Austria Fined Him and Threatened Him With Prison — His 'Weeds' Built a Mountain Paradise

In 1962, a nineteen-year-old farmer inherited a struggling mountainside farm in Austria's coldest agricultural region. Over the next three decades, government inspectors fined him repeatedly, threatened him with prison, and told him his methods were impossible.

Today, that same farm is studied by universities around the world.

This video explores the extraordinary story of Sepp Holzer and Krameterhof, one of the most influential regenerative agriculture and permaculture projects ever created. Located high in Austria's Salzburg Alps, where temperatures regularly fall below minus thirty degrees Celsius, the farm challenged conventional agricultural science by producing fruit, vegetables, and thriving ecosystems where experts said only spruce forests could survive.

Rather than following government manuals, Holzer observed natural processes. He used pigs to naturally seal ponds, created microclimates with rocks and water, built hugelkultur systems from buried wood, and developed a landscape that now includes more than seventy ponds, thirty thousand fruit trees, and one of Europe's most famous examples of ecological farming.

We break down the science behind this transformation: microclimate engineering, water retention landscapes, permaculture design, natural pond construction, soil regeneration, and how observation often outperformed conventional agricultural rules.

The fines and legal battles that made Holzer Austria's most fined farmer

The creation of more than seventy naturally sealed ponds

The transformation of a debt-ridden alpine farm into a globally recognized ecological model

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

Degrowth basics

"The word degrowth stands for a family of political-economic approaches that, in the face of today’s accelerating planetary ecological crisis, reject unlimited, exponential economic growth as the definition of human progress."

What is Degrowth? | Caracol DSA

Why degrowth is the only responsible way forward | OpenDemocracy

Degrowth and MMT: A thought experiment

We Need A Fair Way To End Infinite Growth | Current Affairs

Degrowth: A Call for Radical Abundance | Common Dreams

Can degrowth save us and the planet? | Nottingham Trent

Defending limits is not Malthusian | Undisciplined Environments

Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth? | New Yorker

The Urgent Case for Shrinking the Economy | The New Republic

Giving Up on Economic Growth Could Make Us Cooler and Happier | The New Republic

A guide to degrowth: The movement prioritizing wellbeing in a bid to avoid climate cataclysm | CNBC

What is ‘degrowth’ and how can it fight climate change? | Popular Science

Enough for Everyone | Yes! Magazine

Toward a Post-Capitalist Future: On the Growth of “Degrowth” | Lit Hub

All we are saying is give degrowth a chance | The RSA

A pathway out of environmental collapse | newsroom

On Technology and Degrowth | Monthly Review

What is degrowth (and more importantly, what is it not)? | META

Green growth

"There is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale against a background of continued economic growth."

Is Green Growth Possible? | Jason Hickel & Giorgos Kallis

The Myth of America’s Green Growth | Foreign Policy

The decoupling delusion: rethinking growth and sustainability | The Conversation

Is green growth happening? | Uneven Earth

Green Growth | Uneven Earth

The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth | Scientific American

Degrowth is not austerity – it is actually just the opposite | Al Jazeera

A response to Paul Krugman: Growth is not as green as you might think | Timothée Parrique

Deceitful Decoupling: Misconceptions of a Persistent Myth | Alevgul H. Sorman

Degrowth isn’t the same as a recession – it’s an alternative to growing the economy forever | The Conversation

Degrowth and the left

"In the middle of an ecological emergency, should we be producing sport utility vehicles and mansions? Should we be diverting energy to support the obscene consumption and accumulation of the ruling class?"

The Left should embrace degrowth | New Internationalist

Ecosocialism is the Horizon, Degrowth is the Way | The Trouble

Degrowth: Socialism without Growth | Brave New Europe

Toward an Ecosocialist Degrowth: From the Materially Inevitable to the Socially Desirable | Monthly Review

For an Ecosocialist Degrowth | Monthly Review

Degrowth and Revolutionary Organizing | Rosa Luxemburg NYC

The necessity of ecosocialist degrowth | Rupture

Degrowth is Anti-Capitalist | Protean Mag

Degrowth Communism | PPPR (Part one | Part two | Part three)

Economic Planning and Degrowth: How Socialism Survives the 21st Century | New Socialist

Degrowth and the South

"Southern countries should be free to organize their resources and labor around meeting human needs rather than around servicing Northern growth."

