Letter from Damascus: Superhighway to Damascus

BookForum – Jan/Dec 2005

One of the most significant deficits in the Arab world today—and one which the highly publicized United Nations Arab Human Development Reports have so far failed to mention—is the staggering absence of young voices on the intellectual scene and in the public debate concerning societal and political reform. This is perhaps the starkest manifestation of the “knowledge gap or deficit” referred to in the reports, issued annually by the United Nations Development Program to monitor socioeconomic and political conditions in the Arab states. Arab countries, it seems, have somehow ceased to produce intellectuals—artists, novelists, poets, and political and social analysts—who could navigate new courses and harness popular sentiment to help lift their countries out of the morass in which they are mired. Continue reading “Letter from Damascus: Superhighway to Damascus” →

The U.S. and the Arabs: so similar, yet so democratically different

Special to The Daily Star

Popular beliefs and perceptions aside, Arabs and Americans have much more in common than they like to think. Selective historical memories and a growing sense of insecurity are only two glaring examples in this regard.

Just consider the way Arabs talk about Saddam Hussein these days. Consider the way they treat his surviving family members, his daughter Raghad for instance. Her face has recently been splashed on the covers and pages of many society magazines. Reading these publications, one is tempted to imagine that the mad tyrant was actually a national hero who did many great things for Iraqis and Arabs in general. Continue reading “The U.S. and the Arabs: so similar, yet so democratically different” →

The oxymoron of “illiberal democracy”

Special to The Daily Star

The term “illiberal democracy,” advanced by some as an acceptable model for future change in many parts of the Middle East, is, in truth, an oxymoron. Real functioning democracies can never be illiberal. Nor can they be at peace with the rest of the world, a fact that makes their appearance quite problematic for many of their neighbors and for the world at large. Continue reading “The oxymoron of “illiberal democracy”” →

The Rich and the Poor

A Heretic’s Log: A series of philosophical essays written between September 20, 2002 and July 15, 2004.

When it comes to the issue of poverty in the world, there are no lights at the end of the tunnel, although there is a need for lights to be present all through it.

We can easily assert today, and studies in this regard are too numerous to mention, that the majority of the peoples of Earth are not receiving their “fair and reasonable” share of the material benefits of globalization. Meanwhile people’s expectations regarding what constitutes this fair and reasonable share are being reshaped daily, making it ever harder for their attainment to take place and creating a condition of constant frustration as a consequence. Continue reading “The Rich and the Poor” →