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After a group of teenagers severely beat a prominent employee of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency in an attempted carjacking in Washington, DC, Trump threatened a federal takeover of the nation’s capital.

Trump shared an image on August 5 on Truth Social of a bloodied Edward Coristine, also known by his online alias as “Big Balls”.

“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,” Trump wrote. “Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump repeated the idea to reporters on August 6, saying he was “going to look at” revoking the city’s home rule, citing the attack on Coristine.

Data shows that in recent years, the district has had a significant crime problem, but offences such as homicide, gun-related and aggravated assault, carjacking, vehicle theft, robbery and sexual assault have declined from COVID-19-era peaks.

But a big question remains: can Trump undertake a federal takeover of the District of Columbia?

Experts say it’s possible, but not necessarily simple – he’d have to get Congress to agree.

What is DC’s ‘home rule’?

The United States Constitution created the District of Columbia as a 10-square-mile seat of the federal government.

Because the district is not a state, its residents lack full congressional representation; it has one House delegate who cannot vote on the floor, and no senators.

For about a century until 1973, the city was run by three presidentially appointed commissioners. That year, President Richard Nixon signed the Home Rule Act, enabling district residents to elect a mayor and city council.

While the home rule law granted the district significant autonomy for local governance, the city still answers to Congress on certain matters, including budgetary oversight and the ability to overturn local legislation.

“Since 1974, and indeed for all of DC history, members of Congress have interfered in city affairs to fiddle with everything from how long pools are open to banning the city from using its own tax money for a needle exchange programme,” said George Derek Musgrove, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County historian.

What does it mean to federalise DC?

Trump hasn’t detailed how federalisation would work, or said whether there are specific services he wants to take over.

Legal scholars agreed, given the explicit language in the Constitution, that Trump cannot simply take over the district and oust its home rule-elected leadership. He would have to work with Congress, the entity entrusted with overseeing the capital.

“Congress may exercise this authority, not exercise it, or delegate it,” Musgrove said. “With the Home Rule Act of 1973, it delegated a good bit of that authority – though not all – to a local government. It would have to act to reclaim that authority, or to delegate it to another entity, like the executive branch.”

Congress’s Republican majorities have so far supported Trump’s agenda with near-unanimity, but a repeal of home rule isn’t a sure thing.

It would need to win passage in the House, which the Republicans narrowly control and where Trump might be able to enforce his will with the majority. But it would also need to clear the Senate, which would take 60 votes, including at least seven Democratic votes, to proceed to final consideration. Democrats have generally been supportive of home rule for the district.

In February, Senator Mike Lee and Representative Andrew Ogles introduced legislation to repeal home rule. But the measure has only three Senate co-sponsors and three House co-sponsors.

“According to the Constitution, Congress makes the laws for the district,” said University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt. If Trump wants to “federalise DC in order for him to wipe out its Democratic leadership and replace it with people who are loyal only to him, that strikes me as precisely what the framers did not want”.

Short of a law, the president has other ways to exert influence in the district, including the authority to mobilise the DC National Guard without local consent. That’s a possibility he floated in remarks to reporters on August 6.

The Home Rule Act also allows the president to assume temporary control over the city’s police department in an emergency – something Trump threatened to do in 2020 amid nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd.

What has Trump said over time about this?

Trump has talked broadly since his 2024 campaign about expanding the federal government’s powers over the district, including enhanced oversight and direct management.

During the March 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump spoke about driving through the district, lamenting dirty roads. “It looked like somebody just took their garbage and just threw it all over the highways, the Beltway. It’s so disgraceful, so disgusting,” Trump said. “… Frankly, the federal government should take over control and management of Washington, DC.”

During a July 2024 Florida campaign rally, Trump promised to “take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, DC, and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime, but rather it will become the most beautiful capital anywhere in the world”.

Trump echoed this in February, again focusing on blight and crime: “I think the federal government should take over the governance of DC and run it really, really properly.”

In March, Trump signed an executive order establishing the “DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force”. It mandates beautification efforts such as graffiti removal and enhanced park maintenance, and it includes provisions to address violent crime and issues related to homelessness.

In a July Cabinet meeting, Trump pitched the idea again: “We have tremendous power at the White House to run places where we have to. We could run DC. I mean, we’re … looking at DC. We don’t want crime in DC. We want the city to run well.”

Has home rule been revoked before?

There is precedent for removing home-rule powers, but not recently.

In 1874, local conservatives angry about voting rights for local Black and working-class white residents teamed up with opponents of Reconstruction-era voting in the South and some of their Northern allies to roll back democratic laws in the district, Musgrove said.

The changes lasted until Nixon signed the home rule bill a century later.

A repeal of home rule would not be popular with Washingtonians. In 2024, Trump won less than 6.5 percent of the district’s vote.

While no city is perfect, the district has built a functioning city government under home rule, Musgrove said.

According to a poll released on Thursday, the majority of people in five countries, including Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Greece, South Africa, and Spain, think that weapons companies should cut or stop trading with Israel as the conflict continues.