Who is afraid of degrowth? A Global South economic perspective | IBON Foundation

The anti-colonial politics of degrowth | Jason Hickel

Unlearning: From Degrowth to Decolonization | Rosa Luxemburg NYC

Degrowth requires the Global South to default on its foreign debts | Resilience

Journals/Reports

Degrowth: a theory of radical abundance | Jason Hickel

A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights

What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification | Jason Hickel

Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario | Global Environmental Change

Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios | Nature Energy

Degrowth and critical agrarian studies | Julien-François Gerber

Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability | European Environmental Bureau

Incrementum ad Absurdum: Global Growth, Inequality and Poverty Eradication in a Carbon-Constrained World | David Woodward

Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help | Nature

A New Political Economy for a Healthy Planet | Jason Hickel

Planning beyond growth. The case for economic democracy within limits

Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5 °C ambitions | Cleaner Production Letters

Is green growth happening? An empirical analysis of achieved versus Paris-compliant CO2–GDP decoupling in high-income countries | The Lancet

Books

Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide | Pluto Press

A People's Green New Deal | Max Ajl

Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World | Jason Hickel

Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job | Verso Books

The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism | Verso Books

The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism | Verso Books

Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism | Kohei Saito

Degrowth & Strategy: how to bring about social-ecological transformation

27 Essays and Thoughts on Degrowth | Giorgos Kallis

Videos

Yes To Limits To Growth! | The Other School

How Degrowth Can Save the World | Andrewism

How We End Consumerism | Our Changing Climate

Demystifying Degrowth | Rosa Luxemburg NYC

Degrowth is not Austerity | John the Duncan

Degrowth and Ecosocialism | Planet: Critical

Degrowth in 7 minutes: Fighting for climate by living better | Think That Through

The Future is Degrowth (w/ Aaron Vansintjan) || SRSLY WRONG

"Degrowth means power to the working class!"with Jason Hickel | GND Media

Others

degrowth.info

Degrowth Journal

Doughnut Economics

a. She’s 5′ 11″ and can never find pants long enough for her legs or shirts long enough for her arms.

b. She hates synthetic fibers as much as I do and it’s difficult to find natural fiber clothes that aren’t made of cotton

c. She’s a biologist and would physically fistfight microplastics if given half a chance

So her gift from mom and dad for her birthday was a sewing machine. Not a super expensive one but a good solid serviceable one.

And recently she asked “So where do I GET wool or linen and thread that isn’t polyester” and mom was like ‘go ask your sister’

“Bets, u know I’m a 15th degree blackbelt of buying shit on the internet”

cotton and Silk thread; https://redrockthreads.com/

Linen thread and wool fabric; https://burnleyandtrowbridge.com/ (they’ve got wool stuffs and worsted wool fabric for $15 a yard! I just got three yards of navy worsted wool I’m making a constellation winter skirt from)

More linen thread and wool; https://wmboothdraper.com/ (just ordered wool broadcloth to make a coat)

Silk fabric (THE best place to get silk lining fabrics and raw silk fabric):https://www.dharmatrading.com/

A varying assortment of wool and silk and cotton and even some leather, use coupon code  spring2020 for 50% off your full order, worked yesterday when I bought some stuff there; https://metrotextilesnyc.com/

The Linen Lab has a variety of weaves, weights, and colors available

I'm aware that in some ways I'm a weird luddite but this is one of the major, major problems that I have with so much of the modern technology landscape existing as tools that allow you to access your data rather than tools which allow you to store your data.

Look at the data that you have. Look at what you are storing. Ask yourself "if the internet stopped working tomorrow, would I be able to access this information?"

If the answer is "no" you have 2 problems:

1 - You don't actually have that information and can easily lose access to it.

2 - You may not know who DOES have access to that information. If it's encrypted storage you're probably somewhat secure, but IS it encrypted storage? Or is it stored in plaintext on someone else's server?

So my deal with the EARN IT Act is that I don't super duper trust any of our government systems to do fuck all. I think it's worthwhile to contact your representatives, but I don't know that it will actually DO anything.

However YOU can do something.

If you don't want your data accessible to companies that will scan it and test it and pass it on to the government, don't give those companies your data.

