Al Badiyah | البادية

The desert and its inhabitants have long been antagonized. Although the arid desert is a unique biome, "desertification" refers to resource depletion of biomes and loss of life. In contrast, "reforestation" signifies biome restoration. Historically, across “several languages, “desert” is associated with feelings of abandonment, scarcity, and death” (Alsane, 2019). "Desert is not an innocent term," Haynes wrote. Its name evokes "a sense of foreboding," derived from the Latin "desertum," meaning "abandoned," which was derived from the Egyptian "tesert." In Hindi, the desert is called "marustahal" or "a place of death." The Taklamakan Desert is “likely the Uyghur version of an Arabic word meaning ‘a place to leave alone.’” (Haynes 2013). The colonial lens views the desert as terra nullius and a tabula rasa, an inherently violent framework, and therefore, colonial tools treat it as such through violent means. The desert is not empty; it is not "no man’s land."

Al Badiyah, one of many Arabic words for “desert,” derives from the verb “bad’a,” or “to begin.” It can also mean “wilderness” or “jungle.” The word contains multitudes. Al-Bedu (often misnamed “Bedouins”) are the People of Al Badiyah, connected to the Land: “our beginnings” or origins. This single word can initiate conversations about re-indigenizing lands across biomes, from “jungles” to “deserts.”

"Map of the Cradle of Western Civilization 6,000 to 4,000 BC," illustrated by J. F. Horrabin, was published in The outline of history; being a plain history of life and mankind, H. G. Wells, 1926. Horrabin depicted the lands of the “Semitic Peoples,” calling it the "Cradle of Western Civilization." How did our Badiyah become the "Western" Cradle?

J. F. Horrabin, Map of the Cradle of Western Civilization 6,000 to 4,000 BC, in The Outline of History by H. G. Wells (New York: Macmillan, 1926).

Perhaps it's the same way Mariam Al-Astrulabi's Astrolabe, gave Europe navigation, which led to the weaponization of cartography for colonial aims, while she is erased from Western history books. Today, algorithms, named after the great mind, Al-Khawarizmi, are used to silence and profile us, and without which the "West" wouldn't have been able to develop the drones sent to our lands on our people. A major development in the weapons industry, tested and honed on the Cradle of their Civilization. At the NYSE, Arabic numerals flash onto the screens daily. A Bloomberg headline on Oct 30, 2024 read: "US Defense Spending Boosts GDP With Biggest Surge Since Iraq War." A CNN headline on [] read: "Trump budget proposes $1 trillion for defense, slashes education, foreign aid, environment, health and public assistance." In April 2018, Refik Turan, head of the Turkish Historical Society, at the conference "World Wars, Turkey and Syria on Unending Struggles for Power," stated: “According to a recent research, the number of Muslims who died in the fights and wars in the world in the last 25 years have reached 12.5 million. This almost accounts to the losses in a World War.”

The Combahee River Collective Statement from 1977 stated that “major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives.” Freire wrote, in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors” (Freire, 1970).

Al Badiyah is a collective that celebrates heritage through spatial intervention with a bias towards collective liberation.

It is a collective of Storytellers, Designers, Writers, and Artists uniting their skills for collective liberation. It offers a platform at the intersection of design, activism, and media, providing agency to tell our own stories.