Spain received the most votes in favor of ending arms deals, with 58% of respondents saying they should completely end them, followed by Greece, with 57%, and Colombia, with 52%. In Brazil, 22% of respondents thought sales of arms should be drastically reduced, compared to 37% who said they should stop altogether. These percentages were 46 and 20 percent, respectively, in South Africa.

The poll was created by the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine network, supported by the left-wing Progressive International movement, and released last month by the Pollfish platform in response to a call made by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, to cut financial ties with Israel as she decried an “economy of genocide.”

The people have spoken, and they don’t want to be complicit. Ordinary people across the globe demand the end of colonialism, apartheid, and genocide, according to Ana Sanchez, a Palestine-based campaigner for Global Energy Embargo.

No nation can justify maintaining diplomatic, military, or economic ties with Israel while it executes a genocide in Palestine, according to the constitution. People’s ability to cut the supply lines of oppression are at the center of this, not just trade.

The survey locations were chosen because of the countries’ direct involvement with Israel’s energy import and export.

To assess public attitudes toward responsibility, more than 1, 000 people from each country were questioned about Israeli governmental and private relations.

The highest level was held by Greece and Spain, and the lowest level was held by Brazil as the humanitarian crisis grew worse.

Israel’s current “military actions” in Gaza are being opposed by 61 and 60 percent of the population in Greece and Spain, respectively, while 50 percent of Colombia and 61 percent of the population opposed them. 30% of Brazilians and 20% of South Africans opposed Israel’s war, respectively, while 30% and 20% both supported the campaign.

More than 60, 000 people have been killed by Israel’s genocide in Gaza to date, the majority of them children and women. The Strip’s besieged Strip is in a state of ruin as the population starves, with the highest per capita child amputee population ever. Arms dealers and those who facilitate their deals are in greater need of scrutiny as the crisis worsens.

Following a campaign accusing the Danish shipping giant of having ties to Israel’s military and occupation of Palestinian territory, Maersk announced in June that it had abandoned all businesses connected to Israeli settlements, which are deemed to be prohibited by international law.

Norway made the announcement on Tuesday that its sovereign wealth fund’s investments in Israel would be reviewed in light of its ownership stake in an Israeli company that provides fighter jet components to the Israeli military. Numerous wealthy and pension funds have recently distanced themselves from businesses connected to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank or its conflict with Gaza.

41 percent of Spanish respondents said they would “strongly” support a state-level action to halt trade in weapons, fuel, and other goods in an effort to pressure Israel into halting the conflict. In Colombia and South Africa, this percentage was 33 percent, and Greece and Brazil, this percentage was 28 and 24 percent, respectively.

Francois Burgat, a French political analyst, was accused of supporting terrorism in a post that included a statement from Hamas on social media. He was later found innocent. Burgat joins Centre Stage to explain the case, the politics that underlie it, and what he thinks it reveals about Palestinian freedom of speech and support.

Over the last century, both Muslim and non-Muslim thinkers have centred their reformist discussions on decolonisation. The sheer volume of books, articles, and seminars on this subject has become overwhelming to the point of saturation. Muslims entered this debate seeking to understand how to regain global relevance, if not influence. They struggled to pinpoint exactly where and how the Muslim agenda went off course. The colonisation of Muslim countries became the nearest and most convenient target to criticise and demonise. As a result, Muslim thinkers of the 20th century were deeply absorbed in the process of decolonisation. Analysing the root causes of our decline and disintegration is undoubtedly an essential step towards self-correction and revival. The question, however, is how much progress have we made as an Ummah by endlessly repeating age-old analyses that leave behind only a bitter aftertaste? Where has all this talk of decolonisation actually taken us?

I dare say it has led us to pursue aggressive efforts to further secularise Muslim values and promote misplaced priorities, such as pushing for a nation’s entry into the World Cup, building the tallest skyscraper, hosting music festivals, spending billions to recruit the world’s top football players, and staging Formula One races. As an afterthought, there is also an appreciation for education, often reduced to importing Western universities into the Muslim world. The significant contribution of Ismail al-Faruqi, a prominent Muslim philosopher who championed the concept of the Islamisation of knowledge, defined as the integration of Islamic principles into all fields of learning to realign modern knowledge with a monotheistic worldview, has quietly faded from focus. It has been increasingly overshadowed by an apologetic stance towards liberalism.

In striving to regain global standing, we seem to have replaced meaningful reform with superficial displays of progress.

In Western academia, discussions on decolonisation began with examinations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s paradox of founding and later expanded to ideas such as Frantz Fanon’s theory of spontaneity, Sukarno’s concept of guided democracy, and Ali Shariati’s paradox of colonisation. With Ismail al-Faruqi’s call for the Islamisation of knowledge, Muslims came to recognise that true self-determination must also involve a revival of Muslim epistemology. This aligns with the Peruvian scholar Anibal Quijano’s argument that decolonisation requires a critical challenge to Eurocentric control over knowledge.

