Category Archives: 2023

DTM network for mathematics and hard sciences

Background

In his book Decolonizing The Mind – A Guide to Decolonial Theory and Practice, Sandew Hira, secretary of the Decolonial International Network, has laid down some guidelines on how to decolonize mathematics and the natural science. Regarding mathematics he outlines five dimensions of decolonizing mathematics.

  1. A critique of the Western historiography of mathematics
  2. A critique of the foundations of Euromathematics
  3. A critique of the use of Euromathematics
  4. The concept of reverse engineering in mathematics and technology
  5. A new educational system for mathematics

Regarding the hard sciences he distinguishes four dimensions:

  1. A critique of the Western historiography of hard sciences.
  2. A critique of the Western concept of the relationship between humans and nature.
  3. A critique of the Western concept of the role of ethics in hard sciences.
  4. A critique of the limits of hard sciences.

A year ago Gustavo Paccosi started with organizing a group of mathematicians and scientist in Argentina who meet every two weeks to discuss critical issues in math and science. Gustavo is a doctor in science and technology and lecturer in mathematics at the Universidad Nacional De General Sarmiento (UNGS) in Buenos Aires. He works in the area of mathematics and applied mathematics, with specialization in bifurcation theory and synchronization.

In several meetings between Sandew and Gustavo the idea was born to join forces and set up an international network of scientists dedicated to decolonizing mathematics and the hard sciences.

Aims of the network

The network has the following aims:

  1. To develop a research program in the different dimension of mathematics and the hard sciences.
  2. To get students and researchers involved in participating in the research program.
  3. To publish the results of the research program.
  4. To organize workshop, seminars and conferences to further develop the research program and distribute and discuss the results of the program.

The network is an experiment in setting up an infrastructure of experts to reconstruct a discipline in science from a DTM point of view.

Get involved

If you want to actively participate in the network, please send an email to mathnetwork@din.today with your name, country of residence, your professional background and why you are interested in joining the network.

 

 

Calendar December 2023

December 5: University of Amsterdam – Decolonizing Spaces: what is to be done?

The University of Amsterdam is organizing a round table event with the theme: Decolonising Spaces : what is to be done ?

Date: December 5, 2023

Time: 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Location: Doelenzaal, Singel 425, 1012 WP, Amsterdam

Speakers are:
Kenza Badi
Sandew Hira
Annemarie de Wildt
Rot

Click here to sign up.

8-10 December London – Islamophobia conference

Since 2014, IHRC has organized an annual conference in Great Britain with Scotland Against Criminalizing Communities (SACC) to discuss key issues related to structural and institutionalized Islamophobia . The 10th annual conference in December is a combination of online and in-person events. Sandew Hira will be one of the speakers. For more information click here .

16 December Zoom Argentina – explaining the DTM framework

On December 16, 15.00 Amsterdam time, Sandew Hira will give an exposé to a group of Argentinian scientists (math and the hard sciences) on the theoretical framework of Decolonizing The Mind.

New list video podcast series Decolonizing The Mind

Here is the new list of Sandew Hira’s video podcasts . It provides analyzes of the war in Palestine and its relationship to decolonial theory.

Date Number Title Link
Friday November 3, 2023 006 What is the role of Hezbollah in the liberation of Palestine.? Are they going to invade Israel? https://youtu.be/Fa2bYKe-5QQ
Sunday November 5, 2023 007 The role of Turkiye https://youtu.be/sZjwOcLJ70g _ _ _
Monday November 6, 2023 008 The role of Russia https://youtu.be/awlGuK0JkR0 _ _ _
Tuesday November 7, 2023 009 The role of China https://youtu.be/VJYH3XFKZkg _ _ _
Wednesday November 8, 2023 010 The role of India https://youtu.be/vK3QGPGwLlQ _ _ _
Thursday November 9, 2023 011 The role of Saudi Arabia https://youtu.be/TXk6K_A3zIM
Friday November 10, 2023 012 The role of Egypt https://youtu.be/ZsDGelFhBKM _ _ _ _
Saturday November 11, 2023 013 The role of USA and Europe https://youtu.be/vQO1AXPpbZ4 _ _ _
Sunday November 12, 2023 014 The preparation for a regional war: Hezbollah https://youtu.be/KFsLwjnVJjw _ _ _ _
Monday November 13, 2023 015 The preparation for a regional war: Iran https://youtu.be/XiVxEREOFvA _ _ _ _
Tuesday November 14, 2023 016 What if Israel decides to use nuclear bombs? https://youtu.be/Rk2Os55JqNs _ _ _
Monday November 20, 2023 017 What does it mean to decolonize the world? https://youtu.be/7F_zNTQN5J0
Monday November 27, 2023 018 Current narrative of civilization: Europe/USA https://youtu.be/C4fruziGvQE _ _ _

 

Sandew Hira launches a daily video pod cast series on Decolonizing The Mind

On Sunday October 29, 2023 at 12.00 AM CET Sandew Hira launched his YouTube channel Decolonizing The Mind – the final frontier of colonialism. Every day at 12.00 AM CET he will post a video podcast of 15-20 minutes in which he provides a daily analysis of current world affairs from a decolonial point of view. Here is the link to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DecolonizingTheMindwithSandewH

The first episode is titled: How will the war in Palestine end? In a free Palestine or World War III?

