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Title: The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity by Tariq Ali ISBN: 1-85984-457-X Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.93 (30 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An entertaining critique that spares neither East nor West
Comment: The gist of the story that Tariq Ali tells in this book will be familiar to most people who have taken the time to learn the history behind today's global events. What Ali brings to the table, however, is the personal insight, humor, and unabashed opinionatedness of a gifted storyteller. The overarching theme of the book is the history of tumultuous relations between Islam and the West. The scope of this epic tale extends from the time of Mohammed to the US invasion of Afghanistan. Although it's apparent that Ali has extensive knowledge of Islamic history, some of the book's best moments are embedded in the personal anecdotes detailing his childhood in Pakistan. Ali witnessed the bloodshed that accompanied the India-Pakistan partition, and was an active student agitator during many of the corrupt, violent, and almost comically buffoonish regimes that followed. Consequently, this book provides an excellent overview of Pakistani history, in addition to dealing with the influential, often iconoclastic figures who shaped the history of Islam. The ironic thing, which Ali points out, is that many of these men and, yes, women are just as obscure in the Islamic world as they are elsewhere. The diversity of radical challenges to fundamentalist orthodoxy that pepper Islam's history give lie to the Wahhabite call for a return to a "pure" Islam. It's all very similar to the way that Christian fundamentalists have projected their own prejudices and fears into the pages of the Bible: both groups put the letter of the law ahead of its spirit.
A lifelong atheist, Ali's lacerating criticism is just as hard on Islamic fundamentalisn as it is on Western imperialism. In a discursive climate that often seems divided between shrill, dangerous neoconservative attacks on Islam as a whole, and a woefully disorganized left, prone to awkward apologetics for a virulent strain of religious conservatism, he has the guts to effectively say "It's ALL a bunch of nonsense!"
[I docked one star for poor editing: Ali repeats himself, almost verbatim, several times. Presumably, this book was written in several large chunks, which were then hastily pasted together. While this doesn't detract from the substance of his arguments, it does give the book a somewhat disjointed quality, inviting hair-splitting critics to avoid the powerful punch of the book's content, while harping on the minor flaws in its form.]
Rating: 5
Summary: A refreshing riposte to conventional thinking on 9-11
Comment: Tariq Ali's book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, is necessary reading for everyone. For radicals it provides an excellent history of U.S. imperial exploits and of ideological and political conflict in the Middle East and Central and South Asia. For those of other political stripes, centrists and rightists, it provides a refreshing and unrestrained response to the predominating views about the meaning and response to the events of September 11, 2001.
Ali notes how Francis Fukuyama's thesis on the "End of History," while claiming the moral and economic superiority of liberal capitalism and its triumph over bureaucratic "socialism," didn't provide much in the way of direction for U.S. hegemony following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations filled that gap. Huntington's book, partly a response to Fukuyama, argued not for a golden age ahead, but continuing conflict derived from apparently irreducible cultural differences. Thus Western, and particularly U.S., intervention would still be very much needed to defend American values such as "individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets" (quoted in Ali, p. 273). Huntington's book therefore provided a rationalization for a continued and predominant role of the U.S. in world affairs. September 11 was "proof" for that thesis.
Ali's book subjects this thesis to a withering critique, and this is the main reason for his choice of title, something that others seem not to have grasped. Ali carries out his critique by making two points while presenting a broad political and religious history of the Middle East and Central and South Asia. First, he shows us that Islam and the cultures with which is Islam is associated are anything but monolithic or homogeneous. Islam has had its Luthers as well as its Savonarolas. It has not always been hostile to Western (Aristotle) or even rational and scientific thinking. Its politics have been more varied than most Anglo-American countries, comprising the most radical communists as well as producing leftist and far-rightist nationalisms.
Second, Ali shows that, tragically, and in far too many cases, U.S. foreign intervention in these regions has abetted and financed the rise of the most reactionary elements "against communism or progressive/secular nationalism. Often these were hardline religious fundamentalists: the Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser in Egypt; the Sarekat-i-Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, the Jamat-e-Islam against Bhutto in Pakistan and, later, Osama bin Laden and friends against the secular communist Najibullah [in Afghanistan]" (p. 275). With the exception of Indonesia, Ali's book is, among other things, a historical presentation of these interventions. Thus, U.S. imperialism, far form necessarily defending itself from an alien and hostile Islamic culture, is at the very least partly responsible for the ascendancy of fundamentalist Islam. Moreover, not only has the U.S. failed to promote democracy, liberty, equality, etc. in these regions, it has actually stifled it.
There are many, including at least one reviewer below, who will disagree with Ali's conclusions, particularly his charges of U.S. imperialism. What these persons want to believe is that U.S. foreign policy really is about those lofty principles that Huntington lists. Ali provides his own response to these critics: "The historic compromise with integrity that this form of Americophilia entails transmutes the friendly critic into a slave of power, always wanting to please. S/he becomes an apologist, expecting the Empire to actually deliver on its rhetoric. Alas, the Empire, whose fundamental motivation today is economic self-interest, may sometimes disappoint the most recent converts to its cause. They feel betrayed, refusing to accept that what has been betrayed is their illusions. What they dislike most is to be reminded of the sour smell of history" (p. 257). Hence, the furious and often ad hominem attacks volleyed against Ali.
What is the meaning of September 11? It is, in the prescient words of Chalmers Johnson, "blowback." "'Blowback' is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown. Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorit attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States" (quoted in Ali, p. 292). Read this book for a case study of this phenomenon.
Rating: 5
Summary: bin Bush bin Laden, Is there a difference?
