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A Brief Summary of the Racist ‘Dog-Whistles’ embedded in Chris Bennett’s framing of me in his two Cannabis Culture Screeds: Part 1

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Chris Bennett’s two recent libelous smear pieces published on the Cannabis Culture website[1] rely extensively—almost structurally—on a network of orientalist, racialized, and Islamophobic dog-whistles. These rhetorical devices work together to cast me as an inherently untrustworthy, volatile, and dangerous “Middle Eastern mystic,” a stock caricature in Western colonial discourse. He repeatedly invokes language and imagery that prime the reader to associate my Iranian and Islamic background with barbarism, deception, irrationality, and even madness. The cumulative effect is not merely personal insult: it is the deployment of a racialized narrative architecture that codes me as the archetypal “foreign threat,” the unknowable and unstable outsider whose spiritual identity, cultural heritage, and scholarly work are inherently suspect purely because they do not originate from a white, Western, Christian, or secular frame of reference.

As I have previously underscored in earlier analyses, this pattern is not incidental. It reveals, quite directly, that Bennett’s conduct is informed by racism and may even reflect deeper white-nationalist sympathies—latent or explicit—particularly given how closely his rhetorical template aligns with long-standing orientalist smear traditions and, more damningly, with the CESNUR/Bitter Winter playbook he has now openly admitted to corresponding with.[2] These articles do not merely attack me as an individual; they traffic in a set of racialized tropes that frame Middle Eastern, Muslim, heterodox and specifically Shiʿi intellectuals as aberrant, fraudulent, delusional, or dangerous. It is essential to expose each of these dog-whistles clearly and systematically. What follows is a point-by-point summary of the racial, orientalist, and Islamophobic devices Bennett deploys throughout his two articles.

 

1. “Middle East Theocracy” – exoticising and flattening Iran

“You Won’t Believe Which Middle East Theocracy Takes an Enlightened Line on Entheogens and Psychedelics!”

Even though he’s quoting a headline, he endorses and recycles this framing. The dog-whistle elements:

  • “Middle East Theocracy” as a monolith erases the specificity of Iran, Shiʿi jurisprudence, Qum, marājiʿ, etc., and collapses everything into a sensationalist Western meme of the “Middle Eastern theocracy.”
  • It plays to a Western audience’s pre-existing Islamophobic imaginary: Muslim = authoritarian + irrational + backward, so any “enlightened” move is “shocking” and click-worthy.
  • The trope suggests that rationality and nuanced jurisprudence are normal for the West but “incredible” or “newsworthy” for a “Middle East theocracy.” That’s a classic orientalist asymmetry.

Standing alone, it might be “just” orientalist. In the context of an article targeting an Iranian-background heterodox Shiʿi mystic and Bayānī, it becomes a racialized atmosphere in which me and my work are read. It should be noted that Rosita Šorytė framed matters in precisely the same way in her August Bitter Winter diatribe.[3]

Thus, Bennett’s uncritical recycling of the headline “You Won’t Believe Which Middle East Theocracy Takes an Enlightened Line on Entheogens and Psychedelics!” functions as an orientalist dog-whistle that flattens Iran into a generic “Middle Eastern theocracy,” erasing the specificity of Shiʿi jurisprudence, Qum’s scholarly traditions, and the internal diversity of Iranian religious discourse. By invoking the phrase “Middle East Theocracy,” he activates a Western Islamophobic imaginary in which Muslim societies are presumed authoritarian, irrational, and backward, such that any display of legal nuance or intellectual sophistication appears “shocking” or exotic. This framing constructs an implicit civilizational hierarchy—Western rationality versus Eastern primitiveness—that primes the reader to view Iranian religious reasoning as inherently aberrant. In the context of an article targeting an Iranian-background heterodox Shiʿi thinker and Bayānī mystic such as myself, this trope produces a racialized interpretive atmosphere in which my work is read through a lens of suspicion and Otherness. Rosita Šorytė’s identical framing demonstrates that this orientalist template is neither accidental nor unique to Bennett.

 

2. “A rather controversial individual who goes by the name Wahid Azal”

“…all accounts pointed to a rather controversial individual who goes by the name Wahid Azal, who, as we shall see, has been known to make some other notable outlandish claims.”

