Do you want to be published in a good-looking book? The Critical Muslim is looking for well-written, engaging essays for its Universities issue. Could be a personal account or a polemic. About universities of any time or place. 3000 to 6000 words, but not in an academic style! Get in touch...

book cover with new font

Here I am on the Lede - the podcast of New Lines Magazine - discussing my new book The Blood Between Us with Faisal al-Yafai. ://qunfuz.com/2026/05/18/when-is-a-revolution-over/

"The biggest social problem in Syria is that there is blood between us." @qunfuz.bsky.social, one of the most astute writers on modern Syria, joins me on The Lede to talk revolution, justice and anger. Listen @newlinesmag.bsky.social newlinesmag.com/podcast/when...

If you missed it at New Lines, please read it here. My essay reviewing five books on Syria by @rallaf.bsky.social, Loubna Mrie, Noor Ghazal Aswad, Anand Gopal, and Jerome Drevon and Patrick Haenni. qunfuz.com/2026/05/15/s...

If you missed it at New Lines, please read it here. My essay reviewing five books on Syria by @rallaf.bsky.social, Loubna Mrie, Noor Ghazal Aswad, Anand Gopal, and Jerome Drevon and Patrick Haenni. qunfuz.com/2026/05/15/s...

The weaponisation of anti-'anti-semitism' for the purposes of genocide is a huge belated victory for Hitler, who must be laughing in his grave. Globalise the intifada against Zionism and all forms of genocidal fascism.

I very much appreciated reading these book reviews by @qunfuz.bsky.social People seem drawn to simple narratives, painfully simple ones, especially when discussing Syria. Even the reviews of these books reveals importance nuance. The attraction to simplicity is a hazard.

If you missed it at New Lines, please read it here.... my article about Alawite-Sunni myths of each other. qunfuz.com/2026/04/12/s...

If you missed it at New Lines, please read it here.... my article about Alawite-Sunni myths of each other. qunfuz.com/2026/04/12/s...

What narratives can unite Syrians after years of sectarian violence and displacement? @qunfuz.bsky.social  considers the challenge of overcoming divisions that have become entrenched in the stories people tell.

A month old comment…

My new book is available for pre-order now. saqibooks.com/books/saqi/t...

The worst western takes are variations on 'Iran never hurt anyone in 50,000 years', which is absolutely true if Syrians are not considered people. The reason some Iranians and Syrians are dancing is because Iran committed so many crimes. Anyway, fuck US-Zionist aggression.

36 children were killed in an Israeli strike on a girls’ elementary school in Hormozgan province, Iran. The same doctrine that bombed schools in Gaza is now bombing schools in Iran.

My sister is reporting very loud bangs in Doha, Qatar. Everybody has been told to stay at home. Iran has hit US bases in Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Iraq, and perhaps Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Now that the regime is fighting for survival rather than for rhetorical purposes, the gloves may be off.

This is yet another illegal, unjustified and unprovoked attack by the genocidal settler state and its Crusader backers against a Middle Eastern nation. May the aggressors pay very dearly indeed. So long as fascists get away with their violence they will escalate.

The Critical Muslim is looking for well-written, interesting essays (for publication in book form) for its West issue... Get in touch if you can write about Western converts to Islam, Christian Zionism, Israel as a Western outpost, the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, etc etc

The fact that many Muslims chose to vote for a progressive party led by a gay Jew, thus robbing the fascist and pro-genocide parties of victory, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that their backward values clash with British standards of tolerance and openness.

Great victory for the Greens in Gorton and Denton. A kick in the teeth for Starmer's pro-genocide Labour Party and for the fascists of Reform. Hope &decency return to UK politics. (Reform is blaming the victory on those backward Muslims choosing to vote for a progressive party led by a gay Jew.)

If genocide is a foreign issue, 1. Why was I taught about the Holocaust in school? 2. Why is our government and Air Force participating, using our taxes? 3. Why are our politicians telling lies to ease the genocide, and demonising those who oppose it?

I've just finished it. Really, I think it may be the best non-fiction book I've ever read. It's not just about the Syrian Revolution, but about revolution in general, and freedom, despair, and radical hope. About human beings as individuals and in the collective.

I think I've found the best book on the Syrian Revolution. It's Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution by Anand Gopal.

Britain's High Court has ruled that the ban on Palestine Action is unlawful. This is an important victory against Zionist efforts to destroy British civil liberties. The next stage is to hold those British politicians, officials and businesspeople complicit in the genocide to account.