Comment: When this book first came in the aftermath of world trade center atrocity, I didn't even want to look at it. But things became clear that the Anglo-American Wolf is really the master behind this horror as Thierry Meyssan's 9/11: The Big Lie, Pentagate and Gerhard Wisnewski's Operation 9/11 -in German,- in logical and resoning ways presented this matter.
I started to recall back when I was the a physics graduate student in the eighties and discuss with my colleagues how bin Laden and all those labeling themselves Mujahideen were being used and led by the Anglo-American Wolf just to serve one purpose, the Anglo-American Wolf interest. The Wolf has a deep-rooted nature of robing and looting the working people everywhere so that its corrupted corporate Elite grows fatter and fatter. Now I realized that the Wolf has used that group again intentionally and unintentionally. For no one in his right mind can believe that such a group could stay inside USA under the watchful eyes of the CIA and FBI for a year learning from zero how to fly an airplane and passed unnoticed. Egypt's, Israel's, Italy's.. Inelegance knew about a massive terrorist act in the year 2001 and passed to the Wolf's officials. But the Wolf didn't wink a bit because the Wolf was orchestrating every thing. When the NJ poet laureate said that, he was labeled as anti-Semite and prosecuted. That made me think if the Wolf can be so regardless to the immediate people it controls from near what about people everywhere on the globe it controls by remote controls from Hell. When the Wolf developed its atomic bomb in the 1945. With it the worst war criminal Truman annihilated about half million Japanese just to intimidate the Soviet Union who fought world war 2 for them, and the that Truman passes as a war hero that sheds a light about the dark nature of the Wolf. The Wolf also looked at itself as the only one with a brain. It is the one and only that can understand atomic and computer industries. Other peoples are just subhuman to the Wolf. They are only on this earth to be run and controlled by the Wolf. Therefore when the soviet developed their atomic bomb in 1949, the Wolf ran into atomic frenzy rampage accusing many people in its land of being spies to the soviet. The Wolf executed many of them as Ethel and Julius Rothenberg. The Wolf put Robert Oppenheimer in Jail twice accusing him of given the Wolf's atomic secret recipe to the Soviets. If I may call the Wolf's attention, that before World War 2 the German school of mathematics and physics ranked number one in the world. The French came next. The Wolf school was even next to the school in Italy. It was the German mathematicians who made abstract algebra. The wolf in its English translation to the German mathematical Works couldn't find words to translate the German "der Koerper". Therefore for while the Wolf translated it as "Realm" as we can read in the early twentieth century English texts on Algebraic Number theory as in "Foundations of the Theory of Algebraic Numbers by Harris Hancock Macmillan 1932".., "THE ELEMENTS OF THE THEORY OF ALGEBRAIC NUMBERS by Reid Macmillan 1910",.."A Dover translation of the German Triumph der Mathematik"...and many more. Some other books and literature used the word "Corpora". Later on The Wolf English books used the Word "Field" which it has also used for the German "das Feld". Yet in Algebra, Analysis, Theoretical Physics " das Feld" and "der Koerper" are two different entities. That is not the nature of this article here to give the Wolf a Reality pill. Let us even mention to the World the goodness of the Soviet Atomic Bomb that countered the horror of the Wolf Atomic Bomb. A Wolf lunatic named McCarthy went into war with China and was defeated mainly due to its Wolf arrogance. That McCarthy was threatening to use its Atomic Bombs against China. But the Wolf backed off when it learned that The Soviets already had the bomb.
During Iran hostages' crisis bin Bush's father and bin Laden's father were body. They arranged with the Iranian officials to delay the release of the hostages until a new Wolf was sworn in into the Wolf presidency. This tells one thing, that the Wolf for its prestige and arrogance could care less to the lives even of those the Wolf claims its own. Even Saddam Hussein was proven to be less inhumane than the Wolf. After all Saddam released the hostages he was going to use as a human shield from the Wolf. And as soon as Saddam released the hostages, the Wolf got him real bad. But believe it or not, the Wolf was going to get him anyway, the hostages lives didn't matter much to the Wolf. Or you really don't know the nature of the Wolf. The Wolf has only one motive. It lives by it and it lives for it. Is to rob and loot all the World resources and then control the entire world right from the back of every nation's neck. I say this honestly to the Arabs regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel is not the enemy. The Wolf is. The Wolf created this crisis to keep you busy while it loots your oil. With the Wolf it is OIL OIL OIL. The Wolf can solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem no problem. But this does not serve the Wolf interest. The Arab people in the Mediterranean over the history always welcomed any one to come and live among them. They never asked for green cards or cards from Hell. Here is a real humiliation you really not aware of. It is the Saudi. A bum, a high way bandit named Abd-El Azeez Al Saud with the help of the Anglo-American Wolf mad himself a king and named all Hejaz and Najd: Saudi Arabia. In the old Arab poetry it is said that the poet Jareer said the most insulting line of verse:
Lower your eyes down. You're from Numair
Therefore neither Kaab did you reach nor Kelaba
Now I say to you. It is enough humiliation to you that your identity is Saudi. Finally to all those groups who bomb civilians. It is not just wrong and barbaric; it only serves the Wolf. The Wolf only cares for and serves its corporate elite. The only solution to stand up to the Wolf is through enlightening of the public. People massive march to extirpate the regime in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the future puppet installed regime in Iraq, Etc. Thanks to all those who fight for social justice and refuse to live in a world dominated by the Anglo-American Wolf.
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Title: Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq by Tariq Ali ISBN: 1859845835 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Stone Woman by Tariq Ali ISBN: 1859843646 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky ISBN: 0805074007 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali ISBN: 0860916766 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: December, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Book of Saladin: A Novel by Tariq Ali ISBN: 1859842313 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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