Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A hidden universe of suffering 

An excellent article ‘Even when things were at their worst, the majority of Americans were free to say what they thought for the simple reason that they never thought what they were not free to say’. — the atomic physicist Leo Szilard The new orthodoxy

How Arab art embraced cubism

A list of songs which have been banned by the BBC over the years

"But we have to choose whether to treat people all the same or not, whether they are Ukrainians fleeing war, or Africans fleeing war and persecution. Do we treat them all the same or do we treat them according to the colour of their skin?" — the mayor of Lampedusa, Italy  

It is a good revisit, and it always reminds me of a colleague who upon mentioning Orientalism and Edward Said in 2010/11, she said: “that a long time ago,” implying that it became outdated. She too was taken by ‘liberal globalisation’, ‘human rights’, etc.  I still prefer and recommend Vivek Chibber’s and Sadiq Jalal al-Azm’s approaches, for they show the limitations of Said’s analysis. Hamid Dabashi in his The End of Two Myths has also pinpointed what Said was unable to analyse and incorporate in Orientalism. Furthermore, we should not forget that today there is a whole literature on neo-Orientalism. Why Edward Saïd’s book still matters

Lyrics in English