It deals with the question whether we are witnessing the birth a free Palestine of the beginning of World War III. It lists all the major factors that will determine the outcome of this war. The coming episodes will go deeper into these factors.

Please support this channel by clicking on the SUBSCRIBE button.

All the videos will be listed at my website: https://www.sandewhira.com/index.php/category/videos/.

The episode contains PowerPoint presentations. You can download the PDF of the presentations by clicking on the video image at https://www.sandewhira.com/index.php/category/videos/.

Here is the first episode: https://youtu.be/81cDt1zYl8A

 

The Global Academic Director of DIN launches the Lesotho Chapter

From 7 – 8 October 2023, Dr Munyaradzi Mushonga, the Global Academic Director of DIN, was in the Kingdom of Lesotho to launch the DIN Lesotho Chapter. The host was the National University of Lesotho (NUL), the country’s premier institution and only public university (https://www.nul.ls/).

The Faculty of Humanities (https://www.nul.ls/humanities/), led by its Dean, Professor Paul Leshota and the faculty’s postgraduate co-ordinator Professor ’Mamoleba Kolobe, together with the Academic Forum for Development of Lesotho (AfdeL) led by its Secretary General Professor Tsepo Mokuku hosted the Global Academic Director of DIN.

The launch of the DIN Lesotho Chapter was preceded by a public lecture on Decolonizing Knowledge and a Workshop on Decolonizing The Mind, both conducted by Dr Munyaradzi Mushonga. The Global Academic Director of DIN kicked off the public lecture by paying respects to the Elders of the Basotho nation, past, present and emerging, and challenged those present to take pride in their ways of living, doing, knowing, thinking, praying, dancing, and singing as these were valid and legitimate forms of knowledge without which there would be no living. The lecture touched on a number of key aspects of decolonizing knowledge namely: what is, and what is not decoloniality; why decoloniality in the 21st century; how knowledge is colonized; how to decolonize knowledge; and the place of knowledge and decoloniality in development. Dr Mushonga concluded the lecture by calling on NUL and Lesotho to embark on the journey of unlearning in order to relearn what Western modernity taught them to despise.

In the workshop, Dr Mushonga took the NUL community on a journey of how to decolonize the mind. He offered Decolonizing the Mind (DTM) as a school of science that argues that scientific knowledge has been colonized and requires root and branch decolonization and reconstitution. Drawing from Sandew Hira’s tour de force, Decolonizing The Mind: A guide to decolonial theory and practice (2023) (https://shop.ihrc.org/products/decolonizing-the-mind-a-guide-to-decolonial-theory-and-practice-sandew-hira),  Dr Munyaradzi Mushonga demonstrated how knowledge production has been deployed in the colonization of the mind. He also offered several pathways to the decolonization of the mind.

Lecture and Workshop Feedback/Evaluation

The evaluation/feedback on both the lecture and the workshop was framed around five questions developed by the co-ordinating team led by Professor Paul Leshota, Professor Tsepo Moku and Professor ’Mamoleba Kolobe:

  1. What were your expectation(s) about the decoloniality seminar?
  2. Mention a maximum of three important things that you learned from the workshop?
  3. State three ways in which decoloniality may be relevant for NUL?
  4. State three ways in which decoloniality may be relevant for Lesotho.
  5. What is the most important thing about decoloniality for you?

Diverse responses were generated from these five questions. Because of want of space, only one response is picked from each question. Overall, the participates were not only satisfied with the knowledge they gained, but also the possible routes to exit the epistemic/existential prison. In response to question 1, one participant responded, “Decoloniality should [be] spread throughout the whole continent of Africa, in countries, villages and communities as well. It should be explored with all the media platforms, as well as in formal, informal and non-formal academia approach”. In response to question 2, one participant wrote, “Decoloniality occurs at different levels; personal, structural, systemic, and otherwise”. In response to question 3, one participant wrote, “Establishment of decolonial institute or centre; fortnightly presentations on decoloniality; and establishment of decoloniality journals to publish decolonial-driven research”. To question 4, one participant responded, “African spirituality will no longer be discriminated because of religion; Basotho will know that knowledge is not centred around Eurocentric ideas; Basotho do not have to depend on Western, European and Eastern countries”. To question 5, one participant stated, “It is slowly liberating my mind and has rekindled within me the thirst to know and research about Lesotho”. In short, the aggregate of the responses demonstrate that the lecture and the workshop were a great success, and the DIN Foundation needs to build on the momentum.