Here's a quick mini-review of Samia Rahman's book. qunfuz.com/2026/02/12/s...

Bilal Abdul Karim seems to have disappeared after being detained. I don't like his politics at all, and I understand why the government is concerned about him. But nobody should 'disappear' in a free country. We should be informed where he is and what he's been charged with.

A lot of books have been written about the Syrian war, but Robin’s earlier book, Burning Country, is still one of the best books I’ve read on the topic. The subject of this next one is, in a way, surreal. Excited to read it.

I have a book out in June.

So much gratitude to Minnesota.

Free Gozarto (a bit of cognitive dissonance for the Western 'free Rojava' crowd, who tend to be unified by their ignorance of the region and its history).

In short: a lot of the libertarian Left think and talk about Rojava in EXACTLY the same way that Leninists think and talk about Cuba. Desperate for "the revolution" to be happening somewhere, wilfully blind to the authoritarian reality, contemptuous of its ungrateful subjects

Every day (on Twitter) I have to block a dozen people calling me a Jolani-loving jihadist and Arab chauvinist thirsty for the blood of Alawites, Druze and Kurds. Reminds me how ugly, racist and ignorant very many western leftist orientalists are.

Trump used his Davos speech to make an ignorant racist attack on Ilhan Omar, Somali Americans and Somalia, and the worthless goons in the audience gave him a standing ovation. The world elite in 2026 consists of vastly overprivileged idiots.

Syria's Jazira region is Arab, Kurdish, Syriac, Turkmen, Armenian and Yazidi. It is multicultural, like the rest of Syria, and the rest of the region. Ethnostate ideology has drowned the region in blood for over a century. Time to move beyond it.

Disaster: the PKK leadership outside Syria has rejected the deal Abdi signed yesterday. Now the SDF is mobilising, and may fight for Hasakeh, where most people reject its occupation.

“Kurds are an integral part of the Syrian social fabric. Syria is the container that embraces all its sons.” – Mashaal Temmo, Syrian-Kurdish politician assassinated by Assad in 2011

Thank God the liberation of eastern Syria happened so easily. People in Raqqa, Hasakeh, etc are celebrating. That's because there was nothing democratic about 'democratic confederalism'. It was another dictatorship, experienced as occupation by most under its boot.

People of Deir Hafer, Maskaneh, and elsewhere are wildly celebrating their liberation from SDF occupation. (Unfortunately they don't seem to have heard the western twitter experts telling them they should be weeping.)

About 100 writers and four board members quit Adelaide Festival after it barred author Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Hopefully a way out of this criminal tragedy is found, but there are dynamics here that echo Syria in spring 2011

Please follow the link to the investigation into the Bureaucracy of Murder at Branch 215, where the Caesar photos were taken. qunfuz.com/2025/12/18/d...

SDF should take its soldiers and US weapons to Kobani and other Kurdish majority areas and negotiate from there on decentralisation and self-defence. They'll have cards to play, and many Syrians will sympathise. But not this occupation of east Syria, or parts of Syria's largest city.

It's hilarious when racist Iranians blame "the Arabs" for the very specifically Persian-Shia 'wilayat al-faqih' dreamed up by Khomeini and then used as a colonial weapon against the Arabs. Your bloodthirsty weirdness has nothing to do with the Arabs.

Please follow the link to the investigation into the Bureaucracy of Murder at Branch 215, where the Caesar photos were taken. qunfuz.com/2025/12/18/d...

The entire history of Crusader-backed Zionism is based on the idea that the feelings of Jews and Westerners are more important than the lives, rights and property of Arabs and Muslims. Zionist Jews feel that Palestine belongs to them, so the Palestinian ownership and presence must be cancelled.

The genocide is still raging in Gaza, and the steady pace of theft and murder in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria is rising, and now there is a concerted campaign from Netanyahu, the British government, and others to rob us even of the words to oppose it. Globalise the intifada.

It's a great essay in a great issue. A print thing, not an online thing...

I was on The Lede podcast discussing Ahmad al-Sharaa's visits to both Moscow and Washington DC - as well as Scottish independence! qunfuz.com/2025/12/03/t...

I wrote this article for Time magazine. The conspiracy theorists are making a big deal about a 'jihadi' in the White House - but it's only a big deal if you haven't been paying attention. qunfuz.com/2025/11/12/a...