Every age discovers its own language for discussing the human condition. The twentieth century increasingly found itself speaking through sport. Seems absurd? Twenty-two players pursue a ball around a rectangular field while millions watch. How does that evoke philosophical reflection? Yet, the deeper one looks at football, the harder it becomes to dismiss it merely as entertainment. Football has become one of the principal ways modern societies imagine themselves.

The great clubs of Europe are repositories of memory. Entire generations remember where they were when Maradona dribbled past England, when Zidane head-butted Materazzi, when Iniesta scored in Johannesburg, or when Messi finally lifted the World Cup in Qatar. Football has become one of the modern world’s great theatres of meaning.

And, thus, some of its greatest practitioners asked questions beyond tactics and trophies. What does it reveal about human beings? How should talent relate to the collective? What is the relationship between freedom and discipline? Can excellence be engineered? Can creativity be organized? These are not football questions; they are civilization questions. Football merely provides the stage on which they are performed.

Five figures stand apart for transforming football into a vehicle for thought: Johan Cruyff, César Luis Menotti, Sócrates, Jorge Valdano, and Pep Guardiola. Each seeks an answer to the same question: What is football for?

Football is about understanding space. ~ Hendrik Johannes Cruyff

Johan Cruyff’s greatest contribution to football was not tactical; it was perceptual. He changed what football looked at. Before Cruyff, football largely revolved around players. Coaches discussed positions, opponents, formations, and individuals. The football field seemed crowded with bodies competing for possession. Cruyff became fascinated by the spaces between players. Sounds simple, but it was revolutionary.

Cruyff watched football by following possibilities. The future interested him more than the present. He arrived at an insight: the game is fundamentally a struggle over space. And, the player who understands space understands football.

The pass itself is not the important event. What matters is the space created before the pass and the possibilities that follow it. The dribble changes geometry. Football becomes a shifting architecture of relationships, distances, and opportunities. Cruyff’s observation that football is played with the brain is often misunderstood. He was not praising intelligence; he was describing a way of seeing. Great footballers notice patterns before others recognize them. They enter the future slightly earlier than everyone else.

Cruyff’s vision resembles the moment when a physicist suddenly perceives an invisible structure beneath apparently chaotic phenomena. What Newton discovered in falling apples and planetary motion, Cruyff sought in football. Beneath the apparent disorder lay hidden patterns. Yet patterns alone cannot explain why football moves us. Geometry can organize a city. It cannot explain why people love it.

Cruyff’s famous dictum, ‘Toeval is logisch’ (coincidence is logical), captures this football philosophy, that football’s apparent chaos often conceals an underlying geometry. What spectators often describe as luck, chance, or coincidence is frequently the visible consequence of invisible preparation. Teams that occupy space intelligently, move collectively, and anticipate possibilities create conditions in which favourable outcomes appear accidental to outsiders. Chance remains real, but an intelligent organization determines the likely beneficiary. Indeed, one could almost place Cruyff beside chemist Louis Pasteur’s famous observation: “Chance favours only the prepared mind.”

Cruyff translated that insight into football.

Football is about freedom and beauty. ~ César Luis Menotti

If Cruyff was football’s architect, Argentina’s Menotti was its philosopher. Few coaches have thought more deeply about the moral dimensions of football. To many observers, Menotti’s preference for attacking football appeared aesthetic. His brand of football was about beauty and elegance, they said. This interpretation missed the depth. For Menotti, beauty was not decorative. Beauty was ethical.

Menotti’s core values were freedom, creativity, beauty, expression, individuality, and cultural identity. He believed football should reflect the best possibilities of human freedom. Victory mattered, but it was not enough. His sentiment can be summarized as, “Winning is important. But the manner of winning reveals who you are.”

The football field became a small republic in which larger human values revealed themselves. A society that celebrates freedom should celebrate freedom on the pitch. A society that values imagination should encourage imagination in its footballers. A society that admires creativity should resist reducing the game to mere efficiency. Menotti’s football was therefore not simply a style of play. It was a vision of human flourishing.

Human beings need beauty and results. Civilization itself oscillates endlessly between these demands. Menotti’s philosophy lies in refusing to surrender beauty entirely to practicality. He insisted that efficiency alone cannot satisfy the human spirit.

Football is about meaning and leadership. ~ Jorge Valdano

Jorge Valdano inherited his compatriot Menotti’s humanism but transformed it into something more intimate. Where Menotti spoke about freedom and style, Valdano became fascinated by leadership, fear, confidence, and meaning. He spent much of his post-playing career trying to understand why some groups achieve extraordinary things while others fail despite possessing equal talent. He repeatedly returned to a remarkably simple conclusion: Every team is a state of mind.

Modern organizations are obsessed with structures. They study incentives, processes, systems, and metrics. Valdano does not reject these, but he points out that every structure ultimately operates through human beings. The most sophisticated plan in the world passes through minds occupied by doubt, hope, courage, insecurity, and belief. Thus, football is a study of collective psychology. The great leader does not merely organize. He creates meaning. He transforms anxiety into confidence. He aligns ambitions. He creates trust. He converts a collection of individuals into a community.

Valdano was fascinated by the emotional realities hidden behind the movement of the ball. Why do some teams become stronger after adversity while others collapse? Why does belief spread through a dressing room? Why does confidence sometimes seem contagious? These questions place football in direct conversation with military history, political leadership, and organizational theory. Valdano’s football is ultimately about the human condition.