Participants at the NUL Decolonizing Knowledge Lecture & Decolonizing the Mind Workshop, 7-8 October 2023

The Decolonial International Network Lesotho Chapter Takes Root

The enthusiasm and the robust engagements that followed the public lecture and the workshop were enough to set in motion the constitution of the chapter, which the participants hastily named as DIN Lesotho Chapter. The formulation of the chapter revolved around the following three key questions in their English and Sesotho versions.

1)            How might Decoloniality be defined in Sesotho? (Re ka hlalosa ‘decoloniality’ joang ka Sesotho?)

2)            Suggest decoloniality themes that should guide the DIN Lesotho Chapter activities? (Ke lintlhakholo li fe tsa ‘decoloniality’ tse ka tataisang Mokhatlo oa DIN Lesotho ts’ebetsong ea ona?)

3)            Suggest decolonial activities that the DIN Lesotho Chapter should carry out? (Ke lits’ebetso tsa mofuta o fe tsa ‘decoloniality’ tseo           mokhatlo oa DIN Lesotho o ka li etsang?).

These questions were debated in three separate group discussions followed by group presentations. After the presentations, a strong 13-member DIN Lesotho Chapter Steering Committee was established. The committee is made up of representatives from NUL’s seven faculties and other stakeholders. As at 8 September, following made up the Committee: Education (Dr Mahao Mahao), Law (Dr Letadzo Kometsi),  Humanities (Prof. ’Mamoleba Kolobe; Dr Raphael Thuube; Dr Sean Maliehe; Prof. Paul Leshota (Dean ex-Officio), Science & Technology (Dr Nthatamele Maliehe), Undergraduate Students (Mr Mphou Setha), Postgraduate Students (Ms Makabelo Kobisi), Non-Academic Staff (Mr John Mofomobe), AfdeL (Prof. Tsepo Mokuku), with the faculties of Agriculture, Health Sciences, and Social  Science yet to submit names.

DIN Lesotho Chapter Steering Committee – from left to right: Dr. S. Maliehe, Dr. N. Maliehe, Prof. T. Mokuku, Prof. M. Kolobe, Prof. P. Leshota, Dr. R. Thuube, Ms M. Kobisi, Dr. M. Mahao

On Wednesday, 18 October 2023, the DIN Lesotho Chapter Decolonial Ad hoc. Committee met to discuss the way forward. It came up with several resolutions that it will take to the Steering Committee for deliberations and ratification. The Global Academic Director is happy to report that DIN Lesotho Chapter indicated its readiness to host its first Decolonial School in the not-too-distant future.

The Sun that went down with the arrival of a ‘Civilization of Death’ is rising again in the Kingdom of Lesotho.

Will Israel survive the 2023 War?

Sandew Hira, October 8, 2023

The question

In my book Decolonizing The Mind – a Guide to Decolonial Theory and Practice I wrote the following in a paragraph dealing with Palestine: “If in any of the coming rounds of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian resistance the Palestinians stand their ground and a prolonged war between Gaza and Israel ensues, then international forces will come into play for the final battle which will cease to be an air battle.” I pose the question: “Will Israel still exist in the coming decades?” [1]

In an analysis of the war of 2021 I draw the following conclusion: “The next stage might be the final round if we are looking at it in the context of World War III, the US or Israel could use a nuclear bomb to ensure their survival.”[2]

The conclusion is that Israel might not exist in the coming decades.

This article provides a decolonial analysis of the new war of yesterday, October 7, 2023. Its conclusion is: Israel might not exist in the coming years.

The theoretical framework

We live in dangerous times. If we use Western media as a guideline to understand current events, we will not understand the danger and how to deal with it. The Western narrative of the current stage of world politics is very simplistic. We live in a world in which freedom and democracy is under attack. Barbaric and despotic forces there attacking Western civilization. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Israel is a beacon of Western civilization in the heart of a backward oriental region. Israel and its Western supporters are so mighty that they will easily beat the forces of evil.

This narrative is part of mental slavery, the colonization of the mind. A mechanism of mental slavery is that Western media prevent other voices that contradict their narrative to be heard. So the contradiction come from reality. When reality does not conform their narrative, they panic. They think that there something wrong with reality.

I use the theoretical framework of Decolonizing The Mind (DTM) to explain what is going on now and what we can expect in the coming period.

