An intervention in an electronic forum
Hi all,
Let me take the opportunity to add a few notes to this discussion being, in part, a man of an Islamic background, though I currently do not profess to be a Muslim or a member in any faith. Continue reading “Few Notes on Islamic Reformation”
Tharwa Editorial / Also published in the Daily Star under the title: “Prepare for when the Arab bottle breaks.”
When you are stuck in the neck of a bottle, it doesn’t matter how far you are from the bottom, or how close you come to the edge of freedom. There are no points of no return. As you struggle to free yourself, you can as easily fail and fall as succeed and climb out of the top. For those stuck in the neck, though, the option of not doing anything, of accepting their bondage, seems like the safest bet. But what happens when they realize that an overwhelming force may threaten to break the bottle? What is the safest bet then? Continue reading “Stuck in the Bottleneck”
In an ideological state, the ruling ideology is not important in itself but only inasmuch as it can serve as a mantra whose repetition is necessary to justify the continuing control of the corrupt ruling elite. For this reason, ideological states are almost always incapable of reinventing themselves. The best that can be achieved in them is implosion and disintegration.
The survival of a certain administrative core, in some cases, and the fight to maintain that survival, are not necessarily signs of (cultural and civilizational) vitality inasmuch as they are indications of the desperate activities of certain interest groups working hard to cut down their losses, on the one hand, and maximize their potential benefits from the breakdown, on the other. Continue reading “On the Pragmatic State!”
Of all the barriers that separate people in the world, racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, sectarian, etc., the barrier represented by one’s social class, however defined, seems to be, historically, one of the hardest to break through. In fact, the thing that often makes the other barriers so difficult to break through or maneuver around seems related in no small measure to the fact that, in time, they tend to acquire a social dimension as well. That is, they end up delineating social classes as well. Or should we say sociomoral classes, since each class tend to develop its own particular conception of morality?
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 