Football is about citizenship and human dignity. ~ Sócrates Brasiliero

Medical doctor. Captain. Political activist. Public intellectual. No footballer has travelled further beyond football than Sócrates. During Brazil’s military dictatorship, he helped create one of the most remarkable experiments in sporting history: Democracia Corinthiana. This was not simply a football innovation; it was an attempt to rethink authority. Players voted on decisions. Hierarchies were questioned. Participation replaced command. The football club became a laboratory for citizenship.

Sócrates asked a question almost nobody else had dared to: Can football teach people how to govern themselves?

This is a profoundly political question, but not a partisan one. It concerns the nature of freedom. Modern institutions often assume that efficiency requires hierarchy and that excellence demands control. Sócrates suspected otherwise. He wondered whether responsibility might flourish under participation and whether freedom itself could become a source of strength. In this sense, he resembles the great civic thinkers of antiquity more than a conventional footballer. The field became a classroom; the dressing room, a civic institution; and football, a rehearsal for democracy.

Football is about reconciling freedom and structure. ~ Pep Guardiola

Cruyff’s understanding of space, Menotti’s defense of creativity, Valdano’s concern with human beings, Sacchi’s organizational discipline, and modern analytics’ obsession with measurement all illuminate part of the same reality. Guardiola refuses to choose between them.

Guardiola attempts something more ambitious: he seeks reconciliation.

The great debates of football increasingly appear false from his perspective. Freedom versus structure. Creativity versus discipline. Art versus science. Humanity versus analytics. These oppositions dissolve. The purpose of structure is not to eliminate freedom; it is to create freedom. The purpose of positional play is not to constrain imagination; it is to generate possibilities for imagination. The purpose of analysis is not to replace intuition; it is to improve intuition.

Guardiola’s football represents a kind of synthesis. The highest forms of excellence emerge not when one principle defeats another but when seemingly contradictory principles learn to coexist.

At this point, football begins to reveal its power as a metaphor for human life. These five thinkers address questions faced by every civilization. Football condenses them into ninety minutes.

This may explain why the game continues to fascinate billions despite its apparent simplicity. Beneath the goals and trophies lies something deeper. Football has become one of the few remaining arenas where modern societies continue to debate the relationship between freedom and order, individual brilliance and collective purpose, science and art, efficiency and meaning. The observations and investigations over the years merge into a philosophy of human flourishing. And perhaps that is why football remains larger than any statistic, any trophy, or any result. For beneath the game lies a question that every generation must answer anew: Not how football should be played. But how human beings should live.

Check in tomorrow for our next article in the series leading to the FIFA World Cup 2026.

This series is a concise version of a long-format Substack series on the World Cup by JP Santhanam. The Substack post can be read here.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

The post The Five Philosophers of Football appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Upon receiving the award, Jean Drèze said: “This recognition is not something I achieved on my own. All the work I do is in collaboration with people and collectives working for change. I live and work in India, which was rightly described as a ‘museum of inequality’ by Dr B. R. Ambedkar.

India has all possible varieties of inequality—not only astronomical economic inequality, but also the caste system, huge gender disparities, massive disparities in access to education, and so forth. The silver lining is that India also has a rich history of resistance to inequality. I’ve been very fortunate to be associated with some of these movements.

My contribution consists mainly of research for public action. I’m very pleased to be associated through this award with the World Inequality Lab, a like-minded team striving in the same direction.”

In recent decades, the study of global inequalities has experienced a remarkable boom: economic, social and environmental inequalities have been the subject of a growing body of theoretical and empirical work, visible and influential throughout the world.

The World Inequality Lab (WIL) and Sciences Po’s Centre for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS) have joined forces to establish a Global Inequality Research Award (or GiRA), which aims to recognize every two years researchers from all disciplines who have made a significant contribution to the understanding of global inequalities.

Six years ago, on April 19, 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, we had a conversation with Drèze that bears a listen and watch today:

Related:

‘Self-reliance for Poor and State Support for Business is the New Motto’—Jean Dreze

Silger police firing: Bela Bhatia, Jean Dreze stopped from meeting survivors

Economist Jean Drèze among three activists detained in Jharkhand, released

The post A soldier of grassroots research & action: Jean Drèze awarded the Global Inequality Research Award appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Over many years, and in many countries, a growing view among political actors and within political science was that class was losing its punch. The line was something like this. The working class once voted for labour parties. The middle class voted conservative. But over many years) that difference between how the classes voted got smaller and smaller. In some places it disappeared.

The “decline of class” narrative suited the leaders of labour and social democratic parties.

They could safely adopt market-based neoliberal policies, with a human touch added, in the knowledge their base wouldn’t desert them. But their base was changing. It was becoming more middle class, more individualistic, more awake to the benefits of market solutions to complex problems.

Now, those politicians are shocked by the rise of far-right political parties that now claim to represent the working class. In Australia, One Nation is close to matching Labor — in some polls, it is already ahead.

In the United Kingdom, Reform is leading in all the polls, while the governing Labour party is below 20%. In Germany, the neo-nazi AfD is presently leading in all opinion polls, while the Social Democrats are below 14%.

In the United States, the Republican Party has gone full Trump, on an agenda with aspects that look eerily reminiscent of prewar Germany. In France, the National Rally candidate is ahead in all opinion polls for the next presidential election.

‘Blue collar’ is not the same as ‘working class’

In many countries, the labour and social democratic parties are mere shadows of their former selves.