One element of DTM is the use of imagination as a source of knowledge. Western analysis is based on observation and reasoning. The future is an extrapolation of the past. When they look at Palestine, they see Israel, a strong military power with nuclear weapons and the strongest possible support from the West: militarily, politically, economically and culturally. How can this power be defeated by a group without this kind of support? Given this framework the only outcome of the current war is that Palestinians pay a very high price for their resistance in the forms of thousands of casualties and eventually go into submission.

In the DTM framework the future is not an extrapolation of the past. It is perfectly possible to have sharp breaches in the currently line of development that fundamentally alters the future. In under to understand this argument, you should use imagination.

I give a few examples in the book.

Imagine that you are a African who was born into enslavement in the USA. You have witnessed the defeat of the rebellion of John Brown (1800-1859) in 1859. Brown was a white abolitionist who organized a group of 22 men, among them five Africans, to start a rebellion that should have brought down the system of slavery. They attacked an arsenal with arms and ammunition in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. They called upon the enslaved Africans to rise up in a general rebellion. But there was no response. The US army quickly captured the group. Some were killed immediately. All, but one of Brown’s sons, were executed after a trial. In those circumstances if somebody would have told you, that six years later slavery would be abolished in the United States, you definitely would have answered that this was a ludicrous fantasy. And yet, six years later the impossible became possible.

Imagine that you are a European that looks at Europe on January 1914. The Ottoman empire and the Austr0-Hugnarian Habsburg empire had existed for 600 years. The Russian empire had existed for 200 years. The German empire was united from different 26 different territories states into one vibrant centralized state. In 1914 Kaiser Willem II seemed to stronger than ever. If someone would have told you that within eight years all these empires would not exist anymore, you would think that this is just a fantasy.

Our sense of time can deceive us when we talk about history. The difference between 1914 and 1970 is 56 years. In half a century the world has changed dramatically. There were two World Wars. World War I was just finished and World War II was one its way and one pandemic (Spanish Flu). Much of the global south was politically colonized by the global north. By 1970 the majority of the global south was politically independent. The Internet and personal computer, let alone mobile telephones, did not exist in 1970.

The difference between 2023 and 1970 is more or less same as the difference between 1970 and 1914. And this period has also seen dramatic changes in the world. China and India have risen from the ashes of the colonial period to become major economic and political players on the world stage. The Soviet bloc has dissolved and out of those ashes the Russian Federation has risen as a major military power. Germany has been united. Iran has become a major geopolitical force. We are experiencing a pandemic (COVID-19). The Internet technology has changed the world in a way nobody could have foreseen.

Yet, when we compare 1914-1970 with 1970-2023 it feels as if the gap between 1914 and 1970 is far bigger than the gap between 1970 and 2023, probably because we are still in one generation that is living through the current era. We feel as if the period 1914-1970 is closed, while we still seem to be living in the second period.

Now imagine how the world will look in fifty years, say in 2072. Can we imagine a change that is so drastic that we regard the period of 1970-2023 as a period that we have closed as humankind?

I will now use imagination to envisage the dramatic changes that might take place in the coming years.

The principles of decolonial imagination

The first principle for decolonial imagination is the use of the concept of civilization to analyze world history. In Marxism they use class as a concept of analysis. In Liberalism is about individualism. A civilization is a collection of societies with a specific cultural base: knowledge, ethics and views on how to organize and structure a society. It has economic institutions that produce goods and services that can sustain highly developed social, political and cultural institutions. It has political institutions that structure the relationship between the rulers and those being ruled in the form of a state. It has social institutions that organizes social relations in a civilization. It has a cultural base with institutions for knowledge production (universities) and knowledge dissemination (media, education) that produces material and non-material culture.

Western civilization is based on colonialism. It is very young (500 years) and already its demise has already started. Israel is part of Western colonialism: the last vestige of an apartheid settler state. So if I talk about the demise of Israel I put it in the context of the demise of Western colonialism and Western civilization.

The second principle of decolonial imagination is to answer the question: what are the forces behind the demise of Western power and civilization? In the DTM framework I look at four forces: economic, social, political and cultural.

We are living in a different economic world compared to 50 years ago. China is now the largest economy and is a key driver in world economy. The economic power of the West had deteriorated to such an extent that it has lost much of its financial and economic power. It is not the driver in technological innovations. China is. The economic power that backs Israel is not as strong as it used to be.

The social institution of racism – the organization of social relations on the basis of superiority and inferiority along racial and ethnic lines – is eroding rapidly. If someone would have told you in 2006 that a black man would be president of the American empire in 2009 and receive the Nobel Prize for peace while carrying out the largest bombardment of Afghanistan, you would not believe it. If someone would have told you in 2020 that a Indian Hindu would be prime minister of the United Kingdom in two years time you would dismiss this is nonsense. Yet all these things are happening. They us that the social institution of racism that supports the base structure of Western civilization are not so strong anymore. Israel is seen by themselves and the West as part of Western social institutions.