Take verbatim from Rosita Šorytė wording, there are dog-whistles galore embedded here:

1.     “Goes by the name…”

o   That phrase is almost never neutral. It’s used in policing, tabloid, and xenophobic contexts: “goes by the name” = alias, false identity, shady foreigner. For the record, my legal name is Wahid Azal.

o   With an Arabic/Persian name, this taps into a racialised suspicion of non-Anglo names: the brown/foreign man with “many names,” hence untrustworthy.

2.     Front-loading “controversial” before anything factual

o   He primes readers to see me first as a disturbing, problematic subject–the foreign troublemaker–before they hear your arguments.

o   The controversy is implicitly racialized: an Iranian Shiʿi mystic dabbling in psychedelics is cast as inherently suspect in a way a white psychedelic writer, such as Bennett himself, rarely is. Dog-whistle!

3.     “Outlandish claims”

o   “Outlandish” literally has connotations of “from the outside / foreign,” “bizarre,” “alien.” It functions as a coded way to say “this foreigner’s strange beliefs.”

o   It invokes the “crazy culty Middle Eastern mystic” stereotype without saying “crazy Middle Eastern cultist” outright.

Thus, Bennett’s description of me as “a rather controversial individual who goes by the name Wahid Azal” is saturated with racialised dog-whistles. The phrase “goes by the name” is a familiar policing and tabloid trope implying aliases, false identities, or the “shady foreigner,” a suspicion amplified when applied to an Arabic/Persian name—even though Wahid Azal is my legal name. By front-loading the label “controversial,” Bennett primes readers to perceive me as a problematic, disruptive outsider before any facts are presented, a framing that maps neatly onto Western stereotypes of the Middle Eastern troublemaker. His use of “outlandish claims” likewise activates the literal meaning of “out-landish”—foreign, alien, bizarre—subtly invoking the caricature of the “deranged Eastern mystic” without stating it explicitly. In combination, these rhetorical choices construct a racialized portrait in which my Iranian Shiʿi and Bayānī background becomes the very ground for imputing untrustworthiness, abnormality, and danger.

 

3. The repeated “alleged” framing around an Iranian cleric & an Iranian-background scholar

“Ayatollah Rohani’s alleged 2014 ‘Psychedelic Fatwā.”
“…according to Wahid Azal’s translation…”
“alleged correspondence…”
“When pressed for the original Persian scan, Wahid is said to reply that it’s private correspondence.”

Individually, “alleged” is defensible; collectively, the pattern is:

  • Saturating the Iranian religious authority and the Iranian-background mediator with doubt, while treating Western secondary sources, Western-framed cannabis scholarship, and his own interpretive narrative as default credible.
  • In critical race terms, this is epistemic racialization: the Iranian cleric and the Iranian interpreter are structurally less believable, their claims marked as inherently dubious, needing extra proof.
  • “Wahid is said to reply…” – vague attribution used to suggest furtiveness, secrecy. When applied to a brown/Muslim subject for a Western audience, that’s a classic dog-whistle of “shifty Oriental.”

It’s not that one “alleged” is racist; it’s that the consistent scepticism is reserved for the Muslim/Iranian chain of transmission, never for his chosen white/Western sources.

Thus, Bennett’s persistent use of qualifiers such as “alleged,” “according to Wahid Azal’s translation,” and “alleged correspondence,” combined with vague insinuations like “Wahid is said to reply…,” constructs a racially coded scepticism directed specifically at the Iranian cleric and the Iranian-background interpreter. While any single use of “alleged” could be neutral, the cumulative pattern systematically undermines the credibility of the Muslim/Iranian chain of transmission while treating Western secondary sources and his own narrative as inherently authoritative. This is a textbook instance of epistemic racialization—the presumption that Iranian or Shiʿi sources are intrinsically dubious, requiring exceptional proof, whereas Western voices are presumed reliable. The vague attribution further taps into the long-standing orientalist trope of the “shifty Oriental,” subtly framing me as evasive or secretive. Thus, the scepticism is not evenly applied; it is deployed exclusively toward the non-Western actors, revealing a structural racial bias embedded in Bennett’s method.

 

4. The way he plays with “Nabīl, Beirut” and “I could find nothing about this individual online”

“According to Wahid, ‘Nabil’ is the Beirut-based Shiʿi academic Nabil Hamed. I could find nothing about this individual online, and I tried the email address on the jpeg of the ‘fatwā’ with no avail.”