Perhaps the labour parties mistook the decline in “blue-collar” (manual) jobs for the decline of the working class. In Australia, the blue-collar share of jobs fell from 44% in 1979 to 28% in 2025. It’s fallen in the UK, the US and elsewhere.

Union membership, once a mostly “blue-collar” phenomenon, declined in most industrialised countries. It fell from an average of 30% of employees across the OECD in 1985 to 19% in 2005 and 15% in 2023. The fall was even greater in Australia.

But these changes did not reflect how likely people were to identify as working class.

In Australia, national attitude and election surveys give us a good idea of trends in people’s views. Between 1979 and 2007, the proportion of respondents in a standard national survey defining themselves as working class or lower class temporarily grew from 40%, to the low 50s in the 1980s and ‘90s, then back to 44% by 2007. In 2025, after a bit more movement, it was still 44% working class.

A British survey in 1983 found 58% of people claimed to be working class. By 2005, those identifying as working class had barely fallen to 57%. In 2023, still 53% of people identified as working class.

In the US, where the phrase “working class” appeared absent from public discourse for decades until Trump, a differently worded question showed that in 1976, 51% of Americans thought of themselves as either working class or lower class. In 2006, the same survey showed 52% identifying as either working class or lower class. Within this period, numbers had fluctuated from year to year — but always between 48% and 55% expressed working or lower class identity.

A Gallup poll added “upper-middle class” to the options, and the proportion claiming working or lower class status was only 39% in 2006. In 2024, that number was 43%.

In Canada, the proportion identifying as working or lower class was 36% in 1980 and still 36% in 1995. In 2017, a different poll found 37% identified as working class.

In short, while “blue-collar” jobs have sharply declined almost everywhere, the experience of “working class” has been relatively stable, within some fluctuating bounds. Differences in class identity between countries seem more notable than differences over time, perhaps due to how questions are asked or how different cultures interpret them.

This is not to say that giving a “working class” response to a forced-choice survey question is the same as a deeply thought position on class. But if people no longer thought of themselves as working class, you would expect to see some pretty big changes over time in answers to these questions.

How the working class was left behind

Sure, jobs changed, a lot. But there has never been much middle-class glamour in the “white collar” jobs at the checkout counter, behind the hamburger hotplate or in the call-centre factory.

Class relations didn’t weaken. In fact, inequality worsened in many countries. Neoliberal policies, including those adopted by social democratic parties, made the rich much richer, but they slowed the growth in the wellbeing of the majority of people, and left the working class behind.

The proportion that thought big business had too much power, and income and wealth should be redistributed, became larger.

Unions lost ground not because their ideas became unpopular with workers. It simply became much harder for unions to recruit and retain members in the face of increasingly hostile employers, governments and laws.

Working class voters didn’t have solutions to hand. But nor were they offered any by social democratic parties that barely spoke their language. Now the door has been opened to far-right parties, presenting alternatives that appeal to some facing those class problems.

There’s life in class voting yet, just not in the way we thought of it.

Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow at the Centre for Future Work, and Professor Emeritus, Griffith Business School, Griffith University

Courtesy: The Conversation

The post Politicians have long misunderstood the ‘working class’. The rise of the far right shows how mistaken they have been appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As a group of 50+ interfaith coalitions, led by Dalit leaders and advocates met with several legislators, many of whom instantly agreed to support this bill, understanding why caste equity is so important in New York State. One key meeting was with Senator James Sanders who helped introduce this bill last year, and who spoke with immense power about the need to recognise the solidarity between Black folks and Dalit communities. “Anyone who is against this [bill] doesn’t know your own history”, he said!

Ms. Swati Sawant who has been working on this bill for over three years gifted him a statue of Babasaheb and explained the connection between Black and Dalit shared histories.

Iconic writer and campaigner, Yashica Dutt, whose 2024 published Coming Out as a Dalit, is a powerful individual account that throws a spotlight on systemic injustice in India and its growing impact on US society, took a leading part in this campaigning effort.  Writing about this on her Facebook-meta page, Yashica said that she documented that day in detail “for a video to be produced later.” She also spoke about her book Coming Out as Dalit and talked about how it points to the existence of caste, right here in the United States.

The campaign has asked all those who live in New York to support A6290/S6531! Besides, at the click of a button, any person can send their letter to their New York State lawmaker in less than a minute — https://sikhcoalition.quorum.us/campaign/nycasteequity/thanks

SabrangIndia had previously reported, how in July 2025, the US District Court for the Eastern District of California in its ruling on July 18, in response to an allegation by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) that had claimed that the California civil rights department’s enforcement of anti-caste policies violated the “constitutional rights of all Hindu Americans,” dismissed HAF’s contention. HAF had attempted arguments to the effect that the California civil rights department’s enforcement of anti-caste policies violated the “constitutional rights of all Hindu Americans.” This claim had been dismissed by a US District Court.

Academics and civil rights activists had then too welcomed a landmark judgment by a US federal court upholding the California civil rights department’s constitutional authority to defence caste-oppressed individuals through state action.

Related:

In a ‘major win’ for anti-caste activists, a US Federal Court upholds California Govt’s authority to act against caste oppression

Unsealed: Suhag Shukla’s Deposition in Hindu American Foundation’s Failed Defamation Case Against Us

Debunking Myths: A Critical Analysis of Hindu American Foundation’s Ram Temple Narrative

The post New York: Support Bill to end caste discrimination, campaign intensifies appeared first on SabrangIndia.

