It’s some what of a misleading picture to post at the beginning of this article, given the title as personally I saw the merit and reasons why Colin Kaepernick did what he did and have a great deal of admiration for the sacrifices he made.
His refusing to stand for the national anthem in America and instead ‘taking a knee’ to show he was not taking part was as a form of protest quite brilliant in it’s simplicity, it was to peacefully dissent from the prevailing mode of behaviour to draw attention to the causes he believed in by refusing to take part in this sacred nationalistic ritual.
Even though others later joined him, he himself suffered the most abuse, including from the then President Donald Trump and was made an example of by the owners of the clubs in American Football, and his career never recovered and I understand he is close to Muslims in his life and I ask Allah to guide him to Islam and that then Allah strengthens his courage in standing up for the causes he believes to be true and guide him to the truth, ameen.
So it’s fair to say that is not the ‘taking a knee’ I am going to be discussing today but I wanted to bring all that up to show this issue of whether people take the knee or not is a fair bit more complex than both sides are suggesting.
ENTER ‘BLM‘
Black activism in America, and therefore by extension the rest of the anglosphere as America is the most dominant culturally and economically in the English speaking world, has always been a complicated and disparate movement or even set of movements with some shared and some different goals.
There are those who believe in steady change and those who call for radical even violent change, from those who believe the system can be reformed through to those who see themselves holding no stake in such a system and so want to burn it all down. It’s quite clear which end of that spectrum Black Lives Matter (Henceforth known in this article as BLM) fall into.
They really are revolutionary and as a former political campaigner before I came to Islam I find their abilities to mobilise their base, gain allies and go from strength to strength to be staggering.
SO WHY BE ANTI-BLM?
BLM are Marxist revolutionaries. This is no lie or exaggeration by their enemies, videos and quotes are freely available from the founders and activists within BLM but the media and their allies on progressive woke left including much of the media refuse to see or discuss this aspect of the BLM movement.
Patrisse Cullors, co-founder refers to herself and her fellow organisers as “trained marxists” and is a student of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground US marxist domestic terror organization.
Pretty much all of the radical black and indeed non-black woke activists in the US and now in the UK are students of various forms of Critical theory, accepted and almost unopposed dogma at almost all places of higher education and among the educated elites who come through these establishments.
These various flavours of critical theory comes from postmodernist thinking, itself a product of thinkers from the Frankfurt School, made up of failed marxist revolutionaries and other leftists.
They seek to critique society, to change it radically towards a way of living they see as more just on racial and other lines and before they took much of it down from their own website BLM were quite open about their aims to dismantle the nuclear family as well as promoting homosexual and queer lifestyles into the black community which is already suffering an epidemic of family breakdown and single-parenthood.
They have marched and chanted for justice as they see it, but as well as calling for the end of Police violence (more on that in another article) they have also chanted and talked about ‘if we don’t get it, shut it down,’ or even ‘if we don’t get it, burn it down’ and this last part is definately not okay.
Hawk Newsome, president for Black Lives Matter in Greater New York was quoted by the New York Post as saying “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation.”
The internet is full of people interviewing BLM protestors, who mostly seem fine with justifying looting and rioting as legitimate forms of protest, even if they’re not taking part in that themselves.
Given this revolutionary and often violent rhetoric it’s not suprising that many of these marches have turned into riots and looting, or been followed by such.
MARXISTS – ALWAYS THE CAUSE BEFORE THE PEOPLE
When they say defund the Police they really do mean that, they have openly called for abolishing Police forces again and again, but what would happen in a community with no Police?
Well they have set-up no police zones like the ones in Seattle and Portland where the Police are literally forced out by protesters from areas of those cities. Volunteer militia’s then taking their place have murdered and committed other acts of violence as bad or worse than anything seen from police forces today.
When leftist run cities in America have taken huge amounts of money away from the police budgets in the wake of these campaigns, refused to prosecute protesters even when caught in criminal and repeated violent behaviour, refused to prosecute theft as every good Marxist knows ‘property is theft’ we’ve then seen, shock horror the crime rates have massively risen. Who would have thought that would have happened?
This is hurting most of all the poor and often ethnic minority communities in those cities, who are usually the victims of crime and are usually much less onboard with the communist / anarchist revolutionaries than their supposedly allies in the mainly white media, intellectual elite and antifa.