The international political institutions of the West have lost their hegemonic influence in the world. New institutions are gaining more influence by the day: BRICS and SCO. Regional powers are gaining international strength: Western Asia with Iran as a major power; Latin Abya Yala (former Latin America) with Venezuela and Cuba as leading states. In Africa South Africa is a leading power in Africa. The continent as a whole is asserting is influence in global matters. Israel is functioning in this international political climate. And is a weaker party in international politics. There are desperate efforts with the Abraham Accords to reverse this trend, but they are going against the historical process of the decline of Western political power.

Western cultural power is declining. Everywhere in the world there is a movement for decolonizing knowledge. It is critique of the Western Enlightenment, the basis of Western culture. There a rise of knowledge from other civilizations that are taking hold in different universities around the world. The support of the apartheid state of Israel in the West is organized by institutions like universities, media and other cultural institutions. I discuss the Israel Advocacy Handbook (IAH) to show that even the Zionist think that the support of Israel is declining. The IAH is a guide on how to colonize the mind in Western Europe and the USA to mobilize support for Israel. It says: “In the last decade, there has been a dangerous and steady erosion in international perceptions regarding the legitimacy of Israel. At the same time, there is an erosion of support for Israel on particular issues in both the United States and Europe. The two problems are intimately related. The crisis is more serious in Europe than in the USA. There is not yet an Israel public relations disaster in the USA, where support levels generally hover between 50 and 63%, but even there, the problem cannot be ignored.”[3]

My conclusion is that the current war takes place in an international context that might lead to the dissolution of the state of Israel. The international economic, social, political and cultural power for this support has been severely weakened.

The third principle of decolonial imagination is the proposition that injustice will someday come to an end. Western slavery has lasted 350 years in Abya Yala. Apartheid in South Africa came to an end thirty years ago. The occupation of Palestine will come to end. The question is not whether it will come to an end, but when and how?

The lessons from the resistance

The first lesson from the resistance against the occupation of Palestine is that it has grown in strength to an unprecedented scale in its history.

The colonization of Palestine for the Jewish population started well before the Holocaust. In 1917 the British launched an attack against the Ottomans and captured Palestine.

On entering the city of Jerusalem British general Edmund Allenby declared: “The wars of the Crusades are now complete.” Palestine was now a British colony.

Fifteen years after Herzl’s letter the Jewish lobby was able to successfully press the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to make a declaration on November 9, 1917, in which he announced: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

The Zionist colonization of Palestine began with a systematic increase of the Jewish population through immigration. In 1917 Jews constituted 3% of the Palestinian population. Under British rule Jewish immigration led to an increase of their share to 30% in 1938.133 Already in this period Zionists had purchased land, uprooted Palestinian farmers with the protection of the British and taken control of the economy with the support of capital from the Jewish Diaspora. This led to repeated revolts by the Palestinians in 1920, 1921, 1929 and a big revolt between 1936 and 1939. A brutal repression of that revolt by the British with the active assistance of Jewish paramilitary forces led to 19,792 Arab casualties, of which 5,032 were fatalities. After World War II, the Zionist colonization of Palestine that began before the Holocaust gained a disastrous momentum when Zionist paramilitary forces started a guerrilla campaign against the British army in order to establish a Jewish state and a terror campaign against the Palestinians in order to expel them from their homes and land. On May 14, 1948, they proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state on Palestinian land. By the end of the Zionist terror campaign, 700,000 Palestinians had been driven out of Palestine. Their houses and lands were taken over by Jews who came from Europe and the US. People who were born and raised in New York, Amsterdam, London or Paris went to Palestine and occupied the land and houses of Palestinians whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years. In 1964, sixteen years after the foundation of the apartheid state of Israel in 1948 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established to further the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle. The PLO carried out many attacks, but the brutal response of Zionists drove the PLO on the defensive. They had to retreat from Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, eventually moving to Tunisia. It eventually led to negotiations that were concluded in the Oslo Accords in 1993 with the two-state solution. It turned out to be a political defeat for the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords had led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 as an administrative entity for the future state of Palestine. It had limited administrative power over the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank.

The two-state solution envisioned an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel. From the very start the two-state solution was doomed. It was an agreement on paper only, reached after considerable pressure of the US on Israel. Israel did not accept an independent Palestinian state. It did everything possible to torpedo the Oslo Accords. The Palestinians had no alternative but to struggle for one free State of Palestine in the occupied territories.

In December 1987 the first intifada began with stone-throwing Palestinians and eventually led to the formation of Hamas as a liberation movement dedicated to armed struggle.

In 2000 the second intifada started as a protest against the visit of butcher Ariel Sharon to the Al-Aqsa Mosque site in Jerusalem. It developed into a large scale armed conflict that left 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead. It ended on February 8, 2005 with an agreement between Israel and the PA on a cease-fire and the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners.