On the surface it looks like ordinary fact-checking. The dog-whistle part is how and where it’s deployed:

  • “Beirut-based Shiʿi academic” + “I could find nothing” invites the Western reader to imagine a shadowy, possibly invented Arab Muslim, because Beirut + Shiʿi + unGoogleable is coded as shady. For the record: Bennett is welcome to contact Sajjad Rizvi of the University of Exeter,[4] and specifically in the context of the 2014 Ruhani fatwa, who will likely verify the existence of Nabīl Ḥāmid of Lebanon (especially as of 2014).
  • Yet in reality, tons of scholars (especially in West Asia) have minimal English-indexed online footprints. Presenting that as evidence of non-existence plays on a Western, digitally centred epistemology that treats the non-indexed Middle Eastern intellectual as a suspicious non-entity. Dog whistle!

Within a Western psychedelic subculture that already has orientalist baggage (“real” knowledge is in English, academic, peer-reviewed, and Western), that suggestion functions as a dog-whistle that Muslim/Levantine figures are inherently dubious.

Thus, Bennett’s treatment of “Nabīl, the Beirut-based Shiʿi academic” as someone he “could find nothing about online” appears at first glance to be routine fact-checking, but in context it functions as a racialized dog-whistle. By pairing “Beirut,” “Shiʿi,” and “unGoogleable,” he subtly invites the Western reader to imagine a shadowy or possibly fabricated Arab Muslim figure—despite the well-known reality that many scholars in West Asia have minimal English-indexed digital footprints, and despite the fact that experts such as Sajjad Rizvi can readily verify the existence of Nabīl Ḥāmid in the specific context of the 2014 Rūḥānī fatwa. Bennett’s insinuation relies on a Western, digitally centred epistemology in which legitimacy is equated with English-language online visibility; those outside that sphere are cast as dubious or fraudulent. In a psychedelic subculture already steeped in orientalist hierarchies of “valid” knowledge, this framing reinforces the stereotype that Muslim or Levantine intellectuals are inherently suspect. Besides being a heavily loaded form of racialized and geographic erasure, it is also an unequivocal dog-whistle.

 

5. “That is why Wahid is pursuing his interests there, in the somewhat more tolerant climate of Western Cultures.”

“…and would certainly not stand the test of use in Iranian culture. That is why Wahid is pursuing his interests there, in the somewhat more tolerant climate of Western Cultures.”

This is one of the more blatant ones.

  • It sets up a binary:
    • “Iranian culture” = intolerant, repressive, primitive about drugs, irrational.
    • “Western cultures” = more tolerant, rational, open, evolved.
  • My position in the West is reframed as opportunistic exploitation of Western tolerance by a foreign agent whose ideas are “too extreme” for his own barbaric homeland. Here Bennett seems to want to eat his cake and have it too: either I am a foreign agent of the Islamic Republic of Iran or my heterodox ideas put in opposition to it. I cannot be both a foreign agent of the Islamic Republic and be too extremely heterodox for it all at the same time. Thus, the contradiction of the framing emerges and with it Bennett’s discursive bad faith. 
  • Yet what Bennett insinuates is a classic orientalist trope: the Eastern religious figure who escapes his backward land to prey on naïve Westerners. It disciplines both sides:
    • Iran as a backward, harsh theocracy;
    • me as a suspect migrant mystic using Western freedoms to push dangerous religious syncretism (that by definition stand against a monochromatic Islamic fundamentalism), never mind the illogic and contradiction that the West should therefore not welcome and be suspicious of  anti-authoritarian syncretism.

The racism is not in the surface statement about differing legal regimes; it’s in the moral coding: Islam/Iran = problem; West = stage for the dangerous Other. But a glaring contradiction here is in that Bennett appears to insinuate support for orthodox interpretations of Islam in the same breath that he is dog-whistling unequivocal Islamophobia by hysterically warning about it.

            Thus, Bennett’s claim that my work only survives “in the somewhat more tolerant climate of Western Cultures” deploys a classic orientalist binary in which “Iranian culture” is caricatured as intolerant, repressive, and primitive, while “the West” is cast as rational, open, and evolved. This framing recasts my presence in the West as opportunistic exploitation—an Eastern mystic fleeing his “backward” homeland to take advantage of Western permissiveness—thereby reproducing the long-standing trope of the foreign religious figure preying on naïve Westerners. The racism lies not in the superficial reference to differing legal regimes but in the moral coding: Islam and Iran are constructed as the problem, while the West becomes the stage for a supposedly dangerous Other. The contradiction in Bennett’s rhetoric is striking: he simultaneously invokes orthodox Islamic conservatism to suggest my ideas “would not stand the test” in Iran, while in the same breath deploying Islamophobic stereotypes that disparage Islamic cultures as inherently irrational, violent, dishonest, and oppressive. This incoherence underscores that the real function of his framing is not factual analysis but unequivocal racialized othering.