1. Lai Mohammed rejects the claim of a Christian genocide in Nigeria, noting that Boko Haram has killed more Muslims than Christians.
2. The violence in Nigeria stems from a mix of extremism, criminality, governance failures, and socio-economic issues, not simply Muslim–Christian tensions.
3. The group began by attacking Muslims who opposed its extremist ideology, showing its takfiri
4. Its actions such as killings, kidnappings, and opposition to education go against core Islamic principles, making it an adversary rather than a representative of Islam.
5. The “genocide” narrative oversimplifies reality and can mislead international responses, highlighting the need for a more accurate and nuanced understanding.

In an era shaped by rapid information flows and polarised narratives, conflicts are often reduced to simplistic binaries; frequently framed along religious lines. Recent remarks by Lai Mohammed, former Minister of Information and Culture of Nigeria, offer a timely intervention in correcting one such narrative: the claim of a targeted “Christian genocide” in Nigeria. Speaking at Abbey College Cambridge, Lai Mohammed argued that insurgent violence, particularly by Boko Haram, has claimed more Muslim lives than Christian ones, challenging widespread assumptions about the nature of the conflict.

This assertion does not seek to minimise the suffering of any community. Rather, it compels a more comprehensive understanding of Nigeria’s security crisis: one rooted not in religious extermination, but in a complex web of extremism, criminality, governance challenges, and socio-economic distress.

The Misleading Simplicity of Religious Framing

The tendency to interpret violence in Nigeria as a straightforward Muslim-versus-Christian conflict has gained traction in global discourse, particularly in parts of the Western media and advocacy circles. Yet, as Lai Mohammed pointed out, such a framing risks distorting reality. Boko Haram, whose name loosely translates to “Western education is forbidden,” did not begin as an anti-Christian movement. Its early targets were, in fact, Muslims, particularly those who embraced modern education and rejected extremist interpretations of Islam.

This internal targeting reveals a critical truth: Boko Haram’s ideology is fundamentally takfiri, meaning it declares other Muslims as apostates and legitimate targets. In its formative years, the group’s violence was directed overwhelmingly inward, against Muslim communities that did not conform to its rigid worldview.

Over time, the group widened its scope of attacks to include Christians, driven less by theological motives and more by strategic intent. As Lai Mohammed frankly noted, assaults on Christians tend to draw greater international attention. In a media-driven age, the spectacle of interfaith violence heightens visibility, attracts funding, and enhances the notoriety of extremist organisations.

Terrorism Without Theology

To understand Boko Haram solely through a religious lens is to misunderstand its nature. As highlighted in earlier scholarly critiques, the group’s actions—from mass killings to the abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok—stand in stark contradiction to Islamic teachings. Renowned Islamic scholars and institutions worldwide have unequivocally condemned such acts as un-Islamic.

Islam’s foundational principles emphasise the sanctity of life, the pursuit of knowledge, and the dignity of women. These are the values that Boko Haram systematically violates. Its campaign against education, especially for girls, directly opposes the very first Qur’anic revelation: “Read.” Similarly, practices such as forced marriages and abductions have no legitimacy within Islamic jurisprudence.

Thus, Boko Haram is not merely a violent group operating under religious pretexts; it is, in many ways, an adversary of the very religion it claims to represent. It exploits religious language while undermining its ethical core.

Banditry and the Politics of Crime

Lai Mohammed’s remarks also addressed another critical misconception: the religious interpretation of banditry in northern Nigeria. He argued that these acts are primarily criminal, not ideological. The perpetrators and victims often share the same ethnic and religious backgrounds, predominantly Hausa-Fulani Muslims.

This observation underscores a broader point: much of Nigeria’s violence is driven by economic desperation, weak state capacity, and organised crime rather than doctrinal conflict. Cattle rustling, kidnapping for ransom, and territorial disputes are manifestations of governance gaps, not religious wars.

Reducing these issues to religious persecution not only obscures their root causes but also risks inflaming tensions that are otherwise manageable within Nigeria’s historically pluralistic society.

A Tradition of Coexistence

Despite its challenges, Nigeria has long been a model of interfaith coexistence. Lai Mohammed pointed to the example of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his wife, representing a Muslim-Christian household, as emblematic of the country’s social fabric. Across Nigeria, interfaith marriages, shared communities, and everyday interactions reflect a lived reality far removed from the narrative of existential religious conflict.

As Lai Mohammed aptly noted, ordinary Nigerians are more likely to disagree over economic issues than theological ones. This insight is crucial. It suggests that the primary concerns of citizens, jobs, security, and stability, transcend religious identity.

The Danger of “Fake News” in Conflict Zones

Labelling the “Christian genocide” narrative as “fake news,” Lai Mohammed raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: how do misinformation and selective reporting shape international perceptions?

In conflict zones, narratives can be weaponised. Advocacy groups, political actors, and even well-meaning observers may inadvertently amplify incomplete or skewed accounts. While highlighting human rights abuses is essential, doing so without context can lead to policy missteps and deepen divisions on the ground.

A more responsible approach requires distinguishing between targeted persecution and indiscriminate violence. In Nigeria’s case, the latter is far more representative of reality.

None of this is to deny the severity of Nigeria’s security crisis. Boko Haram remains a brutal insurgency responsible for thousands of deaths and widespread displacement. Its atrocities against Muslims and Christians alike demand urgent and sustained action.

However, effective responses must be grounded in accurate diagnosis. Mischaracterising the conflict as a religious genocide risks diverting attention from the structural issues that sustain violence: poverty, corruption, weak institutions, and lack of education.