Store things locally. Learn how to send and share encrypted files. If you have to store things online, store them with encryption that *you* have set up.

Honestly I'm pretty sure this is going to be bad. I'm pretty sure there are going to be significant security compromises as a result of the EARN IT Act and that we're going to get so buried in breached data that it's going to fundamentally alter how we have to identify ourselves in ways that will be more difficult to use while making people easier to track.

It's shit, and I hate it, and the internet is getting smaller and more fenced in and the big fun platforms that were easy to use and that let people of all technical skill levels share and collaborate that we had a couple decades to explore are now things that will just be a means of exploitation.

It fuckin' blows, friends.

But it also means that NOW is the time to fundamentally re-think how you interact with the internet. Ask yourself how you send data, and where you keep it. Ask yourself who has your information and how it is secured. Ask yourself what would happen if someone who hated you had access to your primary email account for a day, and ask yourself how you would try to fix what they fucked up.

EARN IT sucks, but this is NOT one of those instances in which you are helpless if it passes. Right now, before it passes, talk to the non-internet people in your life about why it is bad:

- It will mean that the government can see all your stored files - It will mean the websites you store files on will not be allowed to encrypt those files - It will mean that any asshole hacker who can access those systems can access all that data that will now be unencrypted.

This shitty act will make EVERYONE who uses the websites that are subject to the EARN IT act more vulnerable to data breaches, ID theft, and exploitation from hackers while ALSO enabling effortless surveillance by our own government.

This is bad, so tell your relatives and friends and co-workers to tell their representatives WHY it is bad by using this site: https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy

The site is very easy to use and literally you do not even have to navigate to a separate page to contact your representatives.

It sucks trying to use a site like Tumblr or Twitter through a VPN or on TOR. It's slow and terrible because they are BIG sites moving a lot of data.

It's maybe time to start setting up email lists and forums for the people you want to be in touch with. Make sure that you don't only know your online friends through their social media profiles, but have other ways of contacting the people you care about.

If tumblr went down *today*, right now, who would you be able to find elsewhere on the internet and who would you lose forever? If discord got taken down tomorrow, is there somewhere else online that you'd be able to tell a friend who you are?

If you want to take action here are some things that you can do TODAY that will make you less vulnerable to these sorts of harms:

Create an account on Cryptpad.Fr - Cryptpad is an open-source, zero knowledge collaboration tool that is an excellent browser-based replacement for Gsuite. It doesn't have app support, but it is a really fantastic tool to work on shared documents in a secure way. You don't even have to have an account to access and work on a document. Free accounts come with 1GB of personal storage; this is actually a LOT of storage if you're keeping in good practice of storing your important files locally rather than online. It's also a great free, non-google, non-microsoft office suite that is more portable than Libre Office. If you do have the funds to support them as well as creating an account, please consider it.

Create a ProtonMail account. Protonmail is an end-to-end encrypted email service based in Switzerland that allows you to create free accounts with a limited amount of storage. Please note: while ProtonMail has zero-knowledge storage, they can be compelled to produce the user information that they have access to, including login and IP address data. If you need to make sure that no one knows you're logging in to protonmail you need to log in through an anonymizer like TOR.

Learn how to use TOR - which is very easy; it's pretty much like just using any other browser. Download it, install it, poke around a bit, and do some light-weight browsing. People think it's scary because it's something that hackers use and that governments yell about; it's not. It's also not ideal for day-to-day use, but it's good to already have it running when you need it instead of scrambling to use it in a panic if the EARN IT act passes.

Start using a password manager. If there is nothing else from this list that you do today, this is the one thing you should do. The other stuff can wait until later, but if the internet may soon be less secure as a result of EARN IT, the very least that you can do is secure your logins. Bitwarden is a free, portable, exceptionally functional Open Source password manager that has wonderful resources on its website that teach people at all skill levels how to effectively use the product. Please, Please, Please, PLEASE as the random ass hacker-type person in your life I am *BEGGING* you to use a password manager. And Bitwarden is free, but if you get the paid version for $10 a year you can get encrypted file storage and sending tools as a part of the package. Learning how to create and send encrypted files can be confusing and frightening for people who haven't done it before. It is VERY easy with Bitwarden and they have a lot of accessible info teaching you how to use that tool.

