Abdulla Moaswes, Author at INVERSE JOURNAL

Abdulla Moaswes

Abdulla Moaswes is a researcher and educator originally from Jerusalem, Palestine. His primary area of research is on (settler-)colonialism and global capitalism, with a focus on the colonisation of Kashmir and Palestine. In addition to this, Abdulla has written about the politics of internet memes, chai and cultural production, and is interested more generally in ideas of resistance, liberation, decoloniality and decolonisation. He is also the world’s only Palestinian cricket fan and an avid reader of Urdu and Arabic poetry. His writings on various topics have appeared in +972 Magazine, LobeLog, The New Arab, Express Tribune and the South China Morning Post. He is a graduate of the University of Exeter and the School of Oriental and African Studies.

I Was Born Today — A Poem by Abdulla Moaswes

Abdulla Moaswes is originally from Jerusalem, Palestine. On a day such as this he presents a poem of remembrance against forgetting that returns to the days of his grandfather through a narration binding the dispossession and grief of one generation to another. The scholar and poet is inspired by Edward Said’s 1984 essay “Permission to Narrate” (published in The London Review of Books), where Said addresses the silencing and invisibilization that Palestinians faced in the international media while Zionists tirelessly propagated the myth of an Eden-like homeland—one that, according to them, was barren of inhabitants (conveniently made into ghosts) yet paradisiacal enough for an indefinite and still ongoing occupation. Beyond the need for an introduction, Abdulla’s poem speaks for itself, as his verses transit through time like remembrance transits through forgetting to keep memories alive, deep within the terrain of narration.

Neoliberalism in Palestine and Kashmir: The Nakedness of Colonial Pretexts in the 21st Century — by Abdulla Moaswes

May 15, 2020 | Academia

On this Nakba Day, Palestinian researcher and educator Abdulla Moaswes presents this article to draw parallels between India’s treatment of Kashmir (after the abrogation of Article 370) and Israel’s treatment of Palestine (after the Trump-Netanyahu “Deal of the Century” was announced). According to Moaswes, both events and their aftermath unabashedly reflect the “nakedness of colonial dehumanisation.” The writer explores “the relationship between capitalism, colonialism and dehumanisation” interplayed with nation-state driven “racism and securitisation” in the context of Palestine and Kashmir as occupied territories. The writer also addresses the manner in which “neoliberal economic logic is used by the colonial powers to justify the dehumanisation of Palestinians and Kashmiris” in the 21st century. This article is featured in our Academia section.