 

6. The execution / drug-war paragraph as racialised spectacle

“Iran’s 4,000+ annual drug executions and 80 % of police resources target opium, heroin, meth and cannabis from Afghanistan… bringing, brewing or drinking ayahuasca in Iran is illegal and carries the same risks as smuggling DMT… if discovered, you would face the full weight of Iran’s anti-narcotics machinery.”

Factual elements aside, the way this is staged inside a piece about me:

  • It re-centres Iran as a place of mass execution and brutal repression, with numbers that are thrown in without citation or nuance, never mind the fact that I am on record as being a dissident to the Islamic Republic and its clerical regime.
  • Yet this creates a racialised horror backdrop–an Oriental penal inferno– against which I and the fatwā are read, never mind the fact that Ayatollah Ruhani himself was a dissident to the regime.
  • Nevertheless it subtly codes me as someone emerging from /associated with a barbaric punitive Muslim state, which primes the audience to see me as dangerous, extreme, or marked by this context.

Again: describing Iran’s drug policies is not inherently racist. But as a rhetorical device inside a piece framing an Iranian-background mystic and dissident to regime as untrustworthy, it functions as a dog-whistle: “remember what these people’s societies are like.”

Thus, Bennett’s invocation of Iran’s drug-execution statistics and punitive narcotics regime—delivered without citation, nuance, or recognition that both Ayatollah Rūḥānī and I are long-standing dissidents of the Islamic Republic—functions as a racialized spectacle rather than a factual contribution. By staging Iran as a brutal Oriental penal inferno within an article about me, he constructs a horror backdrop against which my work and the fatwā are implicitly judged. This framing subtly codes me as emerging from, or tainted by association with, a barbaric Muslim state, priming readers to view me as extreme, dangerous, or ideologically marked by that context. While discussing Iranian drug policy is not inherently racist, deploying it as a rhetorical device to contextualise and delegitimise an Iranian-background mystic serves as an unmistakable dog-whistle: a reminder of “what these people’s societies are like,” designed to racialize the reader’s perception of both my identity and my scholarship.

However, Bennett should’ve done his research properly and at least found the English translation of my 2022 fatwā against the Ayatollahs regime[5] during the height of the #Woman_Life_Freedom uprising or even read my CounterPunch piece[6] on the event that went viral in a Persian translation not too long afterward. But let us not let a few inconvenient facts get in the way of Chris Bennett’s racialized smears, fantasist spin, dog-whistling.

 

7. “Self-described Sufi mystic living in Australia”

“The Sole Primary Source for the fatwā is N. Wahid Azal (a self-described Sufi mystic living in Australia).”

Two dog-whistle layers:

1.     “Self-described”

o   With “mystic,” especially in a racialised context, “self-described” is used to delegitimise a non-Western religious identity: the implication is “this is just something he calls himself; it’s not real.”

o   Applied constantly to brown spiritual figures, seldom to white psychedelic writers (“self-described psychedelic historian” is rarely used).

2.     The “mystic in exile” trope

o   An Iranian Sufi “living in Australia” is framed as a semi-exotic occult transplant, which plugs into Western fears about imported “cults,” foreign religious charlatans, etc.

o   For a white Canadian audience, “self-described Sufi mystic in Australia” reads as: not like us, not mainstream, foreign, suspect.

It’s a coded way to other and trivialise my religious identity, which is deeply entangled with ethnicity, migration, Islam and post-Islam, never mind that I am an Australian citizen and have been since the 1980s. Bennett’s characterization of me as “a self-described Sufi mystic living in Australia” deploys two interlocking dog-whistles that racialize and delegitimise my religious identity. The qualifier “self-described” is routinely used to cast non-Western spiritual identities as dubious or invented—an insinuation almost never applied to white psychedelic writers—thereby implying that my Sufi orientation is merely a personal affectation rather than a legitimate tradition. Coupled with the “mystic in exile” trope, the phrase frames an Iranian Sufi in Australia as an exotic or suspicious transplant, tapping into Western anxieties about imported “cults” and foreign religious figures. For a predominantly white Canadian readership, this coding signals “not like us,” rendering me foreign, marginal, and untrustworthy, despite my long-standing Australian citizenship and decades of community presence. The effect is to trivialize and other my religious identity in ways inseparable from ethnicity, migration, and Islam.

