Iqra 011
On technophany, Chinese sovereign wealth funds, war, the Islamic Mission in the West and more
Dr Sohail Hanif of CMC tries to articulate the case for a conscientious Islamic Mission in the West - I no longer believe this is viable but Dr. Hanif is perhaps one of the more insightful voices in trying to make a strong case for a Western Muslim presence - more people inclined to still believe in this project should be reading and listening to him. For those who are sceptical of such a project, there is much to be gained from listening to the more refined voices in this discourse
Former Tiqqun member “Junius Frey” shows how Yuk Hui reopens the question concerning technology through a radical appeal to our battered sense of inhabiting the world
Murphy reflects on the psychology of categorization
An exciting new project to digitise the legacy of the Islamicate canon
An interesting suggestion about learning more about China's sovereign wealth funds
A translated work from the last Ottoman Shaykh Al Islam detailing his views about womanhood
James Poulos on building Bitcoin Monasteries - speaks to a larger concern about how novel technologies can potentially be leveraged to produce new institutional forms paying homage to the Sacred
Ollama's platform that allows access to offline and open source LLMs is now available on Windows
An interesting paper that offers a rebuttal to the Tilly thesis of war being necessary and conducive for state formation
A wonderful and thoughtful reflection trying to place agency and intention back at the heart of biological research
A good piece on the newest chapter of enshittification in tech, this time affecting the Skiff privacy-conscious company that sold out to Notion, written by one of the founders of Notesnook - a Muslim-produced encrypted notes app that is probably the market leader at present.
Greer looks at the Gaza Genocide and the Ukraine war making the case for Deindustrial Warfare
I will be looking at the work of Yuk Hui in more detail in the coming weeks and months - this is one of his more recent essays - Apropos Technophany. His interview on Technodiversity is probably a gentler introduction to the main themes of his work. I personally think there is much that can be obtained by putting Hui in conversation with the likes of Hallaq, Jackson and Nasr Hossein. Over the next year or so I’ll be diving more into different Chinese thinkers and writers.
Open access translation of the works of one of the great luminaries of the Islamic tradition - Al Raghib Al Asfahani