The international community, therefore, has a responsibility to engage with Nigeria based on evidence rather than assumption. This includes supporting counter-terrorism efforts, strengthening governance, and investing in education and economic development, especially in the country’s most vulnerable regions.

The tragedy of Boko Haram is not that it represents Islam, but that it distorts it. The greater tragedy would be if the world, in its haste to categorise, fails to see this distinction. Lai Mohammed’s remarks serve as a reminder that truth in complex conflicts is rarely convenient. Nigeria’s crisis is not a story of one religion targeting another; it is a story of extremism preying on vulnerability, of criminals exploiting chaos, and of a nation striving, despite immense challenges, to preserve its pluralistic identity. Recognising this complexity is not an exercise in denial. It is the first step toward meaningful solutions.

A regular Columnist with NewAgeIslam.com, Ghulam Ghaus Siddiqi Dehlvi is a Classical Islamic scholar with a Sufi background and English-Arabic-Urdu Translator.

Courtesy: newageislam.com

The post Beyond the Narrative of “Genocide”: Understanding Boko Haram, Religion, and Reality in Nigeria appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Though often overlooked in official narratives, Shariati remains one of the most influential intellectual figures behind the Iranian Revolution. His ideas, which linked Shi’ism with modern revolutionary theories drawn from thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Jean‑Paul Sartre, helped shape the ideological climate that culminated in 1979.

Revisiting his legacy is essential not only for understanding Iran’s modern history but also for examining the broader intersections of religion, social justice, and political transformation in the Muslim world.

Born in 1933 in Mazinan, Shariati grew up in a religious household during a turbulent era. The 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Shah’s subsequent modernization drive—perceived by many as an attempt to erase cultural and religious roots in favor of Western approval—formed the backdrop of his intellectual evolution. Shariati’s activism led to imprisonment, and later, study in Paris, where exposure to existentialist and anti‑colonial thought profoundly shaped his worldview. He rejected Marxist materialism but embraced its critique of inequality, reinterpreting Islamic history to highlight figures such as Abu Dharr al‑Ghifari as symbols of resistance and social equality.

From this synthesis emerged Shariati’s concept of “Red Shiism,” a dynamic, activist Islam rooted in sacrifice, justice, and resistance, inspired by the legacy of Karbala. His slogan “Return to the Self” urged Muslim societies to break from blind imitation of the West and rediscover their intellectual heritage. His lectures and writings reframed Islam not as a passive spiritual refuge but as a force for liberation, capable of mobilizing the masses against tyranny. By the late 1970s, his ideas circulated widely among students and activists, laying the intellectual foundations of revolution.

Shariati’s critique extended beyond Marxism to liberalism and existentialism, which he faulted for neglecting the spiritual dimension of humanity. In works such as Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique, he argued that Islam offered its own emancipatory paradigm, distinct from Western secular traditions. He did not seek to make Islam socialist but rather employed Marxist sociological tools to galvanize Muslims into revolutionary action. His criticism of Iran’s Marxist Tudeh Party underscored his insistence on adapting political thought to Iran’s cultural and religious context.

Although Shariati died in 1977, two years before the revolution, his intellectual imprint was unmistakable. Pakistani writer Mukhtar Masood recorded that Iranians across social strata identified Shariati as the architect of the movement. Yet, as the revolutionary state consolidated power, charismatic leadership overshadowed intellectual activism, and Shariati’s role receded into obscurity. His story illustrates how revolutions often celebrate political victories while neglecting the thinkers who shaped their ideological foundations.

Shariati’s legacy endures as a reminder that religion, when reinterpreted through the lens of justice and resistance, can become a powerful agent of social transformation. His vision of Islam as a force for liberation continues to resonate in debates over faith, identity, and political change across the Muslim world.

Author is freelance journalist.

Courtesy: CounterView

The post Faith recast as social justice? Revisiting Shariati’s vision of Islam as liberation appeared first on SabrangIndia.

be a tree sated with fertility, be a tree.

And if you are not a tree, my love, 

be stone saturated with humidity, be stone.

And if you are not a stone, my love, 

be a moon in the dream of your beloved one, be a moon.

(So spoke a woman to her son at his funeral.)

 Mahmoud Darwish, State of Siege (2002)

Mahmoud Darwish

To sit with these lines for five years is to realise that Mahmoud Darwish was not writing a poem. He was drafting an ontology of indestructibility. Written during the 2002 Siege of Ramallah, when Israeli forces confined him to his apartment under tanks and demolition orders, these verses are not an elegy. They are a war manual for the soul. A mother at her son’s funeral refuses to grieve as the world expects. Instead, she issues commands. She transforms her dead son into a landscape that cannot be evicted. This is the purest expression of “Sumud” (refusing to be erased or to leave one’s home), the Palestinian art of remaining, not as an act of passivity but as a furious, creative, and elemental refusal to vanish. The Arabic word “Sumud” is a crucial concept in Palestinian identity and resistance. It is often simply translated as “resilience”; it carries a much deeper meaning that bridges the gap between endurance and political defiance. At its core, “Sumud” is the act of maintaining a normal life under abnormal conditions, and refusing to be erased.

The repetition of “be” (the Arabic imperative kun) is not just a request; it is a command of creation. In the Quran, God creates the universe with the phrase “Kun fa-yakun” (“Be, and it is”).

By having a mother use this imperative at a funeral, Darwish is portraying a subversive act of creation. She is refusing to let her son vanish into nothingness. If he cannot exist as a human, his soul will be refashioned into the landscape by the power of language.

