Strategic protest

Anyone who's familiar with the writing that I used to do on Egypt will know that, I was never particularly supportive of, protests. But I don't, advocate or oppose any tactics universally, but I endorse or reject tactics based entirely on their strategic value in any given situation, in a particular situation. Now, there's basically two types of protests. There's expressive protests and disruptive protests. At that time, the protests in Egypt were mostly expressive protests.

They simply voiced opposition to the coup and to the regime of Abdel Fattah al Sisi. But Sisi wasn't the president of Egypt by popular mandate, so public opinion didn't really matter that much. All expressive protests did in Egypt was to get people jailed and basically provide the police with crowd control training. Most of the protests in Egypt were not disruptive protests, which I think could have been useful if they'd done that. But in that situation, I did not see that the that the demonstrations and the protests as they were being done was actually very helpful.

And in many ways, I think they were detrimental and dangerous for people. So you have to understand from the outset what your protest can actually do, what it can actually accomplish, what it's supposed to be, what the objective is. So if your objective is not something that can be achieved by a march or a rally or a protest or demonstration or what have you, then you will feel and rightly so that protests are futile because they are futile in terms of what your objective is. But in some circumstances, even expressive protests have an important function. Like right now, expressing popular support for Palestine and opposition to genocide is important.

In the West specifically, they're trying to eliminate the Palestinians from being even from from even being in the public discourse. They're trying to erase every narrative but the Israeli Zionist narrative, which is rejected by the whole world. So particularly in the West, I think that public demonstrations of support for the Palestinians is useful and is necessary. You can't let them get away with this. World opinion, the moral position of the bulk of humanity cannot be gagged and silenced just to please and placate the West and appease the West and make them satisfied.

If protests in the West move in the direction of disruption, in my opinion, this should be strictly focused on the private sector. And disruption of the private sector through protest should always be preceded by communication with this or that company to let them know and to offer them the opportunity to take a positive position on Palestine. Approach them saying, you know, either your stated public stance or your silence on the Palestinian issue has created a very bad image of your company, and we wanna help you change that. You need to publicly condemn Israel's war crimes in Gaza. You need to support a ceasefire and de escalation and support the legitimate rights of the Palestinians unequivocally.

Otherwise, you can expect backlash from your customers and from the public at large, and nobody wants to see that happen. This is a message that you should send to the private sector and to companies. And depending on how they respond, to the way that you have approached them, the way that they respond, then you'll decide how you should proceed. And let me say here that I'm not just talking about Israeli companies or companies that are linked to Israel or companies that donate to Israel or anything like that. Any company can be approached and should be approached to take a public stand against genocide.

Any company can be approached to take the humane and moral stance on the Palestinian issue. I've talked about this before. I've talked about the, the spending power of Muslims in The United States, and you potentially bring, that spending power to the bargaining table whenever you're talking to companies. So don't just wait until you can find, you know, some company that you can incriminate in some way as a supporter of Zionism. Those aren't the only companies that you should be talking about or the companies that you should be targeting for your activism.

You should take it as a default that every company supports Zionism unless they publicly say otherwise, unless they publicly support Palestine. Any company. You don't need a list. You don't need to get a list of companies to boycott. You already have a demand and you can make that demand, to any company in your city, any company in your state, any company in your town, any company in your locality.

You can make that demand, regardless of whether they've made a a public statement or not, unless they've already made a public statement in favor of the Palestinians. Now say with, McDonald's, a disruptive or even an expressive protest outside of McDonald's, could be effective. You know? It prevents people from going into the McDonald's. It goes prevents them from going to the drive through and so on.

It hurts their reputation in the market. It associates them with atrocities, and potentially it harms their profitability, and that's all that matters. That's the only thing that the company will look at, McDonald's or any other company. If your public protests have no impact on their bottom line, you can protest twenty four seven. It won't make any difference.

But if the protest hurt their revenues, if their position hurts their revenues, then they'll change their position. Well, they're obligated to change their position in that case. They're obligated to their shareholders to change their position for the sake of profitability. Then Then if you wanna intensify your tactics, for example, you could plaster their windows, with flyers that have text about the situation and about the, the the connection of that company at McDonald's to the genocide with pictures of the victims, with the McDonald's logo. If you plaster those all over the windows, then that hinders customers from going there.

It's not a pleasant dining experience. You know? This will impose, loss of revenues. It will impose potentially cost on the company for removing the flyers and so on. It's all about mathematics, basic math.

You know? You have to, make the companies calculate whether it's more profitable for them to support or to be silent about genocide or more profitable to publicly oppose genocide. And it's our job to make sure that supporting genocide is costly, too costly to sustain. Opposing genocide has to be better for business than supporting it or better than being silent about it. And you have to force them to take a stand.

