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Robert Stark recently interviewed a blogger from the North American New Right scene who is a former Bohra, Dota from Occident Invicta. I have considered writing about the Bohras for some time, since their survival strategy may be of interest to the heretics of our time. I hope he will take the time to contribute/correct this portrait. 

The second Bohra I ever met was utterly shocked when I asked him if he was a Dawoodi Bohra, since he was wearing their distinctive hat. I told him he was, in fact, only the second I had met in my life after a shopkeeper near my home in Paris. He asked me if this Bohra ran a hardware store and now it was my turn to be shocked. Is he the only Bohra in the city? This man then explained to me that when he visited the Dawoodi Bohra mosque in Paris he saw announcements in the vestibule about buying up hardware stores and community resources to support this process. This is a far cry from the requests for used clothes or announcements of future pilgrimages you might find in the back of a church.

Bohras wearing distinctive brocade hats for men and unique hijabs for females

I then looked into this and discovered that the Dawoodi Bohras were well on their way to taking over this niche within Paris. There can be no doubt that they are already colluding in the face of the distribution chain and will eventually pursue vertical integration with that distribution chain. Then there will be no hope for the remaining non-Bohras running hardware stores.

Any history buff who enjoys studying the details of royal claims of deposed houses in Europe will be thrilled by the incredibly complicated Shi’a lines of succession. When the Fatimid Empire was established by a Shi’a, the new Emperor was not ready to turn over his new government to Twelver Ayatollahs (as you find in Iran, Iraq, and southern Lebanon), so he proclaimed himself as the previously secret Imam.

Those who wish to praise Islam for its great works of technical and artistic advancement are speaking almost exclusively of this short-lived Empire based in Cairo. This Empire was unique in its tolerance of non-Muslim religion and fostering of esoteric spirituality. This was the first time in centuries that the spiritual children of Pythagoras and those Sufis who tried to protect a remnant of Dharmic religion within the external forms of Islam could live without fear of extinction at the hands of Christians or Muslims. The great university of Cairo was built by these Isma’ili Shi’a only to be taken over by Sunnis who have made it famous in the West through the propagation of ridiculous fatwas.

When the Fatimid Empire fell, their esoteric spirituality was shattered into a dozen pieces. Refugees to Yemen continued the former regime’s official Isma’ili Shi’a faith and proselytized among the locals. When this community lost contact with the successor Imam in exile (supposedly the ancestor of the present Aga Khan) the Imam was replaced by the “Da’i” or Missionary, thus beginning their Bohra phase. This position has become in practice a hereditary office of not only leadership but intense devotion. Each Da’i maintains spiritual contact with the last Imam who, for them, entered Occultation. As Yemen was already filled with Muslims, their position as a religious minority was obviously not tenable for the long term, so preachers and scouts were sent out to the East Coast of Africa and to India. Eventually the Da’i decamped with his court to India. The Dawoodi Bohras are one of several subgroups, each with their own Da’i. They then became their own caste, in a sense, an endogamous group of port city merchants.

When I asked my two Dawoodi Bohra acquaintances about this incredible history, both of them were totally unaware. Likewise, they had no idea about their common root with the present day Isma’ilis or their predecessors the Assassins. Like most Shi’a their focus is on Mohammed’s Koran, the unjust rule of the Umayyads, the righteous rule of Ali, and the Massacre of Hussein and his family at Karbala. What sets them apart is their intense loyalty and devotion to their Da’i. They are also very strict about zakat (tithing) to the Da’i who redistributes it, and Indians have told me rumors of merchant stalls being destroyed by thugs if this is not paid.

I asked the hardware store owner about the conspiracy to take over the hardware store niche, and he shamelessly confirmed it, though he was a bit bored by the topic. He was more interested in taking the opportunity to proselytize. His ancestors were Brahmins, and he uttered the usual iconoclastic slanders against them. He pointed out that all the items in his store were X Euros and 52 cents in honor of their 52nd Da’i, so each sale, which includes a zakat, is a prayer. (He has recently raised all his prices by one penny upon the death and succession of the Da’i.) He had just watched the then 100-year-old Da’i speak on satellite link at his mosque and flew to India for his birthday. When speaking the Da’i would pause and lean back then nod as if the Invisible Imam was whispering directions on what to say next. The Da’i spoke in extended metaphor comparing the Bohras to pigeons because they travel the world and live in its major cities. As the storeowner recounted the speech, two pigeons walked into the store, which he attributed to divine confirmation. He then told me that his spiritual practice lets him see angels and then swatted at an angel on my shoulder, perhaps because it was a Pagan angel. I asked if he participated in more mainstream Muslim activities like the Hajj. He went with a group of Dawoodi Bohras, and they were stoned by locals who caught them crying over the martyrdom of Fatima at the Al Baqi Cemetary.

Most shocking of all, he estimated that there are 2,500 men, women, and children in the Bohra community in Paris. With this incredibly small number of people there are on the cusp of cornering a market niche. The Bohras take to concept of Asabiyyah further perhaps any other group in the world. Each Dawoodi Bohra has a digitized identity card that carries his bio and other information which can be swiped at any of their Mosques around the world. No need for letters of introduction now. In many areas, six nights a week their dinners are cooked at the mosque and either picked up to eat at home or in community at the Mosque. They always eat from a common plate in the Arab style.

Narendra Modhi visits the 53rd Da’i soon after the death of his father

In India, the Bohras are as well-liked as merchants can be. The bar is fairly low for Muslims, though, and since the Bohras are never responsible for sectarian violence this is greatly appreciated. When the Hindus rioted against Muslims in Gujarat they spared the Bohras entirely. In fact, Narendra Modhi, the BJP governor in charge at the time (and perhaps the next Indian PM) has a very strong relationship with them. It may be reasonable to assume that the greatest physical threat to the Bohras today remains Sunni Salafists, as it has been for a millennium, not Hindutva activists.

I did not build a working relationship with them so I cannot give the ringing endorsement I gave the Sikhs in a previous article, but I think their story is interesting for us. We all know Our Enemy has replaced the Gulag with the unemployment line.

Takeaways for Us

Andrei Kievsky has written two articles in this space which relate to this topic. In “Seeing America as a Battle for Economic Niches” he points out,

The biggest “threat” we pose is if we get white people to see America the way Asians and Jews see it — namely, as an array of economic niches. This is of course a very “un-Aryan” way of looking at one’s sacred homeland. That’s what you get when un-Aryans are slowly taking over, and not enough whites are paying attention. Getting muscled out of our economic niches and our demographic dominance is a new “[American]-Indian” war, except we are the Indians. We are to be “succeeded.”

The Bohras, like us, are a miniscule group of heretics in a sea of hostile enemies. They have faced down religious fanatics who make the Dominican Inquisitors look like Unitarian Universalists. They did this by internalizing lessons enumerated in another Kievsky article “Entrepreneurialism and Community Service: A Strategy of Ethnic Interest Activism.”

To paraphrase:

1. An entrepreneur puts down roots


2. An entrepreneur must hone his networking skills, thus building local networks of support and eventually influence


3. An entrepreneur may have the ability to hire, mentor, and assess the competency of comrades and potential comrades


4. An entrepreneur sharpens the instincts for survival and creativity. Burning these neural pathways will help our activism far more than spending 40 hours a week in a “secure” low-level job.


5. An entrepreneur, depending on his company type, is buffered from Jewish-led Witch Hunts

I invite you all to revisit these articles by Kievsky, develop Asabiyyah and Taqiyya, and try to spend 4 hours each week by building real world foundations to secure your future as an activist and create channels to find, develop, and support other activists.