And not just looting and other property crimes, murder rates in such circumstances has risen as well, disproportionately affecting blacks and other minorities as victims of crime. These excess deaths are way over and above any number of unarmed police shootings, why do these black lives not matter?
‘IF WE DON’T GET IT, BURN IT DOWN!’
Where BLM chapters have marched, as well as their Ararcho-Communist allies – Antifa, regular ordinary people of every colour have been insulted, forced to chant revolutionary slogans and give salutes. Small businesses have been burnt down, or vandalised or exploited especially if they refuse to show ‘solidarity’ with the BLM cause.
Starbucks get’s a location vandalised or burnt down, they claim their corporate insurance, rebuild or setup another elsewhere but a small business is destroyed it will often shut down for good, their insurance usually will not cover this type of damage or if it does it will lead to massive unaffordable insurance premiums, this further destablises already damaged communities.
This is not acceptable and though 93% of BLM protests have been peaceful, that means 7% have not and these protests have been in most cities, sometimes on repeated nights, week after week with communities and police forces overstretched containing the violence and repairing the damage.
To put it simply, BLM is far less like the considered and disciplined radicalism of Fred Hampton or Malcolm X which sought to build up the black community and far more the anarchic last few crazy wild years of the Black Panthers under Huey P Newton.
Though there are tens of thousands of good decent people marching with BLM, the movement itself is so extreme in it’s outlook that it is not going to help any nation it gets it’s claws into, and it is destroying the very poor and black communities it preports to represent just like every Marxist movement has in history.
WHY WRITE ABOUT BLM, WHY NOW?
Why though as a Muslim blogger in the UK am I so concerned with BLM?
Well because what happens in America affects the rest of the world sooner or later. Britain for better or worse follow American trends and so we see stupid privileged student protesters in Britain will stand in front of unarmed British Police chanting the BLM slogan ‘hands up, don’t shoot!’
This kneeling ‘for justice’ symbolic act which has come to stand for BLM and was part of the ritual of their protests which first came to America is now sweeping the UK along with further measures. Yes others did it before them, but the two cannot now be divorced at least in the present climate.
The Labour opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer as well as many other politicians and celebrities has felt the need to have themselves pictured taking the knee specifically stating support for this Marxist revolutionary movement and it’s now the norm for sports teams to make this gesture as a collective body.
Maybe many of them agree with the message of BLM, but all of them? every time on every team, in every classroom and boardroom across the land?
Taking the knee has effectively become in the UK at this time the same as the standing for the national anthem in America, the enforced participation in a political ritual which people find themselves going along with whether they fully agree or not.
I am not saying everyone who is kneeling knows entirely what BLM is about, most I am sure are just concerned with racial justice and have been told this is how to show solidarity. But the info on BLM is out there, it’s just not being widely reported so most people do not know their background or violent rhetoric.
So given what BLM stand for, what they have done, the way they are forcing others to come onboard this is why I refuse to kneel for their agenda.
To be clear, I am a nobody, I am not a sports star, or a celebrity, so no one has asking me to kneel physically. But it’s not just politicians who are kneeling, I’ve seen friends post pictures of themselves on social media kneeling either in their living rooms, offices, or attending BLM protests.
Like most people I see over and over in the talk at work, or on emails, social media or the various forms of intranet and internet that is full of well meaning points and posts by leftist British middle class types supporting BLM or pride month or other progressive causes.
Whether it is the media, educational establishment, local government or health authorities or pretty much all big and medium sized business, they are almost all onboard with kneeling down to the BLM agenda.
I am not okay with this. I dissent.
The whole thing is bullying, bordering on the totalitarian in it’s direction of travel. I literally do mean that, there is no tolerance for dissenting opinions, whether opposed to aims or just to the method and people feel they have no choice but to shut up or even take part.
This is just like marxists behave everywhere, and it’s no accident that BLM has come out in favour of the communist Cuban regime and it’s crack down on protests and dissent in that failed state despite Cuban blacks, being the most poor, being beaten and even killed by Communist Cuban police officers as they protest their lack of rights and opportunities in that Marxist state.
