26. July 2016
We are living through a time replete with malignant possibilities. As if it is not sufficiently frightening that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is poised to rule the most powerful - not to mention belligerent - nation in the world, other Western and non-Western states are laying the seeds for what can only be a truly poisonous future. The real tragic irony is that unless more level-headed and reasonable minds prevail very soon, our post-secular world is very likely to deteriorate...
06. August 2015
By Khaled Abou El Fadl Ramadan is a month in which Muslims are supposed to retreat from the materiality of their existence into an effort to realize their superior perennial and luminous nature. It is a month in which the exercise in self-denial is supposed to unshackle one's sense of empathy for the suffering and oppression of others. It is supposed to be a month of worship and peace. Muslims are exhorted to expend an extra effort avoiding bloodshed, violence and all offensive behaviour. Other...
23. April 2015
It was once a simple dream that breathed life into the hope-starved spirits of so many. Ever since the French landed on the shores of Egypt in 1798, we have been in the grip of a past alienated from its history, an identity divorced from its memory, and insecure flashes of pride defeated by a deep sense of indignity. Then came the Arab Spring! So many thought the Arab Spring would allow the region self-determination, and would shift the gaze of the world away from the twin spectres of oil and...
01. June 2006
By Khaled Abou El Fadl Not much time has passed between the first edition of Shattered Illusions and this substantially revised second edition, and yet in this relatively short time, so much that is de-stabilizing, deconstructive, demoralizing, and in fact down-right shattering, has taken place. At the most fundamental and basic level, so many lives have been destroyed and so many others have been denied liberty, physically assaulted and tortured that one struggles with the feeling that it is...