You have to do that by ensuring that the stand you want them to take is the only way that they can meet their revenue targets. So again, disruption has to be preceded and should be thoroughly accompanied by communication with the company because disruption is nothing but form of negotiation. It's a negotiating tactic. Disruption just lets them know the cost of their intransigence if they don't listen to you, if they don't comply with your request. It's the cost of not negotiating with you, refusal to negotiate.

Obviously, I'm talking about disruption within the limits of the law, civil disobedience, civil disruption, protest that's covered by free speech, and so on. I'm not talking about anyone breaking the law. Both expressive and disruptive protests could also be obviously effective in the global South as well, particularly if they're directed towards the private sector, towards especially western companies because the global South is where most of these companies are looking to increase their market share. So public opinion matters as long as that public opinion is also reflected in their consumer choices, in their spending choices because that's again the only thing that companies will actually pay attention to. I mean, for the global South, you really should be shunning western companies anyway as much as possible and trying to do do all of your business with local companies.

But in the context of the Palestinian issue, it is useful to have those western companies around just so that you can influence them through protest and consumer activism to get them to take the right stance. And again, let me say this again. I don't care if a company does or does not already have an existing connection to Israel. Any company and every company, should be approached to take a positive stance, a moral stance. And any company and every company, that refuses to do that, why it should be protested expressively and disruptively until they take the right position.

Like I've said before, you need to let the whole business community know. If I don't see, a Palestinian flag in your window, if I haven't seen or heard you, taking a positive stance, then I'm not entering your shop. I'm not entering your store, and I'm not doing business with your company. Simple. Very simple.

And furthermore, the public has it in their power to make sure that nobody does business with you, and they can do that by disruptive protest and even by expressive protest. So approach them first, approach the company first, email them, write to them, call them, arrange to meet with their CEO or their executives and so on, and request them to make a public expression of support for the Palestinians, and then take it from there depending on their response. But don't let there be any doubt in their minds when their revenues go down or when they're being protested, or when their stock prices fall, when they lose, subscriptions to whatever service they offer, and when they lose their customers, don't let there be any doubt in their mind why that's happening. And let them know the whole time that there's a very easy way for them to get it all back. And that is quite simply to do the moral thing, to do the right thing.

And when they do the moral thing, when they do the right thing, they will be rewarded by the market because the market is you. And I think this is crucial to understand. Expressive protests, serve the necessary function today in the West of keeping the Palestinian side in public discourse, but that's almost their only function. It's a good function. It's an important function, but that's almost the only function.

Companies will not care about that. But companies will absolutely care, about how you express your convictions through your consumer choices, through your activism, and whether or not, you pursue, disruptive protests to impact their profitability and their operational efficiency. And then, you know, once they take a public stance, once they take a a positive public stance, you can escalate as well. You don't have to be satisfied with that. Ask them to do more.

Ask them to, use their influence and their economic power to lobby the government, recruit the power of the private sector to support the Palestinians. I mean, you're if you're a if you're a mosque or, an Islamic center in The US or The UK or anywhere in the West, you should have a committee that's working on this. You should, you know, survey everyone who comes to your masjid, everyone in the Jamar, and ask them to list all of the companies and all of the shops that they go to the most, that they frequent the most, and then organize your people according to that list and start approaching those companies. Get everyone to write to them, everyone in the Jama'ah, everyone who comes to that masjid. Write to them, tweet them, tag them in posts.

I mean, you you start with relatively low intensity negotiating, and then you can intensify as needed. Intensify to boycotts, you know, intensify to protests, expressive protests, and then if necessary, you can intensify to disruptive protests and so on. Plan it out, you know, all of the steps that you will have to successfully proceed through if they don't respond. So depending upon their response, you have all of your steps already ready. I suggest being as targeted as possible.

Go one at a time. Get one success at a time and then just move down the list. And every success will already be a message to every other company on that list so that when they see you coming, they already know that they should comply to avoid the headache. Be methodical, be strategic, and be persistent. And where it applies, you know, when a company might have overseas branches, and if you're an immigrant in the West and there's large Muslim immigrant populations in the West, you can use that too.

Tell the company, you know, I don't only represent our Muslim community here in this city or here in this county or here in this state, but we are coordinating, with our people back home. And your response to our request will be communicated to them, and your response is going to, impact your business here and your business there. So we suggest you think wisely. I'm telling you, there's a lot you can do. There's a lot you can do.

You have enormous power if you just use it. You have enormous power. And once you start, influencing the influencers, influencing the private sector, where your power will be amplified exponentially, and, we'll start to be able to see real results, to make the situation better for the Palestinians.