The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity

الغلاف الأمامي
Verso, 2002 - 342 من الصفحات
The inviolability of the American mainland, breached on 9/11/2001 for the first time since 1812, led to extravagant proclamations by the pundits. It was a sudden menace confronting the twenty-first century, an event of unprecedented dimensions, a new world-historical turning point.

Tariq Ali challenges these assumptions, arguing instead that what we have experienced is the return of History in a horrific form, with religious symbols playing a part on both sides: ‘Allah’s revenge’, ‘God is on Our side’, ‘God Bless America’. The ‘war against terror’ is a clash of fundamentalisms, religious versus imperial. Each is honored by time-honored features – a shameless use of disproportional military power by one and a carefully targeted fanaticism by its Other. The two forces are hardly equal. One is a product of despair, the other is an empire, whose ability to go to war is a chilling reminder of its place in the world. Contemporary politics is conducted and presented in the elitist style of intelligence agencies: disinformation, false information, exaggeration of enemy strength and capability, explanation of a TV image with a brazen lie and censorship. The aim is to delude and disarm the citizenry. Everything is either over-simplified or reduced to a wearisome incomprehensibility.

This wide-ranging book blends history, literature, politics and autobiography to challenge the conformist culture of our times. Ali argues that many of the values proclaimed by the Enlightenment retain their relevance, while portrayals of the American Empire as a new emancipatory project are fatally misguided.
 

الصفحات المحددة

المحتوى

Prologue
1
Mullahs and Heretics
13
An atheist childhood
15
The origins of Islam
24
The empire of the world
31
Jerusalem Jerusalem
39
Ottomanism
44
The joys of heresy
49
The antiimperialism of fools
126
An ocean of terror
141
The Nuclear Wastelands of South Asia
155
The case of Anwar Shaikh
157
Plain tales from Pakistan
166
Afghanistan between hammer and anvil
203
The story of Kashmir
217
A Clash of Fundamentalisms
253

Women versus the eternal masculinity
60
One Hundred Years of Servitude
69
A spring memory
71
The roots of Wahhabism
73
The kingdom of corruption
79
Zionism the First Oil War resistance
86
Marginal notes on the chapter of defeats
114
A shortcourse history of US imperialism
255
September surprise
290
Letter to a young Muslim
303
On the IsraeliArab war
314
Index
333
حقوق النشر

طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات

عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

نبذة عن المؤلف (2002)

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics--including "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Bush in Babylon," "The Clash of Fundamentalisms" and "The Obama Syndrome"--as well as five novels in his Islam Quintet series and scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of the "New Left Review" and lives in London.

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