping it within the logic of the new cybernetic system.
The Eye of Sauron is upon us but wait everyone is holding mock inquisitorial trials of who is more racist and charging peasants $5 a month via their Patreon for the viewing pleasure.
For every peasant the most important question on the Right or Left right now is who is more racist and they charge people and game the algorithm on this basis.
Alex Jones really matters when you'll happily transfer your biometrics, financial statements, bank account and passport ID to Twitter within the next five years.

2024-02-18 19:11:19

The inherent fragility with the whole tradition of Islamicate critique of modernity from Guenon onwards, finding its fullest expression in the normative Sunnism of al-Attas is that if were to fully realise their projects on their own terms we would be doomed to extinction. This is not to say they are wrong, mistaken - far from it. They are inherently fragile projects because if you take their projects seriously on their own terms with sympathetic good-faith engagement and try to scale it up, I don't see how you escape becoming Luddite fodder.
This fragility - where success, victory of Islamicate critiques end up cannibalizing the entire project is a recurrent theme and motif not just in these philosophically sophisticated critiques but also the Ikhwanist projects too

2024-02-18 19:10:28

"Martin Heidegger, in his 1966 interview (published ten years later) with Der Spiegel, was asked what came after the end of philosophy; Heidegger answered: cybernetics. In other words, he announced that cybernetics marked the end of Western philosophy"
https://i.nostrimg.com/da33a5705e992cb81f225b8e904d44e4f4b3eb4feac948fe5ea147df21cb9691/file.jpg

2024-02-18 18:42:23

Iqra 011 out now
https://i.nostrimg.com/4eaafe419976ad811db8106f003fe7b6da5825d9596b40c871af1fb2e01b9c42/file.jpg
https://iqrapost.substack.com/p/iqra-011

2023-12-15 19:13:17

New post offering some stray reflections on Digital Sovereignty https://listed.to/@TheIqraFiles/48280/notes-on-digital-sovereignty

2023-12-08 19:33:09

My new piece on The Iqra Files: - Notes On Culture War Accelerationism (CWA):
"What would the ultimate political goals of CWA operations be? Decimating trust in the American electoral process, spreading rumours and constant aspersions on the integrity of the American electoral process, the voting mechanism, the already growing trust deficit in the legacy institutions of the Deep State such as the CIA, FBI and a whole host of federal alphabet agencies. A complete assault on the social contract within the Imperial heartland. Trumpism tapped into this for its own cynical means - Muslims too should be relentless in spreading as much content as possible trying to undermine American trust in the guarantors and arbiters of its constitutional and electoral system - this can be neatly packaged under populist themes which are proving to be wildly successful across the Anglosphere."
https://listed.to/@TheIqraFiles/48159/notes-on-culture-war-accelerationism-cwa

2023-12-04 16:02:53

My new piece on The Iqra Files - Notes On British Muslim Politics that reflects and expands on a recent substack piece by Muhammad Jalal
- links to both pieces below
https://listed.to/@TheIqraFiles/48062/notes-on-british-muslim-politics
https://jalalayn.substack.com/p/the-uk-muslim-community-needs-an
https://m.primal.net/HSVt.png

2023-12-02 19:02:04

With the clear emergence of a mature censorship industrial complex that is spearheaded by not just the core actors of the Five Eyes but also the belligerent Israeli intelligence community, Muslims are now finding themselves in the same position of fragility and vulnerability as post 9/11. Whereas during the War On Terror there was a systematic propaganda campaign against Muslims using the total weight of legacy media and the astroturfed NGO-complex, the aims of our enemies is to wind down the decentralising effect of social media platforms in an effort to control not just narratives but diffuse digital Muslim asabiyya, breaking it down from within by putting up barriers across the net.
Digital sovereignty including over data, social media platforms and publishing is now the target of American Empire wishing to try and put the genie back in the bottle in regards to social media. There will be labels such as "misinformation", "hate speech" and the time and tested hammer of "antisemitism" used to justify all manner of draconian encroachment of the Deep Administrative State of American Empire into all facets of "the Discourse".
"The Discourse" was never the imagined utopia of "Popper's Open Society" - it was instead a mirage, a simulacra of "deliberative reason" in the "public sphere" - euphemisms of artificial edifices that were often the construct of ex-military and ex-intelligence agents wishing to simulate the "art of the conversation" and "public reason". These euphemisms fronted by Cold War liberals were merely aesthetic concepts to sanitise the very real and gross encroachment of the State into every facet of our lives in an effort to displace the gaze of God Himself - claiming Sovereignty over our very cognitive faculties. Popperian "open society" aesthetics provided the rhetoric for various intelligence agencies of American Empire to participate covertly in the supposed civic life of liberal democracies.
Sovereignty is key - and it is really the only priority for the Muslim political engagement. Expect over the next 12-18 months a series of ludricous bills and acts passing through parliaments all over the Anglosphere wishing to "protect" people from "misinformation" in an almighty effort to re-establish State dominance over thought and speech.
Scratch beneath the surface of liberalism, look beyond the philosophical assumptions of the canon of Mill, Kant and Rawls and you a find a deeply malignant, transnational, military-technocratic surveillance apparatus that works without any accountability, scrutiny with endless funding - liberalism is the precursor ideology for the Cybernetic State - which is the hyperdigital transformation of the Deep Administrative State established during the latter years and aftermath of WWII by American Democrats and progressives who are the most resourceful and successful servants of the Empire.