I am concerned about statements like this:

Unless you cite your sources and explain to me in technical terms how you think that Tor is being used by the NSA as a honeypot this is not a reasonable statement to make.

Tor DOES receive a large amount of funding by the US government. Tor DOES work on active projects with the military.

Do you know why?

Because intelligence agencies have a very strong incentive to ensure that there is a widely-available tool used by lots of people to anonymize traffic.

Because a traffic anonymizer that is exclusively used by intelligence agencies is a dead giveaway that the only people using it are fucking feds and spies.

So here's my problem: Tor is the absolute easiest way for people with the lowest level of technical skill to attain some kind of IP anonymization online.

It isn't perfect, and the system isn't invulnerable to attacks, and there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the ways that traffic can be monitored.

There HAS been evidence of Tor reporting vulnerabilities to the FBI before they report it to general users. There HAVE been problems with people using the network getting fingerprinted and tracked.

But a lot of complaints about Tor's use by the government look like this:

While Syverson indicated that some of the security issues identified by this research have been addressed in recent Tor versions, the findings only added to a growing list of other research and anecdotal evidence showing Tor’s not as safe as its boosters want you to think — especially when pitted against determined intelligence agencies.

Case-in-point: In December 2013, a 20-year-old Harvard panicked overachiever named Edlo Kim learned just how little protection Tor offered for would be terrorists.

To avoid taking a final exam he wasn’t prepared for, Kim hit up on the idea of sending in a fake bomb threat. То cover his tracks, he used Tor, supposedly the best anonymity service the web had to offer. But it did little mask his identity from a determined Uncle Sam. A joint investigation, which involved the FBI, the Secret Service and local police, was able to track the fake bomb threat right back to Kim — in less than 24 hours.

As the FBI complaint explained, “Harvard University was able to determine that, in the several hours leading up to the receipt of the e-mail messages described above, ELDO KIM accessed TOR using Harvard’s wireless network.” All that Tor did was make the cops jump a few extra steps. But it wasn’t hard, nothing that a bit of manpower with full legal authority to access network records couldn’t solve. It helped that Harvard’s network logging all metadata access on the network — sorta like the NSA.

(bolding mine)

Did you catch that? Someone sent a bomb threat via Tor over a wireless network that logged all user metadata and this author is suggesting that's a problem with *Tor.*

Here's more from the same article:

In 2013, they took down Freedom Hosting, which was accused of being a massive child porn hosting operation — but not before taking control of its servers and intercepting all of its communication with customers. The FBI did the same thing that same year with the online drug superstore Silkroad, which also ran its services in the Tor cloud. Although, rookie mistakes helped FBI unmask the identity of Dred Pirate Roberts, it is still a mystery how they were able to totally take over and control, and even copy, a server run in the Tor cloud — something that is supposed to be impossible.

And some more:

Back in 2007, a Swedish hacker/researcher named Dan Egerstad showed that just by running a Tor node, he could siphon and read all the unencrypted traffic that went through his chunk of the Tor network. He was able to access logins and passwords to accounts of NGOs, companies, and the embassies of India and Iran. Egerstad thought at first that embassy staff were just being careless with their info, but quickly realized that he had actually stumbled on a hack/surveillance operation in which Tor was being used to covertly access these accounts.

Uh. This guy's primary method of attacking Tor seems to be pointing out that Tor doesn't encrypt traffic and so people get caught using it when their traffic is unencrypted.

That is a LOT of the criticism that you see about Tor.

Yeah. It's not a VPN. It's a traffic anonymizer.

Look. Buds.

Tor isn't an NSA honeypot that is snooping on your traffic. Tor is a decent anonymizing tool that is run by an open source project and largely funded by the US government because they can't do their gray man hide in plain sight bullshit if they're the only one walking around.

Here's Luckygreen, an oldschool cypherpunk and crypto activist, talking about Tor as it was being conceived of in 1997:

At the FC'97 rump session, Paul Syverson from NRL presented a paper titled "Onion Routing". The description of the system sounds very much like Wei Dai's PipeNet. However, the development team seems to be unaware of PipeNet and the discussions about it that we had in the past. NLR has currently five machines implementing the protocol. Connection setup time is claimed to be 500 ms. They are looking for volunteers to run "Onion Routers". It appears the US military wants to access websites without giving away the fact that they are accessing the sites and is looking to us to provide the cover traffic. What a fortunate situation.

