Values & Principles
Values
All of our work is built upon these values. Values are the glue that bind principles to create a solid foundation. We can all say the exact same words, but what grounds us / holds us accountable? These things must be present for us to genuinely be behind our foundation — for example you can’t understand collectivism without understanding settlerhood.
Source: Letters from a Living Utopia by Mx. Yaffa AS
These values are built from Islamic and Trans wisdom and are core to utilizing Islamic and Trans Methodologies for world building.
We are human.
We are accountable.
We are growing.
We are collectivist.
We claim purpose and responsibility.
We claim non-attachment.
We claim liberation, vision, utopia.
We honor strategy.
We honor sovereignty.
We honor death.
Human - Insan
We honor what it means to be human and we honor the realities that are meant for us.
Liberation is inherent to being human.
Belonging is inherent to being human. Assimilation is the antithesis to belonging, if we did not belong we would have gone extinct long ago. To belong is necessary for liberation — and it is not new, it has always been ours to claim.
We make mistakes, we are accountable, we grow towards one another and our purpose.
Accountability - Tawbah
It is our responsibility to honor that to be human is to make mistakes, to be accountable, and to grow.
One of the most harmful visions of systemic oppression is to come into anything from a place of perfection or desiring perfection. Perfection, in the white supremacist capitalist sense, is anti-human. We move towards humanity, always.
Growth - Namu
We are meant to always grow towards our purpose: stewarding land and caring for one another.
It is our responsibility to develop skills needed so we can hold our current realities and the possibilities of collective liberation.
Systems of oppression intentionally suffocate our capacities so that we are unable to show up when it is most needed.
We honor that capacity is held in the physical body, expanded through land, ancestors, spirit, start, and all creation. Training our body-minds to expand our capacity is necessary.
Collectivism - Jama’eiah
This work is rooted in an ecosystem made of land, spirit, and every living being, centering the most marginalized of the most marginalized, particularly people and places we will never know and will never directly interact with.
This work is for everyone and it is not about any one of us or our immediate community, it is so much bigger. The work is about dismantling all systems of oppression, not necessarily listening to the wants of anyone, especially when these desires are in direct opposition to this broader goal.
Purpose and Responsibility - Masouliah
Every human is a part of building a collectively liberated consciousness and worlds. It takes all of us
This work is ours, not someone else's somewhere else.
It is our responsibility to learn to do this work, to be trained, to come together, to be a part of collective liberation creation. We are responsible for our purpose to steward land and care for one another, a purpose that can not truly be honored if we are not working to dismantle systems of oppression and build systems of care and liberation.
Non-attachment - InshaAllah
We control how we show up, we do not control anything beyond that
In the greatest scheme of things we do not control what happens beyond ourselves and even within ourselves there is plenty that is not in our control
We honor the work we need to, not trying to force an outcome in our timelines and visions; we simply do not have that kind of power, nor is it for us to ascribe to
Hakeem — We do whatever we can, and the rest lies with the best judge of all judges, Allah (SWT).
Our physical bodies are only here temporarily. While we hold no physical attachment to this world beyond the prescripted length of our lives, we are tethered to liberation and will/should do everything in our power to uphold the responsibility Allah (SWT) endowed us with to this dunya.
Dream, Utopia, Liberation, Vision - Huriah
We know that limitless possibilities are possible — not just the possibilities placed upon us by systems of oppression. We dream not because we can design a perfect world but because the act of dreaming supports us in expanding our capacity and grow towards liberation, just like some plants grow towards the sun — we grow towards liberation through dreaming. We dream not for a distant future, but to enact our dream of liberation now.
We were created with purpose, our work is to remember and return to liberation.
Strategy - Tadbeer
We are strategic in how we move towards collective liberation. This work is not about us, thus our comforts and discomforts are not relevant.
It is our responsibility to care for ourselves when it is most strategic for us to see this vision through. If we’re one of the only people to see a vision through, it is therefore important for us to take care of ourselves in order to actually see the vision through.
We reflect, we consider, we act.
Sovereignty - Seyadah
We were created different and sovereign.
We claim our autonomy, for our land, our bodies, and everything else we have been gifted.
Within our lifetimes, not representing a single human life, referring to the humanity beyond oppression, the one that is still here when collective liberation is achieved. It could be today, tomorrow, a thousand years from now — it is all within our lifetime as a collectivist ecosystem.
Death - Maut
Death is a part of the spiral of life
Everything dies — humans, plants, the planet, the universe, and definitely systems of oppression.
We mourn as we build collectively liberated worlds.
This work does not begin or end with any of us — we live and we die along the way.
Principles
We are committed to Islam as an organizing methodology through which we labor towards liberation—a vision of liberation that encompasses all.
We honor an Islam that honors humanity, and assert transness and queerness are and will always be human.
We are committed to Indigenous Sovereignty everywhere, including land back and bodily autonomy for all individuals.
We are committed to undoing settler ideologies (i.e., the desire to approximate to whiteness) among immigrant and forcibly-displaced people. We refuse to assimilate into settlerhood on stolen land and recognize the privileges gained due to genocide that many of our community members benefit from, even as we experience genocide ourselves elsewhere.
We are committed to the end of all empires that oppress through domestic and international state violence, including, but not limited to policing, incarceration, surveillance, colonialism, imperialism, and zionism.
We are committed to building alternative systems and institutions through mutual aid to meet our community’s needs.
We are committed to utilizing Islamic, disability, and trans methodologies for building a collectively-liberated world that recognizes the intersections of all struggles.
We are committed to investing in a liberated world, understanding that liberation is a daily practice and not only an end destination.
We are committed to fulfilling our purpose that Allah (SWT) bestowed upon us: stewarding land and caring for one another, recognizing that we each individually carry a different role to achieve this purpose.