IF YOU TOO DISAGREE YOU NEED TO GET OFF YOUR KNEES AND TAKE A STAND
O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allah is more worthy of both.1 So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort [your testimony] or refuse [to give it], then indeed Allah is ever, of what you do, Aware.
Quran translation, Surah An-Nisa, 4:135
It’s not sufficient in this life to keep quiet when we see people taking a wrong path and taking the rest of society along with them because that would make our own lives easier at least temporarily if we just submit or pretend to submit and go along with it.
It’s necessary to correct society where it is going astray, or else sooner or later that trouble will land on your door and in just the same why when confronted with a ritual he disliked Colin Kaepernick refused to participate so should others here with kneeling for BLM.
Though the cause is very different, it is the same peer pressure being applied to stand for the national anthem, or the minutes silence for remembering the war dead in the UK, many of whom were war criminals, or by the woke culture warriors as in the trans debate. It’s all the same to me. I won’t submit if I disagree.
It’s now got to the point where just about everyone is complying, but ask yourself why? what do they get out of it?
And if the whole of the middle classes, the business elite, the educational elite, the media lovies and celebrities are in on a cause, are you really as edgy or anti-establishment as you think or are very much part of the establishment and their aims and objectives here?
Not standing for the truth now is only going to make the situation worse and history is full of examples of the terrible messes that nations and communities got into by letting Marxists gain power over the masses.
Refusing to kneel or display a black marker on your social media profile picture, or questioning the prevailing narrative does not mean you are racist, just that you do not see BLM as having the answers to that problem of racism and causing a whole range of other problems as well.
IF NOT BLM THEN WHAT?
The BLM cause is to me, a misdirection on the path to progress on achieving justice against the steadily decreasing problems of racism faced by ethnic minorities.
I also believe that Critical Race Theory advocates are wrong and can be shown to be wrong quite clearly by reasoning, statistics and plenty of pictures of burnt out and looted shops across the US.
This argument is so clear in fact that those who say otherwise are either woefully ignorant of the facts, or misguided ideologues or else know or suspect they may be wrong and are keeping quiet out of self preservation, or else they’re grifters using the cause for their own worldly aims.
Ibram X. Kendi, widely considered one of the most important thinkers in CRT declared in an interview with Vox, “There’s only two [possible] causes of racial disparities. Either certain groups are better or worse than others … or racist policy. Those are the only two options, and antiracists believe that the racial groups are equal, and so they’re trying to change policy.”
But this is simply untrue. Yes racism is a real problem for many people but we cannot boil all differences in racial outcomes, whether in policing, or anything else as down to racism alone as it proposed by advocates of Critical Race Theory like the followers of BLM and their woke allies in the left and corporate world.
Doing so would mean we would have to pretend either there are no cultural differences between different peoples, or that these differences in cultural outlook, upbringing and faith have no impact on the outcomes that members of these groups face when carried out in the wider world.
This is not victim blaming, it’s just logic. As a casual student of history it can easily be reasoned that many of those differences exist because of often tragic historical events, but that these differences exist and will cause better or worse outcomes in different areas to different groups is pretty obvious to me.
You cannot champion and celebrate these differences as important, or mention these historical events as important in society whilst simultaneously denying their effect… Well, not and still expect to be taken seriously.
This denial of cultural differences across different groups causing different outcomes infantilises the black community, removing agency from them in pretending that all the causes for their problems are external and they can do nothing about it themselves within their own community.
To my mind it’s another slightly more subtle form of the historical patronising racism taken up by the mostly white middle classes and those who have taken on their attitudes in life to think that uniquely, the black community cannot affect change on themselves and must be saved by others, i.e the woke middle classes and their solutions.
The answer to racism is not Critical Race Theory with racial group grievances and perceived grievances but treating everyone justly as an individual, as we are taught in Islam whilst at the same time not denying them their own racial or cultural identity and this was how so much progress has been made in the west, progress which now risks being undone.
Those societies which can reach this level of justice, can both celebrate difference, whilst at the same time learning from each other to improve on and better each community. Those who do not are doomed to conflict.
“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a White has no superiority over a Black nor a Black has any superiority over a White except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly.”
Part of the final sermon from the Prophet Muhammad
(Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)
GINGERBEARDMAN 