And here's some more from him on the topic:

>What do you think of the "onion routing" approach from the group at Naval Postgraduate? How would compare it to this newest proposal? Neither one of them is any good in its present form. The folks at the FC'97 rump session got to watch Jim and myself poke truck sized holes into the NRL design within seconds of them ending their presentation. :-) Here was a US military research lab presenting a system they thought would give them a way to surf the Net anonymously by using the public for cover traffic. [Let me just spell out here that I believe that the people from NRL and Cypherpunks are on the same side on this issue. Their concern is COMSEC, not SIGINT.]

If you don't know what that last sentence in brackets means, let me explain it:

Comsec is communications security; sigint is signals intelligence. Comsec means keeping your own comms secure; signals intelligence is deriving intelligence from intercepted signals.

The NSA/CIA/FBI/US Navy are all interested in making sure that Tor is alive and well and running but it is largely so that they can send their own messages on a well-supported, widely used tool. This is widely and openly discussed in emails between developers and intelligence agencies and it is being reframed as "the NSA is using this tool to spy on you."

Again, Tor is not perfect. It does not encrypt your traffic and it is possible - with a significant amount of effort, time, and expense - to exploit the Tor network to eliminate anonymization.

But unless you can articulate how to deanonymize Tor traffic *separate from the now-six-and-eight-year-old attacks in 2014 and 2016* I can't take you seriously when you talk about how Tor isn't a useful tool and/or is some kind of honeypot or data gathering scheme.

It is either a fundamental or wilful misunderstanding of how this technology works and what it is meant to do to act as though it's useless to use Tor because Tor is *also* used by the military and CIA.

Tor is one of the better tools out there to anonymize your IP address. It is vital to OSINT researchers, hackers, activists, and whistleblowers. Telling people NOT to use this tool while not providing a better solution with instructions on how to use it is the kind of misinformation that ruins people's lives.

How can a rando and university dropout get into and learn more about? Any literature or other content to recommend?

Hi!! Wow, you have no idea how you just pressed a button. I'll unleash 5+ years on you. And I'll even add for you open-sourced works that you can access as much as I can!

1. Videos

I often find this is the best medium nowadays to learn anything! I'll share with you some of the best that deal with the topic in different frames

• This is a video of Edward Said talking about his book, Orientalism. Said is the Palestinian- American critic who first introduced the term Orientalism, and is the father of postcolonial studies as a critical literary theory. In this book, you’ll find an in-depth analysis of the concept and a deconstruction of western stereotypes. It’s very simple and he explains everything in a very easy manner.

• How Islam Saved Western Civilization. A more than brilliant lecture by Professor Roy Casagranda. This, in my opinion, is one of the best lectures that gives credit to this great civilization, and takes you on a journey to understand where did it all start from.

• What’s better than a well-researched, general overview Crash Course about Islam by John Green? This is not necessarily on orientalism but for people to know more about the fundamental basis of Islam and its pillars. I love the whole playlist that they have done about the religion, so definitely refer to it if you're looking to understand more about the historical background! Also, I can’t possibly mention this Crash Course series without mentioning ... ↓

• The Medieval Islamicate World. Arguably my favourite CC video of all times. Hank Green gives you a great thorough depiction of the Islamic civilization when it rose. He also discusses the scientific and literary advancements that happened in that age, which most people have no clue about! And honestly, just his excitement while explaining the astrolabe. These two truly enlightened so many people with the videos they've made. Thanks, @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog

2. Documentaries

• This is an AMAZING documentary called Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies A People by the genius American media critic Jack Shaheen. He literally analysed more than 1000 movies and handpicked some to showcase the terribly false stereotypes in western depiction of Arab/Muslim cultures. It's the best way to go into the subject, because you'll find him analysing works you're familiar with like Aladdin and all sorts.

• Spain’s Islamic Legacy. I cannot let this opportunity go to waste since one of my main scopes is studying feminist Andalusian history. There are literal gems to be known about this period of time, when religious coexistence is documented to have actually existed. This documentary offers a needed break from eurocentric perspectives, a great bird-view of the Islamic civilization in Europe and its remaining legacy (that western history tries so hard to erase).

