Sumud Declaration of Intent
Many organisations try to give an answer to the human, cultural and ecological devastation that is going on in the world today. Many do so with courage and self sacrifice; others simply take advantage of the enormous funds which governments spend to manipulate the politics and economy of dominated countries.
All our respect goes to the first kind of organisation, whatever the ideas they draw their inspiration from may be. We do not want to have anything to do with the second kind.
Sumud is an invitation to go to the root of the matter. Often, behind the horror around us, there are not merely blind forces of nature, but warfare and plundering which have always accompanied imperialism.
Sumud proposes no model from the towering heights of a superior culture. Sumud wants to simply listen and provide support to those who struggle, in the dominated countries, against poverty and for liberation, through a kind of voluntary commitment which is neither sentimental nor condescending, rejecting any kind of complicity with those who think volunteer associations should provide sedation against rebellion.
The name comes from a very ancient Arab root, with many meanings: samda means a rock firmly planted in the earth; mismâd is a camel which goes on giving milk in a drought.
The basis meaning is impenetrability, attachment to roots, resistance. But those who resist, and do not let themselves be overwhelmed or seduced, have an inner richness. This is why Sumud at the same time also means self-sufficiency and freedom.
We Have Nothing to Teach Them
An economic disaster is hitting the wealthy West which is bound to change our way of life. It was about time! Indeed, we were sick and tired of this opulence.
It is not religion but money which is the most powerful opium of the people. The diabolic mechanism of material well-being had to stop to make people understand in what kind of maddening matrix they were stuck. Nonetheless, there is danger ahead.
The fear of plunging down can fuel the most spiteful feelings that human beings harbour. The police state is not just a devilish machine standing outside and against people; it also worms its way into the mind of the "citizens", by now transformed into subjects-consumers, causing them to withdraw into their dismal loneliness and cry out for "security". In order not to slide down to the bottom of the heap, they are readily accepting a new foreign enemy: the Islamic resistance.
This gloomy and chauvinist plea is about to end the myths of freedom and tolerance on which the West fancied to ground its superiority. Therefore, the resistance, which has been carried on so far by the peoples robbed, aggressed and tormented by the imperialist wars, is not any longer up to them alone. Now that the First World is shattering into pieces, we must learn a lesson from those who have always been doomed to resist hardships by any means while keeping the torch of their dignity burning.
Hence, we have not founded Sumud in order to run away from the West, but rather to better fight for a future of brotherhood and solidarity. We want to experiment the politics of positive facts and contagious examples. We want to change ourselves, because it is impossible to change the world without also changing the people living in it.
It is not as "missionaries" that we are answering Gaza's cry for help and travelling to Palestinian refugee camps. We do not have anything to teach them, nor do we want to convince them of the hypocritical values in the name of which the West, Israel and their puppet regimes have martyred them and caged them in ghettos. We are going there because they have asked us to help them resist, and in order to bring back to the West a part of the anger, the hope for liberation, and the humanity which managed to survive inside the Resistance.
For us, anti-imperialist voluntary work means bringing our bodies to the hell where the damned of the heart have been thrown, sharing their thirst for justice, and breathe together with them the air of freedom which has kept them alive. Sumud means belonging to the international community of the last, because the whole mankind will only be free when they have cut loose from their chains.
It is not religion but money which is the most powerful opium of the people. The diabolic mechanism of material well-being had to stop to make people understand in what kind of maddening matrix they were stuck. Nonetheless, there is danger ahead.
The fear of plunging down can fuel the most spiteful feelings that human beings harbour. The police state is not just a devilish machine standing outside and against people; it also worms its way into the mind of the "citizens", by now transformed into subjects-consumers, causing them to withdraw into their dismal loneliness and cry out for "security". In order not to slide down to the bottom of the heap, they are readily accepting a new foreign enemy: the Islamic resistance.
This gloomy and chauvinist plea is about to end the myths of freedom and tolerance on which the West fancied to ground its superiority. Therefore, the resistance, which has been carried on so far by the peoples robbed, aggressed and tormented by the imperialist wars, is not any longer up to them alone. Now that the First World is shattering into pieces, we must learn a lesson from those who have always been doomed to resist hardships by any means while keeping the torch of their dignity burning.
Hence, we have not founded Sumud in order to run away from the West, but rather to better fight for a future of brotherhood and solidarity. We want to experiment the politics of positive facts and contagious examples. We want to change ourselves, because it is impossible to change the world without also changing the people living in it.
It is not as "missionaries" that we are answering Gaza's cry for help and travelling to Palestinian refugee camps. We do not have anything to teach them, nor do we want to convince them of the hypocritical values in the name of which the West, Israel and their puppet regimes have martyred them and caged them in ghettos. We are going there because they have asked us to help them resist, and in order to bring back to the West a part of the anger, the hope for liberation, and the humanity which managed to survive inside the Resistance.
For us, anti-imperialist voluntary work means bringing our bodies to the hell where the damned of the heart have been thrown, sharing their thirst for justice, and breathe together with them the air of freedom which has kept them alive. Sumud means belonging to the international community of the last, because the whole mankind will only be free when they have cut loose from their chains.