The Anatomy of a Siege: Beyond the Blockade

A siege is not merely a military act or tactic. It is a slow erasure of a people’s future. In Palestine, the “plight” is concrete. In the Palestinian context, this “plight” manifests as the systematic and brutal killing of children and young people, the uprooting of ancient olive groves, the restriction of water (the “rain” of the poem), the fragmentation of families by concrete walls, and the fragmentation of bodies by checkpoints. But Darwish teaches us that a siege is also metaphysical. It aims to reduce the human being to bare life, a hungry, terrified, statistically invisible creature stripped of history, name, and narrative.

For the Iranian people, the siege wears a different mask: economic sanctions and diplomatic strangulation. It is a blockade of medicine, knowledge, and global conversation. Yet the Zionist logic is identical: isolate, impoverish, and make the people beg for their own humanity. In both cases, the besieged are told they are temporary. Darwish’s mother replies: You have confused death with disappearance.

Global Sumud Flotilla For Palestine

The Alchemy of Elements: Resistance as Metamorphosis

When the human form is rendered illegal, when a son can be shot and his name erased from a registry, the mother refuses nothingness. She performs alchemy. She reincarnates her son into three elemental forms, each a higher degree of defiance.

The Tree (Rootedness as Land Title):

When the Zionist regime uproots ancient groves to plant Jewish settlements, the mother says: Be a tree. Not just any tree, but one “sated with fertility”, heavy with olives, with memory, with the sweat of ancestors. This is the ultimate rebellion. The tree does not hold a deed; it is the deed. Its roots argue with the bulldozer in a language that predates all modern borders. To become a tree is to say: You cannot deport geography.

The Stone (The Pulse Beneath the Weapon):

The stone is the icon of the Intifada. But Darwish does something extraordinary. He adds, “saturated with humidity.” Humidity is the breath of the living earth, the sweat of the farmer, the moisture that turns dust into clay. This is not the dry, dead stone of a ruin. It is the wet, resistant stone that grows moss and holds the coolness of the morning. For the Palestinian youth facing a military tank, or the Iranian student enduring a morality squad, the stone is the hard reality they throw back at power. But the humidity is their poetry, their cinema, their whispered jokes in the back of a taxi, the life that persists within the hardness.

The Moon (The Unreachable Sovereignty):

If the tree is cut and the stone shattered, the mother sends her son to the moon. Not the moon of astronomy, but a moon in the dream of your beloved one. This is the interior fortress. You can occupy a city, but not a dream. You can sanction a country, but not a lover’s memory. The moon represents a light that requires no passport, no fuel, no permission. It is the sovereignty of the inner life, the space where a displaced family still sings the old songs, where a Tehran artist paints in a basement, and where a refugee draws the key to a house that exists only in the mind.

Aftermath of a bombed area in Palestine

From Ramallah to Tehran: The Shared Geography of the Soul

What unites the Palestinian and Iranian resistance is not a shared history but a shared architecture of survival. Both people have learned that when the external world is blocked, you build inward and downward.

For Palestine, “Sumud” is literal: staying on the land, harvesting the olives under a military curfew, planting a sapling where a home was demolished. It is the insistence that even if the map is redrawn by force, the poetry remembers the original names.

For Iran, resilience takes the form of a cultural fortress. Facing decades of sanctions and ideological isolation, Iranians have turned to a deep well: Rumi, Hafez, and the cinema of Kiarostami and Panahi. They produce art that does not seek Western validation. They prove that their humanity is not a commodity to be granted or withheld by embassies, but a historical fact, an unbroken civilisation that has outlasted every invader, from Alexander to the narcissist Trump.

In both cases, the besieged become metamorphic. They change shape faster than the siege can adapt.

Image from the 2026 Protests in Iran

Art as the Final Frontier: The Ghazal as a Weapon

Darwish weaponises the traditional ghazal, a form of love poetry, for a funeral. He addresses a dead son as “my love”. This is not sentimentality. It is a radical humanisation. The occupier wants the dead son to be a number, a martyr statistic, a security threat even in the grave. The mother says: No. He was the rain I waited for. He was the moon in someone’s dream.

By using the intimate, erotic language of the ghazal, Darwish smuggles tenderness into a war zone. He reminds the world that every political casualty is first a beloved person. The siege cannot calculate grief, and that is its fatal weakness.

The Invincible Landscape

The final reveal: (So spoke a woman to her son at his funeral)- is the most devastating line. It reframes the entire poem as a whisper over a grave. But it is also the ultimate act of defiance. The mother tells the occupier: You have killed a man, but you have given birth to a landscape.

The son is no longer a body that can be buried. He is a tree that will keep fruiting, a stone that will keep striking, a moon that will keep haunting every dream. The siege, for all its military tanks and sanctions, cannot kill what can become something else.

Whether it is the farmer in Gaza planting saplings under drone surveillance, or the student in Tehran memorising Hafez in a blacked-out apartment, they are all following the mother’s command. They are becoming the rain, the tree, the stone, the moon. They are proving that the architecture of survival is not made of concrete and steel. It is made of metamorphosis. And that is why they are impossible to ignore and even more impossible to conquer. The mother in the poem is not just a mourner; she is the custodian of a history the occupier can’t erase. She is the pillar of strength and the stream of the nation’s collective sorrow. The poem is ultimately about refusing the silence of death. In a “State of Siege”, where people are threatened with erasure, the mother performs a ritual of metamorphosis. She ensures her son is never gone, but simply translated into the rain, the trees, and the stone of the home they are defending.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

The post The Metamorphic Resistance: Mahmoud Darwish, Resilience (Sumud), and the Architecture of Survival appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Excerpts from the India section of the 2026 Annual Report:

“In 2025, religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate as the government introduced and enforced new legislation targeting religious minority communities and their houses of worship. Several states undertook efforts to introduce or strengthen anti-conversion laws to include harsher prison sentences. Indian authorities also facilitated widespread detention and illegal expulsion of citizens and religious refugees and tolerated vigilante attacks against religious minority communities.