Meanwhile in Gaza 8,000 Jewish settlers living among one million Palestinians in 21 settlements were faced with armed attacks from the resistance. The PA was supposed to prevent this. They could not. In 2005 (from August to September) Israel was forced to relocate the settlers from Gaza, because they could not protect them anymore.

In 2006 Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections and took control of the government of Gaza. In December 2008 the first Israeli war on Gaza started (Operation Cast Lead) when Israel began with aerial bombardments of Gaza after being unable to stop rocket attacks by the resistance. On January 3, 2009, Israel began a ground invasion of Gaza. On January 21 Israel withdrew its troops after a cease fire was reached under international pressure.

In March 2012, Israel killed a leader of the Palestinian resistance which led to retaliation and a full-scale war with aerial bombardments and rocket attacks. In October of the same year a new round of confrontation began that led to hundreds of Palestinian deaths. In 2014, the worst round of fighting was during a 50-day bombardment of Gaza that resulted in more than 2,000 Palestinians being killed.

In May 2021 the eviction of six Palestinian families living in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah led to mass protests and eventually to a war that lasted for eleven days.

The conclusion from this chronology is that the spirit of resistance is unbroken. The struggle of the Palestinian people comes with a huge price in human suffering. But they have shown that they are willing to pay the price, because the alternative is an eternal life of suffering, humiliation and oppression for them, their children and grandchildren.

The current confrontation that began yesterday is a next level confrontation. The resistance went into Israel with a ground invasion and captured many Israeli’s to bring them to Gaza, among them high ranking officers of the Israeli army. This is unheard of. It defies Western imagination. And it brings to the fore the question: what else is in store for them?

Just from two days of fighting it is clear that whatever follows in the coming day: Hamas has achieved a major victory. The shattered the idea that Israeli’s are safe inside of Israel and their army can always protect them. That is a big victory in itself.

In the book I have explained there are a few factors that will lead to the downfall of the state of Israel:

  1. There is a growing unity among all major factions in the resistance.
  2. Arabs in Israel will become an important factor in future confrontation. The longer a confrontation is going on, the greater the chances are that they will get involved in armed struggle. In 2021 they took to the streets in Akka, Lod, Ramla, the Negev, Galilee, and Wadi Ara.
  3. Many Palestinians thought that a military victory over Israel is impossible. In 2021 it turned out that this is a false idea. At the first day of the current confrontation shows that in a more spectacular way. The stunning way in which the Resistance attacked Israel through a ground offensive emphasized the idea that the Israeli army is not omnipotent.
  4. The war of 2021 shows that there was a clear international coordination of the resistance: Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and even Iraq. The coordination will only grow in any confrontation that will go on for a longer period.

For the first time in the history of the occupation there is a real possibility that Israel can be defeated militarily. So how will this defeat look like. If your mind is colonized, you will not be able to imagine the dissolution of Israel. But look, already on our lifetime we have seen the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic on October 3, 1990 and the state of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991.

I foresee two ways in which Israel will cease to exist. The first is by military means. Now Hamas has entered Israel with a few hundred fighter. Imagine a situation in which tens of thousands of fighters from different parts of the world stage and all out attack, capture the military barracks and command control centers, destroy the airfields, destroy the iron dome and capture the nuclear stockpile of Israel. And this all is supported by the state infrastructure of Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran. It this impossible? Well think about other things that you thought were impossible and yet they happened.

The second way is the peaceful dissolution of the apartheid state of Israel. The people of Israel come to their senses after they have seen that it is impossible to live a safe live in Palestine. The vote with their feet and leave Palestine. They talk to Europe to organize a peaceful transition to a one state solution.

Given the mindset of the West I think the first option is more likely than the second one.

I have put the relevant paragraphs from the book for a free download here.

Check these links

[1] S. Hira: “Decolonizing The Mind – A Guide to Decolonial Theory and Practice”. Amrit Publisher. The Hague 2023, p. 511.

[2] Idem, p. 512.

[3] Idem, p. 90.

DTM Book tour in October in the UK

Sandew Hira, secretary of Decolonial International Network, is visiting the UK on a new book tour. He will be speaking in Wembley, London at the bookshop of the Islamic Human Rights Commission on October 12 and at the Queens Mary University in London on October 13. On October 15 he will be speaking in Cambridge at the Cambridge Stop the War Coalition. See for more information: https://www.ihrc.org.uk/decolonizing-the-mind-book-tour-with-sandew-hira/.

DTM Tour in September 2023

In September Sandew Hira will continue his DTM tour. From Monday 11 to Friday 15 September, he is invited by the Simon Bolivar Institute in Caracas, Venezuela, to conduct a weeklong series of DTM lectures under the title From Repairs to Reconstruction.