 

8. “Bayān Messiah or Blaspheming Madman?” – religious-racial pathologising

Even though this line appears in the related-posts teaser rather than the body, it’s part of the same framing:

“The Strange Case of Wahid Azal: Bayān Messiah or Blaspheming Madman?”

Dog-whistle content:

  • “Blaspheming Madman” directed at a brown, Shiʿi-adjacent religious figure taps directly into orientalist stock characters: the crazed Eastern prophet, the dangerous heretic, the unhinged false Mahdi.
  • Linking my Iranian / Muslim / Bayān religious trajectory to “madness” and “blasphemy” is not neutral; it plays on centuries of Christian and secular Islamophobic imagery about “false prophets” and “fanatical Orientals.”

It’s not “just rhetoric”; it is a racialised religious insult, because my spiritual claims are inseparable from my Iranian/Islamaic background. Thus, the teaser line “Bayān Messiah or Blaspheming Madman?” functions as an overtly racialised form of religious pathologisation. Applying the trope of the “blaspheming madman” to a brown, Shiʿi-adjacent Bayānī figure directly evokes long-standing orientalist stereotypes of the crazed Eastern prophet, the false Mahdi (which is what Abdullah Hashem is), and the fanatical Muslim heretic. By framing my Iranian, Islamic, and Bayān religious trajectory through the binaries of messianic delusion or blasphemous insanity, Bennett taps into centuries-old Christian and secular Islamophobic imagery that casts non-Western religious figures as inherently unstable or dangerous. This is not mere rhetorical flourish; it is a racialized insult that targets my spiritual identity precisely because it is inseparable from my Iranian and Islamicate background.

 

9. “Nasty and aggressive Internet troll… literally terrorized members of the Baha’i…”

“As we shall see Wahid Azal can be a nasty and aggressive Internet troll, who has literally terrorized members of the Baha’i and Ahmadi Religion of Peace & Light (AROPL)…”

This is primarily defamatory, but it also carries racialised dog-whistles:

  • “Nasty and aggressive” tied to “terrorized”: for a Muslim/Iranian subject, this triangulates with the “terrorist / extremist Muslim” stereotype, especially when aimed at members of religious groups framed as more “moderate” or “peaceful.”
  • To a Western reader steeped in Islamophobic media, “Middle Eastern man who terrorises a religious community online” plugs straight into a terror-discourse schema, even if he doesn’t use the word “terrorist.”

Again: one could call any race “nasty and aggressive,” but doing so about an Iranian-Muslim background subject, in an article already steeped in Iran/Islam tropes, gives it extra racial resonance. Thus, Bennett’s claim that I am a “nasty and aggressive Internet troll who “literally terrorized” members of the Bahá’í community and AROPL is defamatory in itself, but it also deploys unmistakable racialized dog-whistles—never mind the fact that I am an ex-Bahá’í and that the leader of AROPL heavily plagiarized from my public written work, which is why I got involved against AROLP. But by pairing “aggressive” with “terrorized,” Bennett taps into the familiar Islamophobic stereotype of the Muslim or Middle Eastern “terrorist,” implicitly casting me as an extremist figure menacing more “moderate” religious groups. For a Western audience conditioned by decades of media linking Middle Eastern men to violence or fanaticism, the suggestion that an Iranian-born Muslim-background scholar “terrorizes a religious community” activates a ready-made terror-discourse schema—even without using the word “terrorist.” Such language applied to any person would be inflammatory, but in the context of an article already saturated with Iran/Islam tropes, its racialized resonance becomes central to how the accusation is meant to be read.

Be that as it may, no genuine antifascist would ever be caught dead framing things this way and with that kind of explicit language—but an antifascist cosplayer who is either confused or an undercover white nationalist definitely would.

 

10. The “messianic-like claims of divinity” line

“A lot of this conflict seems to stem from people’s rejection of Wahid’s messianic like claims of divinity…”

On its face it’s about theology; as a dog-whistle:

  • It frames me as the stereotypical deranged Eastern guru, which Western readers know from a long orientalist gallery (Rajneesh, “Mad Mullahs,” etc.).
  • Combined with “goes by the name,” “self-described Sufi mystic,” “blaspheming madman,” the suggestion is: dangerous brown cult leader with delusions of divinity, while nary a criticism of ‘Abdullah Hashem, whom his CESNUR friends back.[7]
  • This activates a racialised fear of non-white religious authority – the idea that when a non-white religious figure claims high spiritual station, it must be madness or fraud.

