Let me get a gripe out of the way before I begin to review seriously this work by a distinguished contemporary philosopher. Notice the sub-title: an ‘interrogation.’ Is anyone out there as tired as I am of this term? It …
McMann’s book explores the link between individual economic independence from the state with proclivity to engage in politics in opposition to the state. The author argues, and her findings confirm, that citizens’ willingness to engage in ‘civil activities that enable …
It was a May Day, sometime in the early 1980s in Paris. The Islamic revolution in Iran was only a few years old but had long since violently silenced all dissent. Hundreds of the regime’s opponents were being executed, terror …
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward – A New Approach [1] is poorly researched, fails to appreciate the political consequences of the changes which have happened in Iraq since 2003, treats Iraq’s constitution of 2005 with contempt, and …
The war on terrorism presents any thinking person with what appears to be an irresolvable dilemma. [1] On the one hand, as citizens, we claim to have inalienable rights that protect us against force, whether initiated by terrorists or by …
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is Professor of Political Sociology at the American University in Cairo. He founded the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies and is one of the Arab world’s most prominent spokesmen for democracy and human rights. Author, co-author, or editor of …
In January 2007, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, played host to a daylong conference under the title ‘A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations.’ It was a singular business. The allusion in the title betrayed a misunderstanding that …
Editors: Rayyan Al-Shawaf ’s review of Abbas Shiblak’s book Iraqi Jews: A History of Mass Exodus (Democratiya 7) starts off promisingly, by pointing out the discrepancies and errors in Shiblak’s book. But instead of debunking Shiblak’s assumption that Zionist agents set off bombs …
In this issue of Democratiya we reproduce four memos written by Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, and circulated to the Labour Cabinet in January and March 1948. [1] The ‘Third Force’ memos diagnosed the threat posed to democracies by totalitarian Stalinism and …
Over the past several years those who are opposed to some of the policies of the Israeli government, or even to the existence of the State, have proposed an academic boycott of Israel as one of the weapons in their …
Both these books deal with contemporary themes, one with the rise of a variety of fundamentalisms in the modern world, the other with issues stemming from the growth of identity politics – the politics of recognition. Both are well-written and …
Ladan Boroumand reviews Danny Postel’s Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran. Inspired by Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, Postel reveals the fructifying relationship that has been forged between the classic texts of liberal democracy and democratic resistance to the Mullahs. …
Paralysed by the fear of being branded racist, imperialist or Islamophobic, large sections of liberal and left opinion have, in effect, gone soft on their commitment to universal human rights. They readily, and rightly, condemn the excesses of US and …
The big surprise of this presidential campaign has already happened. In advance of the vote, the French are undergoing a change in their mentality. Opinion polls vary, and the outcome is anybody’s guess, but noticeable everywhere is the rejection of …
A book by one of Britain’s foremost historians of Nazi Germany about the relationship between religion and politics, and in particular the role of the great totalitarian political religions of left and right, should have had something important to contribute …
