Articles

There are two different types of consumerism. One is associated with shopping and advertising, the other with consuming in general, which can include consuming ideas, thoughts, practices, behaviors, what have you. On one level, a consumer society is that which likes to shop a lot, but on another level a consumer society is a derivative society, one that has no sense of itself other than what it consumes, and this can be with respect to knowledge, education, technology and many other things.

The idea of "knowledge is power" has well served the Western world elite over the centuries, and some of the most brutal wars have been fought to protect its exclusivity. It still underwrites the international system of recolonization we are calling Western development. But this just makes it more difficult to see why Bacon's dictum is today splattered all over the mental environment.

​THE VITAL ILLUSION by Jean Baudrillard. The Wellek Library Lectures. Pub: New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Pp. 102. Hbk. Price: US$18.

The contrast between the words and actions of the West’s leaders, and the remarkable ability of most Westerners to believe their politicians, and to accept uncritically a totally West-centric view of world affairs, despite the mass of contrary evidence before them, is frustrating at any time.

أصل هذا الكتيب … رسالة بعث بها سيد رحمه الله إلى أخته أمينة قطب . وكانت مجلة الفكر التونسية قد نشرته في عددها السادس من السنة الرابعة ، آذار (( مارس )) 1959م بعنوان ( أضواء من بعيد ) ولما كثر الطلب على هذه الرسالة طلبنا الإذن من الأستاذ محمد قطب حفظه الله لإعادة نشرها فأذن لنا بذلك جزاه الله خيرا .

The sudden collapse of the Taliban under the attack of the US surprised and disappointed many Muslims. Dr Perwez Shafi, of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought in Karachi, discusses the reasons of the Taliban’s failure in Afghanistan

Algerian President Abdulaziz Bouteflika claimed spectacular diplomatic success last month when he concluded security accords with the US and NATO and signed an economic agreement with the EU that provides, on his own insistence, for cooperation in the “war against terrorism”.

Hamas announced on December 21 that it was suspending martyrdom operations inside “the land occupied in 1948.” The announcement, in a notice issued in Ghazzah, came after weeks of intensified Israeli military pressure on Palestinians aimed at making life unbearable for civilians, and at forcing the Palestinian Authority to crack down on Islamic groups on Israel’s behalf.

Before his meeting with US president George W. Bush at the White House on November 27, all that president Abdullah Ali Saleh was prepared to do to accommodate Washington’s concerns about “anti-US terrorists” in Yemen was to expel a group of ‘Arab Afghans’ allegedly allied to Usama bin Ladin, and to take steps to prevent fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters or supporters from entering his country.

The deaths last month of 65 Afghan tribal leaders when their convoy was attacked by US aircraft has drawn attention to the US’s bombing of virtually random targets in Afghanistan.