“Throughout the year, Hindu nationalist mobs across several states harassed, incited, and instigated violence against Muslims and Christians with impunity. In March, violence erupted in Maharashtra after a hard-line Hindu nationalist group, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), called for the removal of the tomb of Aurangzeb, a 17th-century Mughal ruler. Subsequent riots injured dozens of people and resulted in a curfew, fuelled by rumours from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) officials that Qur’ans were desecrated in VHP-led protests. In June, a Hindu nationalist mob attacked 20 Christian families in Odisha after they refused to convert to Hinduism. The attacks, which did not prompt police intervention, left eight people injured and hospitalised.

“In April, three gunmen attacked a group of predominantly Hindu tourists in the Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir, killing 26 people. The perpetrators reportedly asked the victims to recite the Kalma, an Islamic verse, and killed those who were unable to do so. The attack sparked a five-day conflict between India and Pakistan and intensified anti-Muslim sentiment in India, including targeted attacks. Muslims were reportedly killed in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh in alleged hate crimes following the attack.

“In Uttar Pradesh, self-professed members of a Hindu nationalist group reportedly shot and killed a Muslim restaurant worker, vowing to avenge those killed in the Kashmir attack. The Indian government also seized the aftermath of the attack to justify deportations of religious minorities it considers “illegal” migrants.

“In May, Indian authorities detained 40 Rohingya refugees, including 15 Christians, all of whom were transported into inter-national waters near the coast of Burma and forced to swim to the Burmese shore with nothing more than life vests. In July, Indian authorities expelled hundreds of Bengali-speaking Muslims from Assam to Bangladesh despite being Indian citizens. Officials from the ruling BJP accused those expelled of being Muslim “infiltrators” from Bangladesh, threatening India’s national identity. To further facilitate the crackdown in alleged “illegal migration,” the government passed a new set of rules and orders for the Foreigners Act in September.

“The order expands the authority of Foreigner Tribunals to issue arrest warrants and send those suspected of being “foreigners” to holding centres without due process.

Throughout the year, the government also continued to target houses of worship to bring them under state control.

“In May, India’s Parliament passed the Waqf Bill, which adds non-Muslims to the boards that manage Waqf land endowments that are traditionally staffed by Muslims. These endowments include religious sites, such as mosques, seminaries, and graveyards. In response to the bill, deadly protests erupted in the state of West Bengal, leaving three people dead. In September, the Supreme Court suspended key provisions of the bill, including one in which the government can decide whether a disputed property is Waqf or not. The court further limited the number of non-Muslim members of the federal board to four. The same month, Uttarakhand’s legislative assembly passed the State Authority for Minority Education (USAME) Act, which dissolves the Madrasa Board and brings madrasas and other educational institutions for Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians under state control.

The USCIRF has made the following recommendations to the US government:

• Designate India as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA);
• Press India to allow US government entities such as USCIRF and the U.S. Department of State to conduct in-country assessments of religious freedom conditions;
• Impose targeted sanctions on individuals and entities, such as India’s Research and Analysis Wing and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), for their responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ or entities’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States;
• Link future U.S. security assistance and bilateral trade policies with India to improvements in religious freedom; and
• Enforce Section 6 of the Arms Export Control Act to halt arms sales to India based on continued acts of intimidation and harassment against S. citizens and religious minorities.

The U.S. Congress should:

• Reintroduce and pass the Transnational Repression Reporting Act of 2024 to require the annual reporting of acts of transnational repression by the Indian government targeting religious minorities in the United

Related:

USCIRF signals alarm in India’s ‘Increased Transnational Targeting’ of religious minorities 

Umar Khalid’s incarceration: USCIRF Commissioner expresses concern over use of anti-terrorism laws to silence activists

USCIRF recommends India be designated Country of Particular Concern for third straight year!

The post Religious Freedom: How the USCIRF continues to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) appeared first on SabrangIndia.

This matters deeply.

For years, those of us who have spoken out against Hindutva have been told that we are overreacting, being divisive, or unfairly naming an ideology and its institutions. But what communities on the ground, journalists, scholars, and human rights advocates have documented again and again is that the assault on religious freedom in India is not random. It is not marginal. It is not merely the work of a few extremists acting alone. It is structural, ideological, and sustained. USCIRF’s naming of the RSS makes clear that this reality can no longer be dismissed as rhetorical excess or partisan framing.

The RSS is not a fringe body. It is one of the central engines of Hindu nationalist ideology and organizing in India. Its influence has helped shape a political climate in which Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Adivasis, Sikhs, and dissenters of many kinds face deepening exclusion, fear, and vulnerability. When a U.S. government body focused on religious freedom calls for sanctions on the RSS by name, it is acknowledging something many have paid a high price to say aloud: that religious freedom violations in India are being enabled and normalized by powerful institutions, not just individual bad actors.

