Hamid Dabashi

Great article from Al Jazeera by Colombia University professor Hamid Dabashi on the ‘racism of the intellectuals’ (as Alain Badiou wrote in Le Monde earlier this month) and the need for solidarity against what he terms the ‘ravages of capitalism,’ i.e. the displacement and oppression of peoples (Muslims and Africans in Europe, Latin Americans in the U.S., etc) as a result of neo-liberalism — not the reactionary positions thusfar adopted by both right and left.

An exerpt:

“Confronting them [the ravages of capitalism] is the necessity of a renewed pact with a principled moral position that crosses over fake cultural bifurcations between ‘Islam and the West’ or ‘the religious and the secular.’ The moral imperatives that our exceedingly fragile and vulnerable world now faces require a radical reconfiguration of ethical principals far beyond sectarian alignments or denominational identification.

…Humanity needs new visionaries of its highest aspirations. The principal facts on the ground - beaconing those visionaries - are the wretched of the earth, the masses of millions of human beings roaming the globe in search of the most basic necessities of life and liberty or else for fear of persecution. Muslims and Africans face the same ghastly discrimination in Europe as Latin American illegal immigrants do in the United States, Afghan refugees do in Iran, Palestinians (now joined by Africans) do in Israel or Philipino or Sri Lankan labourers do in the Arab world.

That fact is the ground zero of principled moral positions. The morally blinded who hide their xenophobia or political bankruptcy behind a callous ‘secular’ fanaticism and who are indifferent to the terrors that an Afghan or an Iraqi or a Somali migrant labourer faces - just because she wears a scarf or because he sports a beard - ought to be exposed for the indecency of their position and thus new alliances cultivated far beyond and above the tired and old cliches of ‘Islam and the West.’

The moral imperative of our time thus demands a sublimation of our inherited faith into something more worldly grounded.”

(Click the post title to go to the article)