Week 5 :: 2023
Adventures with Bad Hijabi Woche im Rückblick
Can you believe we have already passed through the first FIVE WEEKS of 2023?
What have you accomplished in these first weeks of the brand new year?
Let me tell you about my week. I began to think in earnest about this question: what can you say no to in order to say yes to yourself + to God? I began to consider that these two things might be the same. Self compassion, seeking truth in the way our lungs seek breath or our heart seeks perfusion, seems to me like saying yes to God. What if God is a process and not a place? When we stop seeking, we lose Him. Just like when we stop breathing + when our heart stops beating, we lose life. I think religion has lost God when it becomes about conquesting lands and minds. I think the occupied territories are the minds of the tragically brainwashed who grew up on a psychological diet of al-Husayni fused with Stalin and Goebbels. After five years of being an outcast Muslim that’s what I think.
I decided my hijab practise needed to get real and level up and, since it is the Lenten Season soon and politically timely, I will remove my headscarf to support the women of Iran who are dying because of forced hijab. When no woman is jailed or beaten or menaced or killed for refusing to cover her hair then I will believe that women can be free in hijab. As a western woman I have a responsibility to exercise my freedom in such a way that it doesn’t get others killed. Serving God means I can choose, being a slave means I am disempowered, worthless currency, a tool for the morality mafia.
I choose to serve God and not enslave myself to the morality mafia.
So BAD Hijabi is bad because she covers her hair when she fcuking feels like it WHICH RIGHT NOW IN THE MOMENT IS NEVER AS LONG AS WOMEN IN REGIME COUNTRIES GET KILLED FOR REFUSING TO COVER THEIR HAIR AND LITTLE GIRLS HAVE TO ENDURE THAT DISGUSTING CULTISH CREEP-FEST WITH THE AYATOLLAH and anyone who wants to tell her how to style her hair blah blah can go suck rocks we are over that barbie doll life. Bad Hijab is a crime and so I will be every asshole Mullah’s criminal. Fcuk you Ayatollah and every Mullah and Dawah Bruh D1ckbag on the planet—we won’t do what you want us to.
Remember sometimes things are so fckd you have to be bad to be good. This is one of those times—be bad to be good.
I want to be clear that I hate the female hoomans are eye candy culture of the west, bite me I am not joining that club which makes my body a territory to occupy. #NotJoiningYourCult. However, Buckley’s Mixture tastes awful and it works, so right now we are going bare-headed, it is a sacrifice as I’ve said, we aren’t that thrilled with being eye candy however freedom = duty. This is mine. For my mother’s memory, for all the mothers who have lost their children to this evil evil cult of bearded thugs hijacking God for their d1cktopian fantasies.
I have come to see that the world has three choices when it faces a crisis: 1. blame women, 2. blame Jews, 3. rinse + repeat. The Arab world has become an insufferable dank intellectual place filled with contracted thinking and Jew hatred and misogyny. Sadly it wields the biggest influence upon Islam and the direction the religion takes and this sucks for those of us who want to live with the Mystical God and stop pretending that Arab nationalism is any concern of every Muslim on the planet. No Arab freaking out about Arab nationalism gives even half a sh1t about Canadian nationalism, not even if they live here, so pardon me while I decide not to care about your Arab politics pretending to be religion. 🚮
Another thing—please let’s remember that Amira Elghawaby is a human being, not our favourite scapegoat. Yeah, boo boo, she said a thing about Quebec and Canadian nationalism. Oh well, you will get over it. Maybe think about how Junior vetted her for this position, or that it seems like he did not. Yeah, make this about the d1ckbag and not the female person thrown under the bus. That said, she is a human with agency and the ear of powerful people and she has the floor so it out would be nice if she would level up and use that voice and platform whilst the entire world watches with baited breath to hear her next words.
What needs to happen is radical Islam and Islamism castigated to the discard pile as Islamophobic and anti-Muslim. What needs to happen is the Islamist network to collapse and Islamic regimes to fall. They are sources of Muslim extremism and hatred both worldwide. But that’s a thing no one wants to hear they are too busy shoving money into the actual stolen land thieving Sauds’ pockets to go to Hajj because they think God wants them to fund a Wahhabist state who destroyed Kadijah’s house and which funds extremism around the world and which funds endeavours that create the refugees they have decided they have no duty to resettle.
Apparently God gave the Arab world of religious + political leaders an asshole pass. Jews did not “steal” their own homeland however the Sauds did steal The Hejaz from the actual descendants of The Prophet, who now are the royal family of Jordan. But let’s pretend hating Jews is God’s religion because we are insufferable assholes with egos.
