Mostly intelligible rambles.
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Article’s out! Memoirs and travelogues as genres should be revived, so as my own contribution, I wanted to write on my recent travels and my discovery of «home»—here’s the outcome. LMK what y’all think. traversingtradition.com/2025…
Pragmatism for people like these is whatever serves American interests in the region, and whatever contravenes that is “ideological.” If you’re a true pragmatist you’ll realize the only way to change the status quo is what Sinwar said and was vindicated by: burn everything down.
The problem with the Muslim laity is that we keep lionizing idiots like OBL, Nasrallah, Sinwar type rank idiots who work in siloes with zero strategy. Non-state actors plunging a region into war after every decade or 2 with the hope that somehow this time results will be different is exactly the problem. Non-state actors only bring chaos. And if the collective Muslim statehood doesn’t back their designs then ask yourself: Then whose designs are these non-state actors actually serving? Stop this silly brain rot where you think a random guy in a cave somehow came to a better understanding than all of the collective Muslim statehood.
Nafi‘ retweeted
The initial planning of Riyadh or other cities followed the same urban logic to prevent mobilization, hence suburbanization being visible in Saudi. This coupled in with treating Bedouins as movable commodities as well since they were prone to rebellion. In Cairo as well, Tahrir Square itself underwent many changes to erase popular memory of Egyptian uprising, replacing the grassy circle with an obelisk to project notions of Egyptian heritage (rather than maintain the meaning the Square gained from the Arab Spring), gov’t offices that were targeted being swapped for hotels, traffic being rerouted, and so on.
Horrendous as Cairo is, these decisions are calculated. To challenge authority, an idea must form. To share ideas, you need a «place» where you can discuss with people. Following these discussions, you need another place to mobilize. Destroy the place, and you destroy rebellion.
The initial planning of Riyadh or other cities followed the same urban logic to prevent mobilization, hence suburbanization being visible in Saudi. This coupled in with treating Bedouins as movable commodities as well since they were prone to rebellion. In Cairo as well, Tahrir Square itself underwent many changes to erase popular memory of Egyptian uprising, replacing the grassy circle with an obelisk to project notions of Egyptian heritage (rather than maintain the meaning the Square gained from the Arab Spring), gov’t offices that were targeted being swapped for hotels, traffic being rerouted, and so on.