February 13th 2025,

Back to research class and today sucked. Okay, it wasn’t that bad but I had a hard time because I did not read the article. This was sort of on purpose, not because I did not want to read it, but because I was busy doing an assignment for my work placement class.

This was not a good decision on my end because when class started he separated us into groups, my nightmare, and told us to do the analyzing work for him. And to feel free to shame those who didn’t read the article. Fuck me i guess.

So each group had to do a certain cluster of questions that were based on a specific theme of analysis. By that I mean one group had to figure out the research question while another had to figure out the argument. I was in the argument group.

My fellow students were talking about the article while i just sat there reading, trying to answer the questions even though I hadn’t read it yet. Command F helps. I was definitely the weakest link/the member everyone dreads having. To be honest, even if I had read the article I probably would’ve said anything anyway.

The article we had to read was “Mosques and Markets” and “Black Flags in the Bazaar: The Making of Modern Islamist Proto-states” by Aisha Ahmed. Apparently my professor was there during the book launch. The main idea of this book was to take aim at traditional International Relations analysis, she had issues with the existing literature on Islamist issues, she believes that the idea that Islam is more inherently violent than envy other religion is bullshit. She also found it odd that nobody had made the connection between big businesses and Islamist groups.