The first time I read this comment, I started to write a reply but then realized that I’m not totally sure what you mean in some places, and I figured it would be better to ask than just assume.

Islam in this context is a material force, precisely because it is imbedded in the people - the colonized and the working classes, in their decision-making and power. It becomes entrenched in the material base.

What do you have in mind with the notion of ‘entrenchment’ here?

It is in the masjid where muslims congregate and form communal bonds. It is in the masjid where people recieve their political and cultural education.

How does this distinguish the masjid from superstructural institutions generally, like schools or mass media?

It is in the masjid grounds in which people partake in the political economy.

What does this mean? That the masjid is an employer? That it’s a marketplace? Or just that it carries out the functions of the state in Islamic societies?

Why is it when state secularism and athiesm is mentioned, we only mention those in AES, like the conditions of the ummah is somehow exactly one-on-one the same as that of China or the USSR?

To be clear here, ‘the’ ummah extends to everywhere Islam is believed or practiced? Or does it mean instead something more like ‘Muslim countries’?

Islam is the form that the anti-imperialist essence of the ummah takes.

To make sure I understand what you mean here, Is this a fair (equivalent) restatement or does it miss some things?

in the ummah, anti-imperialism takes the form of Islam

I think in cases where religious institutions are actively organizing and encouraging people to engage in struggle, political or armed, to change their circumstances, it doesn’t make much sense to call it false consolation.

Even when religions assert a kind of cosmic justice outside the scope of individual earthly lives, it’s not always true that religion serves mainly to console, even in matters of personal psychology and belief. Christianity certainly falls into that pattern, but John Brown was not as consoled by the prospect that justice would be achieved in the afterlife as he was convicted by his religious morality that the earthly evil he saw in slavery had to be combatted by all means available, immediately.

I do think that desperate situations drive people to religious belief as a way of upholding the just world hypothesis in the face of powerful cognitive dissonance. But that’s just one factor among many in promoting religious belief, and as a general tendency, it doesn’t necessarily address what religion inspires or motivates people to do in particular circumstances.