2023-12-01 03:59:13

The most insufferable part of liberalism is pretending to go along with the charade that clearly astroturfed, hollowed out, propped-up by-the-Deep-State mainstream "intellectuals" and legacy media orgs are "free and independent" and not a clumsily dim part of imperial propaganda

2023-11-29 15:23:04

Enhanced privacy can play a significant role in fostering a deeper and more authentic religious outlook. When individuals are not preoccupied with the burden of performance, they can prioritize pleasing the Creator over seeking the approval of Creation. Privacy allows for the cultivation of sincerity and introspection, as individuals are not pressured to conform to social expectations or project a public persona for financial gain and social advancement.
In a world where surveillance and public scrutiny are pervasive, the quest for sincerity can be impeded by the constant need to manage one's image. By minimizing these barriers, individuals can focus on their personal relationship with their faith, free from the distractions and expectations imposed by society. This freedom enables Muslims to engage in genuine acts of worship, devotion, and self-improvement that are driven by a sincere desire to please the Creator rather than to maintain a façade for the sake of appearances.
By embracing privacy and eliminating the pressure to perform in a particular fashion, Muslims can develop a more authentic religious outlook that is grounded in humility, sincerity, and devotion. This approach allows for a deeper connection with one's faith, fostering a sense of spiritual fulfilment and inner peace that transcends the fleeting rewards of social approval and material success.

2023-05-04 04:54:24

Syntheticism - trying to replace God with slow and cumbersome bureaucratic institutions - ''the State'' with promises based around abstractions grounded in political ideology of one particular flavour of the Enlightenment or the other - Marxism. Liberalism etc
21st century - trying to replace God by reinventing the human from a foundational aspect - by manufacturing a new type of biology and neuro-chemistry from scratch. Whether through manipulation via tech or reconstructing aspects of our humanness through piece-meal application.
Such engineering and craftsmanship has been made possible through the harvesting and unparalleled access to the habits of mind and heart of the populace which is viable through a culture of passive digital consumption that trades momentary gratification for privacy.
Remember that the "sexual revolution" was only really made possible through novel pharmacological breakthroughs in contraception.
Prior to that such monstrosities were the preserve of perverted French intellectuals but it was pharmacological manipulation that brought this perversion to the masses - the liberalism we live amidst today in the Anglosphere in its social dimension really is just a child of the pharmacological industry precariously upheld with a cocktail of SSRIs, OCPs and opioid ''analgesia"

2023-05-04 04:49:54

"The Hallaqian 20th-century State sought to control nature - nature was the raw material - the earth, the trees, the rivers - and this yielded particular byproducts that fashioned a new subject - the citizen. It was this imperative to mastery that created the 20th-century State.
The 21st-century State no longer has such tame ambitions to control nature alone - it will now seek to control human nature directly, unmediated. This move from nature to humans captures the twilight age of the liberal hypothesis as we move towards the cybernetic"
https://listed.to/@TheIqraFiles/44114/the-hallaqian-problem-and-cybernetics

2023-04-06 08:38:07

Existential Threats of Progress, the Modern Financial System, the Metaverse - youtu.be/8_8UcjFLeGI

2023-04-05 06:18:44

A thoughtful series of lectures held on AI by the Cambridge Muslim College in 2018:
https://typefully.com/IbnMaghrebi/2018-religion-and-science-conference-VGX18au