=Salah= 
**Posted by:** Ali Bin Kalifa Al Thani, Firewall Crow <__Info__ __Msg__ __Rep__>
**Station Type:** Hamilton Cylinder
**Allegiance:** Independent (Contested)
**Primary Languages:** Arabic, Punjabi, Turkish
**Population:** 215,000
Peace be unto you. It is not often that one is asked to speak of his home to others in Firewall, and on those rare occasions when one is obligated to do so, it is usually for reasons that one’s home is in imminent danger of a most dire type. Therefore, it pleases me to be able to tell you of Salah when there is no clear or present danger to the habitat, merely the satisfying of the curiosity of outsiders.
I myself have a rather unique relationship to Salah. My grandfather, great uncles, father, and uncles have all been vital in the funding of the great Hamilton cylinder. Even before the Fall we—that is, the Al Thani family of Qatar—were great ﬁnanciers of efforts to expand ever deeper into space. When approached with an opportunity to build a habitat greater and more grandiose than any previously built, we jumped at it. You see, we have a bit of a reputation for desiring to build big. Once the Fall hit, many of us retreated to lands and estates on [[Mars]], [[Luna]], or [[Venus]]. We knew, however, that should it work as promised, Salah would be the place we could all come together again, the great diaspora, the Ummah, given once more a place to call our own. It is our fondest wish that Salah, named for the practice of formal worship in Islam and one of the ﬁve pillars, will be that place for our people. Even now, however, its future is uncertain.
One of the two Hamilton cylinders built in the rings of [[Saturn]], Salah was recently deemed complete enough for habitation and is making waves for some decisions made by its leadership. The growing population is evenly split between a variety of people from across the Saturnian system and muslims from some of the most powerful and inﬂuential families on old [[Earth]]. My family was one of dozens that contributed to the construction of the habitat; most of the money came from various families living in the inner system. Now that Salah is open for immigration, the various scions of those sunward families are ﬂooding the place. This has, understandably, created some tension.
On the one side, you have those of us that have labored to build the habitat and who have also built relationships with our neighbors. We understand that the outer system, and Saturn in particular, is not Luna or Venus. To our cousins closer to the sun, we have become strange. Some of us, myself included, have found that anarchism and socialism are not that different from the teachings of the Prophet and that seeing to the welfare of all is the noblest of all callings. Because of this, we are seen as corrupted, fallen to the vile and wicked inﬂuences and strange ideas of our neighbors by those who have kept the true faith in the inner system. This is complicated by the fact that most of us that have grown up with Salah, shaping it to reﬂect our dreams, are the younger sons and daughters, the poorer relations, or the hungry, but destitute families that made it off Earth with little but their bodies intact. To our wealthier, and often more pious, cousins from the inner system, we have done all we can and it is now their turn to take over. They sneer at the other residents of the Saturnian system and seek to embarrass our brothers and sisters on [[Profunda]] by building ever grander mosques and minarets, foolishly hoping that by shouting the loudest, Allah will love them best.
If these were the only newcomers, we could still endure, as they are content to build their palaces and places of worship and to look down their noses at those they consider less pious. They have little interest in actually running the habitat. Instead, they would leave us to our beliefs, and we could pass them off as just another thread in the rich tapestry that lives among the rings.
But they are not the only ones to have joined us. Far more pernicious are those that only weakly cling to their faith and who have learned the lessons of the [[Planetary Consortium|Consortium]]. They have seen that wealth is compounded if you also have a servile and scared populace working hard for your enrichment. My older uncles and granduncles are, quite simply, immortal hypercapitalist oligarchs that see the wealth of the Saturnian system as ripe for the picking. And they are ascendant in their power. Since we opened the gates to new residents, they have been pouring in, dozens a day, hundreds a week, claiming positions of power through family ties and long-forgotten ﬁnancing agreements, pushing the matter of how the habitat should be governed.
If you have been watching the [[Titanian Commonwealth|Commonwealth]] mesh feeds at all this month, you would know this has not gone unnoticed. My granduncle, Suhaim Bin Hamad Al Thani, a current executive for [[Solaris]], has reached out to the other heavyweight Consortium interests, advising them to set up shop on Salah. He calls us “open for business” and “the most signiﬁcant investment opportunity since the Martian land grab.” Considering that Salah will eventually hold millions of residents, the Commonwealth is right to be worried. So far, a signiﬁcant hypercorporate presence has been kept out of the outer system, but Suhaim’s big ﬂashing invitation threatens to upset that balance of power. Something I know Firewall is concerned about as well.

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