Faisal Zaidi Writing Forum

The secret history of political Islam Some of the key arguments of modern Islamism were formed earlier than imagined, in the final years of the Ottoman polity

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT IN POLITICS Those most oblivious to their own ignorance are often the ones who loudly proclaim to be experts on matters they actually know

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE DEATH OF POSTMODERNISM Scholars say a difficult period in human thought is now over and done with, so what’s next? Introducing: metamodernism

Constructing Fear: The Politics of Moral Panics Khan (and the establishment) now turned their guns on the Sharif government. He was turned into a ‘folk devil’ that embodied corruption, US interests/agenda, and a pro-India mindset. A whole new constituency was built for Khan

SMOKERS’ CORNER: DEMONISING TO CREATE AN IDENTITY Imran Khan's supporters have acquired a new political entity that requires the demonisation of the 'other'.

Theology In Service Of Secularism: The Case Of John Locke And Sir Syed Ahmad Khan - The Friday Times - Naya Daur South Asian Islamic scholar and one of the pioneers of ‘political Islam,’ Abul Ala Maududi (d.1979), often described secularism as “la din” or religion-lessness. Maududi was critiquing secularism for relegating religion to the private sphere and giving the state the power to regulate the pub...

SMOKERS’ CORNER: FROG IN THE WELL The absorption of Islamist sentiments has made the state increasingly theocratic and thus continue to entrap itself.

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THEATRE OF THE ABSURD The existentialist crisis of the largely apolitical generation that grew up under Musharraf’s regime can only be addressed...

SMOKERS’ CORNER: CAKES AND RELIGIOSITY Contrary to the modernist theories about the connections between class and religiosity, it’s the upper and middle classes in...

SMOKERS’ CORNER: POLITICAL POWER AND THE ‘HUBRIS SYNDROME’ A theory posits that political power can lead to an acquired personality disorder. How well does this theory sit with the actions

An Ill-Fated Merger: The Pitfalls Of Sacralising The Secular In India And Pakistan - The Friday Times - Naya Daur Sacralism is the merger of Church and State wherein one is called upon to change the other. It is not the opposite of secularism, as such. It is the confluence of the secular and the sacred, to produce a hybrid ideology and authority. India has an overwhelming Hindu majority. So why did a large port...

Maududi’s Leviathan: From A Political Ambition To A Cultural Pursuit - The Friday Times - Naya Daur The American historian Richard Wolin in his book The Seduction of Unreason wrote that after being disillusioned by the collapse of student revolts of the 1960s, many young leftist intellectuals in Europe began to engage with the works of the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. They....

"In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges."

―Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness, p. 13

"Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship” -

Denzel Washington

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. ~George Orwell

1984 1984