Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

K for Karl – machine [episode 5]

"I’m not a very passionate republican – many things bother me more than the monarchy. But as principles go it is unwavering. We have a  class problem in Britain  and the monarchy exemplifies it. If it’s a guilty pleasure I’m after, I don’t turn to betrothals in real-world feudal dynasties: I have Netflix. The political scientist Benedict Anderson  described countries as imagined communities . Call me a misery guts, but I’d rather imagine one in which I am born a citizen, not a subject, and others are not born to govern me." "The royal wedding" Note: Imagined Communities is a seminal book. It is an essential reading.

Revisiting the Idea of an Anthropology of Islam 

A bit old, but I think it still very relevant, for many who oppose Trump, for example, lament a loss of "a tolerant order". Tolerance?

Because it is not Manchester or Nice. "Palestinian men, women, and children, slaughtered in their own homeland for the crime of wanting independence and sovereignty over their own country. The Western media will present no face to those murdered, no name, no age, no background, no hospital images of mangled bodies and doctors frantically trying to save lives. There will be no interviews with family members or friends telling us how wonderful and caring their deceased loved ones were - because the Western media kno w that to do so would humanise the Palestinian people and create international sympathy for their cause. Western nations are complicit in these war crimes, treacherous Arab nations are silent, and those shameless African nations who clambered over each other to attend the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem have disgraced the memory of those who fought for African independence and against apartheid. The proverbial image of David vs Goliath could not be played out

Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam

"It is the peculiar fate of oppressed people everywhere that when they are killed, they are killed twice: first by bullet or bomb, and next by the language used to describe their deaths . A common condition of oppression, after all, is to be blamed for being the victim, and that blame gets meted out in language designed to rob the oppressed of their very struggle."