Welcome!
BARAKA BASHMENT is a MASHUP. A mashup is any “thing” made up entirely of other “things.” BARAKA BASHMENT is constantly being made. It is constantly being constructed. It is constantly being developed by the community that engages it. Baraka takes its cue from Barak: blessing, lightning, and thunder. Bashment is a reference to danchall, dub, reggae music, and more specifically for our purposes: AN EVENT OF NOTABLE SIZE.
BARAKA BASHMENT is the point at which lightning erupts from the earth.
But what the hell is going on here?!
My suggestion: Click around and find out. Check out some of the links. If you’re not familiar with some of the references, take a longer peek at them.
But what will you be doing here?!
In addition to discussing the basics: conversion (outside -vs- inside), salat, The Prophet (saw), Qur’an, absolute gender equality, “modesty,” shari’ah (and all the usual suspects involved), giving/relating to the poor, pilgrimage, etc… this site will also embrace a very large spectrum of other so-called “progressive” ideas. Though in actuality, some ideas may be calling for re-progression. Islamic permiculture. Community living. Foot wanderings. Bike riding. A lot of what is around here comes from the deep left. Off the grid type left. This site will hopefully highlight some of the cryptic guts of attempted God-conciousness–investigations of really really surrendering. That said, most everything on this site, rather than aligning itself with a specific movement is attempting to speak with two complimentary radii: that of projection (the future) and that of direct action (what is happening now). If some of the things I say on this site seem irrelevant to immediate concerns, my only suggestion is to remember the dueling radii! Refer to the floating definitions. And let’s get to know one another!
Now doesn’t that sound Islamic?
UPDATE: 2/24/2006
This week, the Baraka Bashment yeilded an eruption rather than the declarative. The Bashment maintained a God-necessitating discursion where symbols appear not as they appeared.
Wind was recognized to be more like a moving wall than a sweeping. The “hand of God” manifested in various forms in sidebars and unloaded what little it could as the humyn drive to contain that which can not be contained was not contained.
Another manifestation? it asked himself.
Much more than not, the not absolutely not!
UPDATE: 5/5/2006
And away we go. Maybe. As the wind blows and carries hanginbg fabric and a petal or two down a compliant stream or creek, so does the impulse to show allegiance. Baraka Bashment unraveling itself. The magic word this week is “dismantle.” And we hope to do just that. The superimposition is strangling. Any houe without a door is no house at all. A house without a door is a prison.
We'’l just have to see. I’m as much in the dark as you.
February 24th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Greets from flatistan … I’ve seen you piping up at Mike Knight’s blog, and I like what I see here on your bashment, though I’m afraid I haven’t time to read & absorb a lot at the moment (I’m an unschooling parent) I like your tafsir & would like to learn more. I also like dub & vaguely “Moorish” music, and I’m an amateur DJ, I bet your mixes would be phat & enlightening. That’s sort of my aim with a mix, actually.. But anyway, enough chatter.
Email me if you haven’t heard about the Edge Islam Convention.
wishing you well,
hakim baker
Uplift Church of Beauty (Springfield, Ill.)
Moorish Orthodox Church