"Millennials Are Killing Capitalism” Hosts a Call for Pan-Islamic Revolution
SOAS research associate Dr. Farwa Sial argued that Islam is “incompatible with capitalism” and called for pan-Islamism to help “dismantle the material world as it exists.”
A SOAS University of London Research Associate and a Malaysian human rights lawyer recently banned from Singapore as an "undesirable visitor" appeared together on an American podcast on July 30 to argue that Islam is "incompatible with capitalism" and must merge with Marxism to "dismantle the material world as it exists." Dr. Farwa Sial and Fadiah Nadwa Fikri made their case on "Millennials Are Killing Capitalism," a US-based show whose founders openly describe “US-led imperialism” as "the greatest threat to all forms of life that the world has ever known."
The episode, promoted on Instagram as a discussion of "the way that Islam has historically connected with socialism and communism and anticolonial movements," lays out — in the speakers' own words — a program of pan-Islamic revolution, solidarity with Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and open rejection of Western political frameworks. One of the two women, Dr. Farwa Sial, currently holds a research post at SOAS University of London, a public British university funded in part by UK taxpayers.
The Podcast: Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
Founded in 2017 by Josh Briond, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and Jared Ware, a former producer of the prison-abolition podcast Beyond Prisons, Millennials Are Killing Capitalism is now in its eighth year and has published more than 330 audio episodes. Its stated mission, posted publicly on Patreon, is to provide a platform for “communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements” and figures its hosts believe are marginalized by mainstream media.
Recent guests include Torkil Lauesen — the Danish former member of the Blekingegade Group who was convicted in 1991 for a series of armed robberies committed between 1972 and 1989 to funnel money and weapons to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department since 1997. MAKC’s guest description of Lauesen calls him a “longtime revolutionary activist.”
Dr. Farwa Sial — SOAS University of London
Dr. Sial is a Research Associate at the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London, where her listed research interests include “imperialism.” She is also Head of Research and Policy for the Asia Region at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs).
On the MAKC episode, she offered the sharpest ideological statement in the conversation:
“If we understand the genocide as a product of capitalist imperialism, then religion can be an answer in understanding how to revert that, how to transform that... Islam is a religion which is incompatible with capitalism. It’s not about [hoarding]. It’s not about personal gains. It’s not about philanthropy. It’s about liberation. It’s about pan-Islamism across the world, and it’s about dismantling the material world as it exists.”
Elsewhere in the same episode she declared:
“In recent history we see a broad struggle of left politics and a revival of principles of Islam… they have taken a decisive role in merging Islam with the anti-imperialism. This is in solidarity with the internationalist turn against US-led imperialism, in solidarity with Iran, with Cuba, with Venezuela, and the emphasis is on class struggle.”
These are not off-hand remarks. In June 2025, IDEAs published her essay “Defending Iran is Asia’s Existential Imperative,” in which she called the Islamic Republic “the last functioning bulwark against full-spectrum US domination” and urged the Global South to defend it against Israeli and American military action.
Fadiah Nadwa Fikri — Deported by Singapore
Fadiah is a Malaysian human rights lawyer and member of Sekolah Merdeka (”Liberation School”), a Malaysian organization that describes itself as focused on “radical political education.” In March 2026, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs barred her from re-entering the country, calling her an “undesirable visitor” who had “encouraged some of the youth here to adopt her brand of radical advocacy” and “to undertake disruptive and violent actions to support specific causes.”
Her X profile uses the slogan “Patria o Muerte” — Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolutionary chant. In November 2025, she published a defense of Palestine Action — a group the UK government proscribed as a terrorist organization in July 2025 — in which she praised “Palestinian armed resistance groups... that aim to disrupt imperialist accumulation and expansion of capital through warfare.”
The Alliance
Sial and Fadiah are not merely co-guests. After Fadiah’s deportation, Sial publicly defended her on X, arguing Singapore was “threatened by a young academic... for speaking/organising against the #Palestiniangenocide.” In January 2026, the two co-authored an essay on the Marxist publication Monthly Review Online on imperialism and ASEAN.
The Network
Sial and Fadiah are not isolated voices, and the MAKC episode is not an outlier appearance. In May 2025, Fadiah spoke at the inaugural International Anti-Imperialist Conference in Lahore, Pakistan, hosted by the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party — the same Pakistani Marxist-Leninist party Sial praised by name on the podcast for “merging Islam with anti-imperialism” in solidarity with Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. One month later, Fadiah appeared on a Kuala Lumpur panel alongside “representatives of Palestine, Cuba, and Iran.” That same month, her organization Sekolah Merdeka posted photographs of a meeting with Cuban Ambassador Yadira Ledesma Hernández, describing their intent to “strengthen the joint liberation struggle against imperialism. Patria o Muerte!”
An ideology once confined to fringe pamphlets and closed reading circles now has a research post in London, a Patreon subscription base in the United States, a conference platform in Pakistan, and diplomatic touchpoints in Havana and Tehran. Its participants publish under their real names. Its funders accept credit cards. Its academic infrastructure is legally hosted by taxpayer-funded institutions in the West. Singapore looked at one figure in this network and drew the conclusion that a foreign government should draw: she is a security concern. The West’s answer, so far, is a salary.