That’s not just personal attack; it’s plugged into a history of racialised suspicion toward charismatic non-Western religious figures. Thus, Bennett’s claim that conflict “stems from people’s rejection of my messianic-like claims of divinity” functions as a racialized dog-whistle disguised as theological commentary. It casts me within a familiar orientalist gallery of the “deranged Eastern guru”—from the “Mad Mullah” caricature to the fraudulent brown mystic with delusions of grandeur—especially when read alongside his other labels such as “goes by the name,” “self-described Sufi mystic,” and “blaspheming madman.” This framing constructs a trope of the dangerous non-white cult leader, activating longstanding Western anxieties about charismatic religious authority when embodied by a Middle Eastern or Muslim figure, even as Bennett avoids criticising individuals like ‘Abdullah Hashem whom his CESNUR associates endorse. Such rhetoric is not a mere personal jab; it draws directly on a history of racialized suspicion toward non-Western spiritual claimants, rendering my religious identity inherently pathological in the reader’s imagination. Yet the glaring hypocrisy is in the blatant refusal in interrogating the same issue whether with Baháʼu'lláh (d. 1892) or Abdullah Hashem—since those two are not part of his CESNUR pay grade to criticize.

 

11. Selective credibility: Western sources vs. Iranian / Muslim ones

Throughout the piece, he:

  • Accepts Western articles and white/Western academics as neutral, authoritative.
  • Treats Iranian clerical offices, Shiʿi forums, and your own work as suspect, “hype,” or “just what Wahid says.”

That asymmetry is itself a structural dog-whistle:

  • Western sources = rational, objective.
  • Muslim/Iranian sources = dubious, biased, needing debunking.

In a context where Islam and the Middle East are already racialised, this epistemic hierarchy becomes part of the racist signalling: “our kind of knowledge,” “their kind of unreliable story.”

A final structural pattern in Bennett’s articles is the stark asymmetry in how he assigns credibility: Western writers, platforms, and academics are treated as neutral and authoritative, whereas Iranian clerical offices, Shiʿi scholarly forums, and my own work are framed as suspect, “hype,” or merely “what Wahid claims.” This epistemic hierarchy—Western sources as objective truth and Muslim/Iranian sources as inherently dubious—operates as a subtler but deeply embedded dog-whistle. In a discourse where Islam and the Middle East are already racialized, this selective credibility coding reinforces the civilisational binary of “our reliable knowledge” versus “their unreliable stories,” thereby racializing not only the content of the fatwā but the very legitimacy of Iranian and Islamicate intellectual authority itself.

 

Conclusion: A Coordinated Racialised Narrative Architecture—Not an Accident, but a Template

Taken together, all eleven of the dog-whistle patterns analysed above reveal that Chris Bennett’s two Cannabis Culture articles are not merely hostile, inaccurate, or defamatory—they are constructed upon a deliberate architecture of racialized and orientalist signalling. This architecture functions by systematically destabilising, de-legitimising, and pathologising me as an Iranian, as a Shiʿi/Bayānī thinker, as a Muslim-adjacent mystic, and as a Middle Eastern intellectual operating in the West. Each rhetorical move gains strength not in isolation, but through cumulative layering: the “Middle East theocracy” flattening, the insinuations about my name, the constant scepticism about Iranian sources, the exoticising of Beirut and Shiʿi scholars, the binary of “intolerant Iran vs. tolerant West,” the spectacle of executions, the delegitimising of my religious identity, the pathologising of my spiritual claims, and the selective privileging of Western epistemology over Islamicate knowledge systems.

Individually, any one of these might be brushed off. Collectively, they form a coherently racialized discourse that casts me as the archetypal “dangerous Eastern Other”—a figure drawn straight from 19th–20th century orientalist smear traditions and reproduced here almost verbatim. This is precisely why the overlap between Bennett’s language and that of Rosita Šorytė and the CESNUR/Bitter Winter apparatus is so alarming: the template is identical. The tropes are the same. The atmospherics are the same. The insinuations are the same. And Bennett has already effectively admitted communication with the very network that has spent years manufacturing orientalist and sectarian propaganda about Middle Eastern heterodoxies.

