Praxis, not doxa

Ideas necessarily generate their opposites, making for conflict, and, often, violence. The hatred generated by such adversarial antitheses dehumanises humanity. That is why it is imperative to move away from ideas towards practice.

Is Poetry Dead?

Who reads poetry today? And who reads the modern and contemporary poets? And yet there is a deluge of poetry – for the producers and consumers of poetry constitute a giant industry, from which the 'average' reader is left out.

Eight annas

Bangladeshis with western degrees are the local army of the American empire: they legitimise American imperialism in their own country, in order to safeguard their academic connections with the "mother country": anything that threatens their career "over there", such as a...

Confessions of a Student Politician of Bangladesh

 Students have been exploited by the major political parties. They are the private armies of the civilian politicians: if a party rigs an election, the other party lets its goons loose on the streets, burning vehicles and people. The kids (yes, they are recruited that...

Four Years AFTER the Revolution

I have lived to see, first-hand, how an entire society goes mad, and loses all humanity…The personal is the political, and the choices we make in our everyday lives translate into  good or evil in the (supposedly distinct) public sphere. Whether misled by ambition, or...

DEMOCRACY, ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

 Larry Siedentop identifies democracy with Christianity. In so far as he equates civil society with Christianity, he would appear to be right. The conclusion follows that Islam and democracy are totally antithetical - and they are. (This doesn't mean that Muslim...

The Wicked Civilisation

 After the end of the cold war, the target of western demonization shifted from the defunct Soviet Union to the anticipated new adversary, the Muslim world. Supposedly universal concerns – women and democracy – were brought to bear with obsessive focus on Islam, to...

9/11 recalled in Bangladesh

" September 11, 2001, changed the world, but not the Muslim world, and certainly not Bangladesh. Whatever change has occurred has come from without, not from within. "   Capitalism has been blamed for the current world violence: the blame should rest with democracy....

Reflections on Democracy and Violence

"The irrational individual enjoys complete liberty in a democracy to play out his irrationality; in the Palace polity, a culture of subordination as well as a bureaucratic hierarchy and notions of kingship work to restrain his impulses. It is argued here that the Holocaust,...