Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

قرأت الكتاب قبل سنوات، ولكن أجدني أعود إليه لأنه من تأليف صادق جلال العظم.    سلمان رشدي وحقيقة الأدب

 The Role of the Rentier Intellectuals Under colonial duress, Muslim public intellectuals were thus the principal agents of changing their own ancestral faith into an unrecognizable site of ideological contestation with what they categorically identified as “the West”—the self-designated code with which the hegemony of colonial modernity faced and stared down the world at large. Factual relation of power between colonial modernity and Islam eventually gave rise to fictive terms of opposition between European colonial ideologues and Muslim public intellectuals. At the threshold of the twenty-first century, and in the immediate aftermath of the cataclysmic events of 9/11, enough remnants of this binary supposition were resuscitated for us to see the psychopathological origin of its formulation, and the political potency of its appeal. To see how this dialectic of generating and sustaining a fabricated hostility between “Islam and the West” has worked over the last two hundred years, ...

The freedom to move and to stay

We have heard a lot the refrain “they hate us.” “In a landmark interview in 1965 Malcolm X was asked by his interlocutor why he preached “hate to meet hate.” Malcolm X denied having ever advocated hate. The white man questioning him persisted that he had. “No,” Malcolm interjects, “that is the guilt complex of the American White Man that is so profound that when you begin to analyze the real condition of the Black Man in America, instead of the American White Man eliminating the causes that create that condition, he tries to cover it up by accusing his accusers of teaching hate.” In that singular moment of rhetorical rebuttal, Malcolm X stages a condition of dialectical reversal, where a Muslim critical thinker reasserts agency and reclaims history, not just by confronting the White Man’s monological premise but by epistemically overcoming the limitations of his moral imagination.” Excerpt From The End of Two Illusions by Hamid Dabashi

One of the architects of the Assad regime’s notorious security apparatus

Fealty to Israel

«صمت من أجل غزة» لمحمود درويش

When the US converts the world into a battlefield, how do Americans know where to draw the line? More precisely put, it is not immensely shocking that a country that inculcates its citizenry with a macho, shoot-’em-up attitude vis-à-vis other human populations might end up with some, well, “murderers” on its hands – particularly when the domestic panorama is one of dystopian capitalism and acute alienation. Capitalism is the culprit

We have been seduced by Harari because of the power not of his truth or scholarship but of his storytelling. As a scientist, I know how difficult it is to spin complex issues into appealing and accurate storytelling. I also know when science is being sacrificed to sensationalism. Yuval Harari is what I call a “science populist.” (Canadian clinical psychologist and YouTube guru  Jordan Peterson  is another example.) Science populists are gifted storytellers who weave sensationalist yarns around scientific “facts” in simple, emotionally persuasive language. Their narratives are largely scrubbed clean of nuance or doubt, giving them a false air of authority—and making their message even more convincing. Like their political counterparts, science populists are sources of misinformation. They promote false crises, while presenting themselves as having the answers. They understand the seduction of a story well told—relentlessly seeking to expand their audience—never mind that the un...

 "لا خوف على الحريات"؟

“ Seeking rational explanations for Israel's strange behaviour may be superfluous , because the best explanation may come from the world of social psychology. Israeli society no longer sees the occupation at all - because the status quo appears to Israelis as normal and natural. And, under these circumstances, Israel is bewildered every time this situation arouses resistance.”