Is there anyone out there who has a genuine heart for God-seeking, or is everyone cosplaying but me because I am a social misfit Aspergian who doesn’t understand the ridiculous rules of hoomans? I feel disconnected sometimes. Where do I belong? Nowhere. That’s the thing—everyone talks a good talk about diversity and no one makes a space for weirdo mixed-culture interfaith people like me, who belong nowhere but you can’t sit at our table. So, to sort of use a metaphor— I usually end up sitting in the smoking section with the secular Jews and lapsed Hindus and ex-Muslims and borderline Catholics and old punk and hippy intellectuals. I hang out with people who have had to figure out how to see the sacred in the every day because no one wants them. Because those are the people who will have me at their table.
I have created a last minute spiritual (online via zoom) group coaching offering for Lent. Yeah, I am not a practising Catholic anymore and I remain an independent reformist Sufi-Muslim who loves Catholic + Jewish Mysticism. What do we call this weird misfit thing that I am? An Abrahamic Mystic? I don’t have any formal connection to any organised faith community, no one wants me (a rebel) hehe, yet I remain a seeker of the Divine, trying to see Him in the everyday. Maybe my personal task for this year will be to build the spiritual community which I seek? This week’s coaching card question is about Saying No to Say Yes and Lent seems like a great opportunity to practise that skill with others in a group setting. We live in a constant state of barrage—there is so much we could and need to say NO to so we can say YES to self-compassion.
For example: I started keeping my phone in my lounge, at the other end of my flat from my bedroom, I started saying NO to doom scrolling in my bed before sleep to say YES to my good night’s rest. How spiritually intelligent are you with your technology + devices? How does that impact your daily life?
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What this space will not be: dogmatic, preachy or evangelical, gatekeeping, judgemental. This space will be a spiritual and contemplative one, with a culture + language self-compassion, one where the Divine belongs to no one because we all belong to Him. I don’t care what you believe or whether your soul is in a state of grace or whether you fixate about swallowing toothpaste breaking your fast—you can sit at this table we are crafting in this space. This circle will be about saying NO to say Yes, doing less to feel more alive, seeing God1 in poverty (in a mystical sense, don’t be a literal muppet please).
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Coming soon to ‘Adventures’— British Fascists | The British League Palestine Branch + the Arab bombing of the Ben Yehuda Street (Jewish) business district in Jerusalem | Gertrude Bell | The Balfour Declaration | the fateful appointment of the Grand Mufti in 1921 | Muslim Brotherhood | Anti-Jewish Pogroms + anti-semitism in Europe | Jews in the Ottoman world
This content belongs to humanity, going forward we aren’t ever going to paywall this stuff, we want to reach as many readers as possible. We are reader supported, so if you can, please donate to our research and work. If you cannot donate then please share this publication widely to spread awareness.
I’ll recap the week, in case you blinked and missed anything. Please do read, like, and share the sh1t out of this stuff if it resonates with you. We are still diving deep into the research and making some important linkages. Your support of this work, a labour of love, we most appreciate. Please reach out if you are a dissident or independent or outcast Muslim looking to challenge the mainstream narrative—I think we are better working together even if we don’t agree on absolutely everything. I remain unapologetically Zionist, just so you know.
Also, know I am still a hooman and responsive to the news of the world, so sometimes I write to that, as I did take the time to this week.
On Monday I wrote about a Hijab as a practise instead of a rule. Best practises in the clinical + science worlds change when we receive updated information, faith practises need to be the same.
Those of us with more freedom have a responsibility to those living in regions of the world where individual freedoms don’t exist, or exist in fragility. I can go outside with my hair uncovered and fear no consequences, and certainly not fear for my physical safety or my life.
Women in Iran enjoy no such freedom, as we have seen. In fact, the regime felt so emboldened as to send an IRGC hit team to America to try to assassinate Masih Alinejad.
With Tuesday’s post, I introduced you to a project I began work on in Midjourney over the summer, the Visual Qur’an. In an effort to make the Qur’an more a source of comfort and awe than of suffering, I began this project when I discovered Midjourney AI. So far phase one, selection of text passages and image generation, has completed. Phase two involves upscaling the images with special software and then laying them out for final publication—a thing requiring funds.
In the summer I discovered Midjourney AI and I decided to see what the Qur’an would look like. I chose a passage from each Surah in the Qur’an, selecting for words that evoke imagery and feeling and phrases that uniquely convey meaning and represent the Compassionate Divine. The Qur’an is known as an unrivalled literary work in the Arabic language, and with careful and proper translation, as well as context, it is possible to experience that in English.
In Wednesday’s post, I supported No2Hijab, with a picture of myself uncovered and an excerpt from an Iranian blogger. Please support the work and activism of women living in regime countries and those Muslims living in the west targeted by regime countries. Please put those women + men first, please—their struggle is life + death not demanding social validation for a progressive identity.