It is important to be precise. USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan advisory body; its recommendations are not automatic policy. But that does not make this symbolic or disposable. These reports shape policy conversations, public understanding, and the terms of international scrutiny. The fact that USCIRF now recommends targeted sanctions on the RSS marks a new threshold in how the crisis in India is being recognized.

There is also a deeper moral truth here. Religious freedom is too often invoked selectively, stripped of context, or reduced to a talking point. But religious freedom means very little if it does not include the courage to name systems that terrorize minorities while wrapping themselves in the language of tradition, nation, and civilization. What is at stake in India is not simply abstract pluralism. It is whether people can live, worship, organize, speak, love, and dissent without fear. It is whether democracy can survive the steady sanctification of exclusion.

For those committed to a liberatory, plural, and ethical vision of Hinduism, this moment should not be read as an attack on Hindus. It is a warning about the consequences of allowing Hindu identity to be captured by supremacist politics. Hindutva does not speak for all Hindus, and the RSS does not represent the only possible Hindu public life. Many of us have spent years insisting that a faith rooted in dignity, interdependence, and moral courage must stand against domination, not sanctify it.

USCIRF’s recommendation does not deliver justice on its own. But it does mark something important: a widening refusal to look away. It tells us that the stories communities have carried, the abuses people have risked so much to document, and the warnings advocates have repeated for years are breaking through denial.

Now the real question is whether policymakers will act, whether media will take this seriously, and whether international civil society will finally reckon with the scale of what religious minorities and democracy defenders in India have been facing.

This should not pass quietly. It should be read, shared, and understood for what it is: a major acknowledgment that the machinery of religious freedom violations in India includes powerful institutions that must be named and challenged.

Read the report here:https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2026-03/USCIRF_2026_AR_3326_NEW.pdf

Related:

USCIRF signals alarm in India’s ‘Increased Transnational Targeting’ of religious minorities 

Umar Khalid’s incarceration: USCIRF Commissioner expresses concern over use of anti-terrorism laws to silence activists

USCIRF recommends India be designated Country of Particular Concern for third straight year!

The post USCIRF’s Call for Sanctions on the RSS Is a Major Moral and Political Marker appeared first on SabrangIndia.

At a protest by varied citizens under the banner of Sanjha Sanskriti Manch, Varanasi, a silent hunger strike was observed on Saturday March 7, protesting the US-Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran.

At the protest a strong statement was issued. This may be read here:

“We strongly condemn the military action carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran during the holy month of Ramadan and pay tribute to all those who have lost their lives. The attack, carried out deceitfully in the midst of peace negotiations mediated by Oman, without any formal declaration of war, resulted in the killing of Iran’s national and religious leaders and strikes on a school and Gandhi Hospital. These actions led to the deaths of more than one hundred and fifty young girls. We consider this a grave violation of human rights. This attack by Trump and Israel has created a serious threat to international peace and stability.

“Similarly, unilateral military intervention and political pressure on Venezuela are contrary to the sovereignty, independence, and the fundamental spirit of the United Nations Charter.

“At the same time, open threats such as occupying Greenland, taking complete control of the Panama Canal, turning Canada into the 51st state, and transforming Gaza into an “American Riviera” reflect the undemocratic and authoritarian policies of the United States.

“The demand by U.S. President Trump that India stop importing Russian oil, the threat of tariffs in connection with trade agreements, and his repeated claim that he prevented an India-Pakistan war by threatening a 200 percent tariff are not isolated incidents but part of the same imperialist chain of actions.

“The weak stance and compromises shown by the Government of India under this pressure have caused significant damage to our independent foreign policy, energy security, economic sovereignty, and national dignity. The national freedom struggle led by India under the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru symbolized an unwavering struggle against imperialism and the ideals of unity in diversity and equal respect for all religions. Our Constitution and this tradition of thought and struggle not only freed India from the chains of colonial rule but also inspired more than fifty nations across Africa, Asia, and the world to achieve independence.

“After independence, the Constitution of India—particularly Article 51—clearly directs the state to promote international peace and security, maintain just and honourable relations among nations, and foster respect for international law. India’s foreign policy has historically remained steadfast in principles of non-interference, respect for sovereignty, and peaceful coexistence.

“More than nine million Indians live in Iran and the Middle East, and thousands of students study there. Over six thousand Indian workers are currently in Israel, many of whom were sent under agreements by the present government. Our 38 cargo ships are also stranded. The devastation caused by war will severely damage our economic condition; inflation will rise, and shortages of oil and gas have already begun.

“We strongly condemn this inhumane and undemocratic action by the United States and express our concern and sympathy for the loss of lives and destruction caused by the war.

“As citizens of the land of Mahatma Gandhi, we appeal for an immediate end to the war and for peaceful coexistence among all nations and peoples.

“We are deeply saddened by the military action of the United States and Israel. Therefore, during the holy month of Ramadan, when bloodshed is taking place, we will instead connect ourselves with the spirit of harmony during Holi, maintain love for our neighbours, and pray to God to grant wisdom to the United States and Israel.”

Several organisations under the banner of Banaras Civil Society, Sauhard Peace Centre, Sanjha Sanskriti Manch and the National Alliance for Social Justice are signatories to this.

Related:

India: Left at the forefront, opposition & people protests US-Israel attacks on Iran

US-Israel War on Iran sees spirals in Hate against Muslim Americans: CSOH

Iran war: from the Middle East to America, history shows you cannot assassinate your way to peace

The post Varanasi, UP: No to war, we want peace appeared first on SabrangIndia.