This reveals something critical: Bennett’s racism is not incidental, impulsive, or unconscious. It is structured, patterned, and part of an established discursive genealogy. It is also functionally incoherent—but only on the surface. He simultaneously invokes orthodox Islamist conservatism to “disprove” the permissibility of entheogens, while deploying Islamophobic caricatures that paint Iran and Islam writ large as barbaric and irrational. He feigns respect for clerical orthodoxy only to weaponise it against a heterodox Middle Eastern mystic he seeks to defame. This incoherence is not a flaw; it is the method. It is how racialized smear campaigns have long operated: use Islam when it undermines the target, and use Islamophobia when that serves better. The ideological inconsistency is the tell-tale sign of racialized opportunism—and racialized opportunism is a hallmark of the far-right, not the Left.

At its deepest level, Bennett’s rhetoric exposes two interlocking prejudices:

1.     The civilisational binary—the West as the arbiter of rationality, legitimacy, and objectivity; the East as primitive, irrational, deceptive, or dangerous.

2.     The racialization of religious authority—a white Canadian psychedelic writer is an “expert” by default, while a Middle Eastern mystic with decades of scholarship, publication, and lineage is reduced to “self-described,” “controversial,” or “outlandish.”

This binary is not simply insulting; it is epistemic violence. It tells the reader that Islamicate knowledge is inherently suspect, that Iranian scholarly output requires special suspicion, and that any religious authority not rooted in whiteness or Western secular liberalism is presumptively fraudulent. It also reactivates centuries-old fears of the Middle Eastern prophet, the heretic, the false Mahdi, the charismatic Eastern guru—the very images Western Orientalism used to pathologise non-Western religions for generations.

Put bluntly: Bennett’s pieces constitute a textbook case of racialized defamation disguised as cultural commentary. They do not simply misrepresent facts; they stereotype, other, and demonise based on ethnicity, religion, geography, and perceived intellectual alterity. In this sense, Bennett has inadvertently done something else: he has placed himself squarely within the ideological lineage of white nationalist discourse, whether consciously or through ignorance. His language aligns far more closely with far-right Islamophobic rhetoric than with any genuine antifascist position—something his “Antifa cosplay,” as I rightly call it, can no longer obscure. Indeed, the harmony between his rhetoric and that of CESNUR/Bitter Winter, groups well-known for defending authoritarian sects and producing anti-Muslim, anti-Iranian propaganda, raises the very real possibility that his smears are not simply personal animus but a coordinated or at least ideologically aligned act of racialized narrative laundering.

Ultimately, these articles by Bennett are not about a fatwā, nor about psychedelics, nor about scholarship. They are about who is allowed to speak, who is allowed to interpret, and whose knowledge is allowed to count. They are about policing the boundaries of legitimate discourse in a way that reasserts white male Western epistemic dominance and delegitimizes Middle Eastern, Muslim, Shiʿi, and Bayānī intellectual autonomy. And that—beyond any personal slight or defamatory statement—is the real harm: the attempted re-inscription of a colonial hierarchy of knowledge, identity, and spiritual legitimacy. For these reasons, Bennett’s articles cannot be brushed aside as harmless opinion pieces or personal disagreements. They reproduce, amplify, and operationalise a racialized discourse that has real-world consequences—socially, reputationally, and legally. And in doing so, they reveal far more about Chris Bennett’s biases, actual alliances, and ideological commitments than they do about me, my work, or the 2014 fatwā. This is why a full, systematic exposure of these dog-whistles is not merely justified—it is necessary.

 

 

 

[2] https://substack.com/home/post/p-179978814 (retrieved 28 November 2025), where he says:
 Wahid Azal opens his response to my article Questions about the 2014 Iranian ‘Psychedelic Fatwā and Wahid Azal? Part 1 of this 3 part series, with the bogus claim “Chris Bennett… appears to have aligned himself with CESNUR (Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni)”. Prior to gigging into Wahid’s sordid past, I had no knowledge or contact with this group, although since sending my articles on Wahid there way, we have corresponded. Massimo Introvigne the Italian academic and sociologist of religion, who co-founded CESNUR, who sociologist Roberto Cipriani “one of… the world’s leading scholars of new religious movements”, called the series a “tour de force’. Massimo, who has written in the defence of Ayahuasca, was very kind and supportive, and was interested in looking at some of my books on the role of cannabis and religion. So thanks for that new academic connection Wahid!

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