Currently the discussion on reparations is about correcting historical injustice within the current world civilization. Hira proposes to bring the discussion to the level of transcending the current world civilization that produced these injustices to a new world civilization that is based on the reconstruction of knowledge and decolonizing the mind.

On September 20, Hira will give a keynote speech in the first of a Webinar series “UMXHOLO” from Walter Sisulu University in South Africa. The Webinar series will be launched by the Vice Chancellor and Principal , Prof. dr. RN Songca , of WSU. The webinar will run from 9-11 am. You can register via this link: https://forms.office.com/r/dSL67zDcCL .

The speech can be followed via https :// msteams.link /6QNO . For more information mail to Busiswa Ngceni, email: bngceni@wsu.ac.za .

Hira’s book is now being translated into Persian by Ebrahim Mohseni and will probably be published and presented in Iran in the first half of next year.

July 6-10: Decolonizing The Mind on Curacao

From July 6 to July Sandew Hira will visit Hira Curacao as part of DTM. After his book launch in Europe from January to April, he visited nine universities in South Africa and Zambia in May. In July he has an intensive four-day program on Curaçao. Friday morning there is a meeting with writers who are committed to rewriting the history books of Curaçao. Friday evening there is a meet and greet session with key figures in social movements and education organized by Fundashon Museo Tula. On Saturday he will give a keynote speech at the conference “Decolonizing The Mind in Curaçao”. On Sunday he will give a public lecture on slavery and reparations for activists from the Curaçao community. On Monday, Fundashon Museo Tula and the Decolonial International Network Foundation will sign an MOU before he leaves for Amsterdam.

A new phase in the development of the global decolonial movement

Sandew Hira, 1-6-2023

Introduction

From May 1 till May 26 I visited nine universities in South Africa and Zambia in my capacity as secretary of the DIN Foundation and as author of the book Decolonizing The Mind. The trip taught me a lot about where we are in the global decolonial movement right now and where we should be heading.

Here is an overview of the trip.

  1. South Africa – University of Cape Town (UCT)

I began on May 2 in Cape Town with a lecture on How mathematics and the hard sciences were colonized and how to decolonize them. Frank Kronenberg and Dr. Tiri Chinyoka were the organizers of the event.

  1. South Africa – University of Western Cape (UWC)

Bassey Antia, an applied linguist from UWC, contacted me after a Zoom lecture that I gave at the Pennsylvania State University which he attended. He wanted to work with my in applying the DTM theoretical framework to the field of applied linguistics. On May 2 and 3 he organized a mini-conference with four of his PhD students from Ghana and Cameroon on this topics. On May 4 he organized a public lecture at UWC.

  1. South Africa – University of Pretoria

On May 8 I gave a book presentation at the University of Pretoria. This was organized by Adekeye Adebayo. He is a prolific writer and an expert on international affairs.

  1. South Africa – UNISA in Pretoria

On May 9 I spoke at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Johannesburg. Professor Grace Khunou and her team has been so kind to host me at UNISA. Nokuthula Hlabangane has been instrumental in linking me to Grace. UNISA was the center for the decolonial movement in South Africa.

  1. Zambia – Kwame Nkrumah University in Kabwe

On May 10 I flew to Zambia where I had dinner with Jive Lubbungu in Kabwe, 140 km from Lusaka. Jive has been preparing the ground for a cooperation between DIN and the Kwame Nkrumah university through an MOU. On May 11 I visited the VC, the deputy VC and the dean. Jive also organized a meeting with staff members for an introductory presentation on DTM. They are the people who are going to work with the DTM Center of Excellence.

  1. Zambia – University of Zambia in Lusaka

On May 11 I had dinner with Yvonne Kabombwe and Ferdinand Chipindi in Lusaka. For many months Yvonne Kabombwe and Ferdinand Chipindi have been preparing the ground for a Memorandum of Understanding between DIN and the University of Zambia in Lusaka. The MOU entails the establishment of a DTM center of Excellence (Chipindi came up with the term).

On May 12 I gave a public lecture at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. After that I had a lunch meeting with the board of the Education Research Association of Zambia (ERAZ) headed by Sitwe Benson. This was a very important meeting. ERAZ is an organization of about 100 members (researchers) at different universities of Zambia. It is a national network.

  1. South Africa – University of Kwazulu Natal in Durban

On May 16 I spoke at the University of Kwazulu Natal in Durban about decolonizing mathematics and the hard sciences. After the lecture the organizer invited me to talk to 10 members of the staff about what it means to decolonize the hard sciences and how they could get involved.

  1. South Africa – University of the Free State Bloemfontein

On May 22 The Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS), The International Office, and the University of the Free State Library of UFS organized the presentation of my book. Two days later I attended the Africa Day Memorial Lecture by Prof. M. Thabane. Africa Day is a huge event at UFS.