The Eurocentric and Western dominance over global knowledge, particularly in areas where they have little legitimacy to lead, is evident in many examples. Curators who oversee vast collections of Muslim manuscripts often claim the authority to narrate their history according to their own interpretations, which frequently diverge from the perspectives of the original authors and traditional commentators.

As the founder and director of Darul Qasim, an Islamic seminary dedicated to advanced studies in the classical Islamic sciences, I witnessed this here in Illinois in the United States at an exhibition of rare Qur’anic manuscripts, where a non-Muslim woman had been appointed to “tell the stories” of the texts. When a student from Darul Qasim corrected several inaccuracies in her account, her only reply was a dismissive: “I’m in charge here.”

Another example involves a scholar from Darul Qasim who submitted a manuscript on classical Arabic grammar to a prominent Western publisher who refused to publish it, stating: “We cannot accept this work as you have not cited any Western sources.” Such incidents highlight how Western academic gatekeeping continues to reinforce Eurocentric control over knowledge.

Ismail al-Faruqi sought to rescue Muslim knowledge from Western dominance. His vision was to “Islamicise” knowledge by cleansing the sciences of concepts that are fundamentally incompatible with Islam. His theories were grounded in a monotheistic approach that integrated all sciences with the worldview of the Ummah. The concept gained traction and was promoted by the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a research organisation founded to advance the Islamisation of knowledge and embed it within academic discourse. While al-Faruqi’s call to reevaluate our system of knowledge was undoubtedly a step in the right direction, it does not fully lead us to the ultimate goal of comprehensive decolonisation.

What is needed is a theory that goes beyond the Islamisation of knowledge. I propose digging deeper into what scholars call the coloniality of knowledge, the persistent dominance of Eurocentric frameworks that continue to shape global intellectual thought, and advancing a theory of the desecularisation of knowledge. This requires realigning knowledge at the level of its epistemology, not merely in terms of politics or economics. Muslim scholars must take on the task of presenting and representing a coherent and effective theory of our epistemology.

In summary, Islamic epistemology recognises three primary sources of knowledge: that which comes through the five senses, that which is derived from human intellect, and that which is conveyed through authentic and true reports, such as revelation to a Prophet. These three encompass every source of knowledge known to humankind, with intuition and dreams also understood as products of the intellect.

Historically, Muslims played a leading role in mastering these sources of knowledge and disseminating them across the world. In Islam, knowledge is never separated from Allah, who is the original source of all knowledge. Unlike Western intellectual traditions that sought to separate knowledge from God in pursuit of modernity and prosperity, Islam affirms that true creativity flows from Allah, and that inventions and innovations arise from honouring Allah’s knowledge of the world.

Unfortunately, there is today a deep tension in the Muslim world over how to distinguish between Islamic and secular knowledge. Many seem to believe that Muslims must undergo a Western-inspired renaissance to reclaim past glory, doing so without regard for the afterlife, or akhirah. The problem is that Muslims do believe in the akhirah, and this has created a self-imposed and false dichotomy, born of misunderstanding Islamic principles, that suggests Muslims must compete with the West while simultaneously upholding the rules of salvation. This perceived conflict forces an artificial wedge between what is considered Islamic and what is considered secular.

I believe this dichotomy is false, and anyone familiar with Islamic law, or fiqh, would recognise that. Islamic law governs how Muslims act, react, and interact with the mundane world in ways that have direct implications for their afterlife. Human actions in this world have consequences in the next. While this is not a treatise on Islamic law, this observation alone should address the doubts of sceptics. Muslims are generous not only because it helps those in need, but because they believe such acts bring immense reward in the akhirah. Charity, therefore, is not merely a humanitarian value, but a profoundly religious one. Belief in the akhirah desecularises even the simplest acts of kindness, reaffirming how Islamic thought integrates the material and spiritual.

I propose that Islamic epistemology views all knowledge not as secular or sacred, but as either beneficial (nafi’) or more beneficial (anfa’). Any knowledge that benefits an individual, human or non-human, in this world is considered beneficial. The Quran itself provides examples of such knowledge: Allah taught Nuh (Noah) the craft of building an ark from wooden planks that withstood a massive storm, and taught Dawud (David) the skill of forging armour from iron. In both cases, the knowledge is described as coming directly from Allah, and therefore, cannot be considered secular. Building bridges, highways, hospitals, and schools also falls into this category of beneficial (nafi’) knowledge, as these works serve human welfare in this life.

Knowledge that benefits human beings in the akhirah is anfa’, or more beneficial. This includes knowledge of reciting the Quran, understanding ritual worship, and knowing how to serve Allah. Establishing religious schools (madrassas), mosques, and zakat foundations, for instance, belongs to this category of anfa’ knowledge.

Muslims do not need to create a false dichotomy in knowledge, for tawheed, the oneness of Allah, also encompasses the unity of knowledge. With this understanding, there is no need to desecularise knowledge; rather, we must appropriate it correctly according to its utility in this world and the next. The key lies in affirming the existence of the other world. I dare say that, in an age where belief in parallel universes is entertained, life beyond this world is not as far-fetched as secularists might have us believe.