In October 2018, the motion ‘It’s OK to be white’ was introduced in the Australian Parliament by White Supremacist Senator Pauline Hanson. The motion called for the ok-ness of Whiteness while denouncing ‘anti-white racism’ and ‘attacks on Western civilization.’...
Last year, following the terrorist attack in Nice, I met a European friend and colleague at a conference in Milan. I asked him how his Palestinian boyfriend was, a lovely man I have grown to care about. My colleague visibly upset informed me that his boyfriend has had...
Some people whose interest in the Middle East is recent think that Assad is a uniquely Syrian phenomenon. I think the excessively harsh despotism and the equally excessive ability to cruelly exterminate your own population while believing yourself to be setting your...
Look at the swamps created by the differential of exterminability and mournability between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is in those and similar dips in the affective tectonic plates in which we are all embedded where some of the emotional propellors of Islamic...
There is a close relation between satire and secularism as the latter came to emerge in Europe. Secularism, as is well-known, gained strength historically as a reaction to an era of European inter-religious violence and massacres. It was not only a desire for the...
We rightly celebrate that we live in a society where law and order prevail. The capacity to follow established rules allows for the smooth operation of the many necessary transactions that make up our everyday life. And the law, among other things, guarantees that we...
As my facebook friends know, I take my status updates seriously. This does not mean that I only treat serious topics, or that I take myself overly seriously. Indeed I can be very frivolous and I always maintain a healthy cynicism towards whichever way I happen to see...
What does being a critical social scientist mean in the Arab world today? Or to ask the question differently: How can social scientists think Arab societies critically following or amidst the upheavals of the last few years? Such questions do not demand prescriptive...
It was lunchtime at Sydney’s David Jones, Australia’s up-market department store chain. So I headed down to the ‘food floor’. Whenever I have to shop at DJs I try to make sure I go there around midday, precisely so I can go down to the food floor and order the...