NM's blog

Our prejudices are so deeply rooted that we never think of them as prejudices but call them common sense. —George Bernard Shaw

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.   The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. — Albert Einstein

Suspicion and prejudice

 “ I remember that, when I taught history and institutions of the Islamic world at Urbino university in the late 1990s, sometimes my classes were literally empty. After 9/11 the classes were filled up of students (I was teaching in Milan at that time), but how much was their interest sincere? Actually, popular interest in Islam is strongly conditioned by contingent outward circumstances and today xenophobic  and Islamophobia propaganda does not help to develop the field.  Again: Italy is a parochial country. I believe to be a free-thinker, normally antagonist towards consolidate [sic] and mainstream positions, both in thinking and in politics. I am not comfortable with the Western society I live therein because I believe it is grounded on hypocrisy and false prejudices. The main one is the conviction that we Europeans and Americans (mostly white of course, WASP) are depositary of absolute and universal truths, eternal, out of history – we would be indeed the makers of the...