On May 26 I participated as a speaker in the 2023 UFS Africa Month Dialogue. Munyaradzi Mushonga was the host and MC. The theme of the Dialogue is Promoting and appreciating knowledge in and from Africa. I spoke on the topic “The importance of being creators and co-creators of knowledge (in and from Africa”). Prof. Francis Peterson, the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of UFS, participated in the Dialogue.

  1. South Africa – Central University of Technology Bloemfontein

On May 25 I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Africa Day organized by the Central University of Technology. In South Africa the foundation of the African Union is celebrated as the Africa Day. Apparently it is a huge event in many universities. The communication was done by Sekoele Ramajoe, coordinator of international affairs at Home Projects. I asked for a lunch meeting on May 24 with his colleagues. Leolyn Jackson, a Senior Lecturer, Head of Student Enrolment, Director of the Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) and Director of the International Relations Office is a key figure at CUT. He is keen on working with us.

The lessons

The central question that came up time and again is: what is decolonial theory about and what is its practical relevance? What does it mean to decolonize the university, and for that matter, the society and the world?

In my interaction with many people in Africa I argued that we need to move from the current stage of general decolonial critique of Eurocentrism to specific critique and alternatives per discipline. Moving from general critique to specific critique per discipline makes it easier to make the transition from theory to practice. If you decolonize economic theory, you are forced to also decolonize economic policy.

This transition requires a different type of decolonial thinkers and activists. We need more experts from the different disciplines involved in order to produce the critique and alternative per discipline.

It is not an easy transition. Take the question of decolonial economic theory and policy. The European Enlightenment has produced two economic schools: Liberalism that argues for an economic system based on private property and markets and Marxism that fights for an planned economy and the abolition of private property and markets. The first system is called capitalism and the second socialism. Many decolonial activists are against capitalism. Does that mean that they are for socialism? What is so decolonial about socialism? If the only categories you know is capitalism and socialism, then decolonial theory ends up being part of Marxism with is appeal for socialism. But we already have decades of experience with planned economy, and the results are questionable.

I argue that there are other economic systems possible besides capitalism and socialism. Islam and Buddhism, but also Chinese philosophy have produced systems that are more successful and appeal more to social justice than capitalism and socialism. Decolonial economic theory looks beyond the dichotomy that the European Enlightenment has produced in order to find solutions to practical economic problems of today.

In a similar way I focused in my lectures and discussion on decolonizing the hard sciences, because often people think that this is not possible: mathematics, physics, biology. With common sense one can understand that this is possible, as I explain in my book.

If the decolonial movement does not make this transition, it will become a relic of the past, a fashion that come and goes like all fashions.

The organizational problem

Africa also taught me about an organizational model that might work for the decolonial movement in academia. We have to experiment with that model. Dr. Ferdinand Chipindi from the University of Zambia came up with the idea of a DTM Center of Excellence. It focuses on Decolonizing The Mind but in such a way that it contribute to the improvement of excellence. Such a center is based on concrete projects.

Some ideas about projects that were discussed are:

  1. A new system of performance assessment for higher education that includes monitoring the extent to which a university is decolonized and a new measurement of excellence in higher education.
  2. A decolonial math book for primary and secondary education.
  3. The decolonial history app.
  4. A research database on reparations that documents activities on reparations across the globe in different languages.
  5. A database of measures of economic boycotts and how to avoid the effects.
  6. Reconstructing the discipline of law.

The projects should be carried out by students and staff in a certain discipline. And they should engage in working together with other centers and people from other universities. There are many problems that need to be tackled, not in the least the problem of funding. But there are many ideas about how to get these projects going.

In that process we will find and experiment with solutions so we can see what works and what does not work.

The way forward

After my return from Africa I immediately got involved in a Zoom panel on Eurocentrism, organised by the Pakistan Institute for Development Economics (PIDE), a university in Pakistan that focuses on economic theory and policy. Prof. Asad Zaman introduced me to PIDE. He studied mathematics at the MIT in the US and economics and statistics at Stanford University. He is also a specialist on Islamic thinking. He is former Vice-Chancellor of PIDE. He is a prolific writer and has a broad interest and knowledge. I was amazed by extent to which he could combine a wide range of disciplines with Islamic thinking. Asad suggested that we develop a course on the history of Western philosophy from the perspective of Islam and DTM. I think this is a valuable suggestion.

The experience in Africa and the discussion with Asad show me the way forward.

We need to train a new generation of scholars and activists to look at practical problems from a pluriversal perspective, from different civilizational backgrounds. We need to decolonize academia from the distinctive disciplines and move beyond general theories. These are all steps towards building a new world civilization.