• When the Moors Ruled in Europe. This is one of the richest documentaries that covers most of the veiled history of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Bettany Hughes discusses some of the prominent rulers, the brilliance of architecture in the Arab Muslim world, their originality and contributions to poetry and music, their innovative inventions and scientific development, and lastly, La Reconquista; the eventual fall and erasure of this grand civilization by western rulers.

3. Books

• Rethinking Orientalism by Reina Lewis. Lewis brilliantly breaks the prevailing stereotype of the “Harem”, yk, this stupid thought westerns projected about arab women being shut inside one room, not allowed to go anywhere from it, enslaved and without liberty, just left there for the sexual desires of the male figures, subjugated and silenced. It's a great read because it also takes the account of five different women living in the middle east.

• Nocturnal Poetics by Ferial Ghazoul. A great comparative text to understand the influence and outreach of The Thousand and One Nights. She applies a modern critical methodology to explore this classic literary masterpiece.

• The Question of Palestine by Edward Said. Since it's absolutely relevant, this is a great book if you're looking to understand more about the Palestinian situation and a great way to actually see the perspective of Palestinians themselves, not what we think they think.

• Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance by S.S. Sabry. One of my favourite feminist dealings with the idea of the orient and how western depictions demeaned arab women by objectifying them and degrading them to objects of sexual desire, like Scheherazade's characterization: how she was made into a sensual seducer, but not the literate, brilliantly smart woman of wisdom she was in the eastern retellings. The book also discusses the idea of identity and people who live on the hyphen (between two cultures), which is a very crucial aspect to understand arabs who are born/living in western countries.

• The Story of the Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole. This is a great book if you're trying to understand the influence of Islamic culture on Europe. It debunks this idea that Muslims are senseless, barbaric people who needed "civilizing" and instead showcases their brilliant civilization that was much advanced than any of Europe in the time Europe was labelled by the Dark Ages. (btw, did you know that arabic was the language of knowledge at that time? Because anyone who was looking to study advanced sciences, maths, philosophy, astronomy etc, had to know arabic because arabic-speaking countries were the center of knowledge and scientific advancements. Insane, right!)

• Convivencia and Medieval Spain. This is a collection of essays that delve further into the idea of “Convivencia”, which is what we call for religious coexistence. There's one essay in particular that's great called Were Women Part of Convivencia? which debunks all false western stereotypical images of women being less in Islamic belief. It also highlights how arab women have always been extremely cultured and literate. (They practiced medicine, studied their desired subjects, were writers of poetry and prose when women in Europe couldn't even keep their surnames when they married.)

4. Novels / Epistolaries

• Granada by Radwa Ashour. This is one of my favourite novels of all time, because Ashour brilliantly showcases Andalusian history and documents the injustices and massacres that happened to Muslims then. It covers the cultural erasure of Granada, and is also a story of human connection and beautiful family dynamics that utterly touches your soul.

• Dreams of Trespass by Fatema Mernissi. This is wonderful short read written in autobiographical form. It deconstructs the idea of the Harem in a postcolonial feminist lens of the French colonization of Morocco.

• Scheherazade Goes West by Mernissi. Mernissi brilliantly showcases the sexualisation of female figures by western depictions. It's very telling, really, and a very important reference to understand how the west often depicts middle-eastern women by boxing them into either the erotic, sensual beings or the oppressed, black-veiled beings. It helps you understand the actual real image of arab women out there (who are not just muslims btw; christian, jew, atheist, etc women do exist, and they do count).

• Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. This is a feminist travel epistolary of a British woman which covers the misconceptions that western people, (specifically male travelers) had recorded and transmitted about the religion, traditions and treatment of women in Constantinople, Turkey. It is also a very insightful sapphic text that explores her own engagement with women there, which debunks the idea that there are no queer people in the middle east.

---------------------

I was once in the office and another professor called me over. She was teaching a course on global citizenship.

"I can't figure out what this student is writing about," she said. "She keeps using the phrase 'perspiration stores.' Perspiration stores this, perspiration stores that."

I glanced at the paper and read a paragraph.

(Source) August 2nd, 2026.

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.