So this year, I’d really like to get back to the whole ethos behind No Hijab Day. It isn’t to mock or rally against hijab, but it’s about raising awareness that the freedom to choose does not exist in many countries and communities, often with fatal consequences, and it’s that freedom of choice that we fight for. Change is coming, we are witnessing it unfold in countries with the most brutal regimes such as Iran and Afghanistan. The bearded thugs are hanging on for dear life, slowly losing their grip on control over women. This year, No Hijab Day is more important than ever. Stand up, and let it be known, Azadi is coming.
On Thursday I wrote about something I had eluded to earlier in the week — values versus rules.
This all leads to my ultimate question on this topic — how do we serve the value of justice with respect to Esson? Do we release him because individual liberty matters and permanent incarceration seems inhumane? That feels lame because he took lives, including the life of the one who survived, and no amount of time served can erase that human suffering, so fcuk Kenneth Esson, if I am quite honest. I want mercy and a desire for justice for the victims and their mothers. How do we serve justice, then? If the risk of his re-offense remains high upon his release then I think we have not served justice. Do we keep him locked up until he dies? We think that’s mercy.
Does this serves the value of mercy, though? For whom is the mercy? Do we serve the value of mercy when we forever clothe and feed and house a killer whom we cannot rehabilitate and return to society safely? I walk around downtown and see homeless people crying and looking like they haven’t seen the comforts of a home for a while and I wonder for whom is the mercy of forever clothing + feeding + housing a rapist/killer?
How do we find balance?
On Friday, I wrote about how and why I think, when it comes to hatred of Muslims and when it comes to Islamophobia, the call is coming from inside the house.
So, we are here now. What are we willing to say no to, in order to say yes to ourselves?Why the fcuk are we talking about how hatful the fake judeo-christian culture is to muslims when a Muslims just blew up 100 other Muslims in a fcuking mosque in a Muslim majority country? Why are we lying about FreeInHijab when the IRGC and the evil regime it serves has been hunting down Masih Alinejad to kill her because she said No2Hijab? Are you all okay? Or are you simply cosplaying because you lack the spiritual literacy to see what’s happening here?
Why don’t western Muslims want for their Muslim brothers and sisters in regime countries what they have + want for themselves + families??? How can you claim to practise modesty when you are egocentric and selfish and arrogant?
On Saturday, I dropped another Adventures of Bad Hijabi Comic weekly serial. The Whale in the Room. That’s like the elephant in the room, only bigger.
I need to know how a concept that’s getting Muslims imprisoned + killed in Muslim-majority countries is going to liberate Muslims in the Christian-majority west. What is the thinking? Can anyone explain to me why a thing that is destroying the people of Iran with mass executions and pedo-level grooming as we are seeing in video clips and hating on women and trying to kill them should be invoked in the west to help promote tolerance of Muslims?
On Saturday I decided, with the gentle encouragement from a lovely + wise friend, to start to write memoir stuff, you can find that under the Nine-One Roses tab. That is where the little girl hiding inside me will go to get vulnerable and share her mother’s story, which is also very much her own. I can manage to commit myself to one entry a week in Nine-One Roses because that sh1t is heavy duty to process and write.
Once in a while in our deep + lengthy conversations (we had many over the course of my life) Mama would pause, look at me, and say softly in her serious mama tone: after I’m gone remember I love you. I could not stand to sit in that rahma and acknowledge that one day I would be without her. I would instantly dismiss that as silly dramatics and pretend she would live forever. No one can love you better than a mother who never felt love from her own mother, how does that even work? In her book The Long Goodbye Meghan O’Rourke wrote about the weirdness of conceiving of the death of the membrane through which she entered this life. What does it mean when the place where my own life began has ended—shoved in a crematorium and reduced to a pile of ashes that can fit in an urn?
I don’t know what it means. Ashes to ashes. He gives and takes away. She didn’t belong to me, and yet I feel as though she did because I germinated inside her.
Has 2023 exploded in with a bang or has it limped along into your life? What will you do with this whole new year? How will you build self-compassion into your life? What will you fight FOR? What will you have to say NO to, as you fight FOR that thing? What values will you champion? How will you fight for freedom and joy for humanity? What will you have to say NO to in order to say YES to humanity? Where will you grow love? What will you give the world this year? What will you give yourself? What if these last two questions are the same question?
Sometimes you have to say NO to some things to say YES to yourself. Spring is upon us and that is a time we say NO to stuff and things and chaos that accumulated in winter and we purge and clean and renew—saying NO to Say YES.
Consider joining the Ministry of No Lenten Circle.
We don’t have to call it that, you call it what you want — Divine, Allah, G-D, Creator, to me all of these words are interchangeable, they describe one force — those theocratic fascists out there do not have ownership of God, we each and all belong to Him, this is a space where no one has a monopoly on Truth.