Link to Posts on: WEA Pedagogy Blog

Collected articles: An Islamic Worldview: Essays on the Conflicts between Islam and Modernity

Express Tribune: bit.do/etdaz  - bit.do/etaz1

Dawn: bit.do/dawnaz 

This website provides a collection of my shorter articles published in newspapers and magazines around the world. For a complete listing, with longer and academic articles as well, see my main website: TRANSFORMING KNOWLEDGE . 

Articles in Newspaper & Magazines

Our identity is strongly shaped by the history we learn – the story of the same war is entirely different when told from the point of view of the vanquished (see The Subaltern’s Tale). In Orientalism, one of the most important books of the twentieth century, Edward Said writes that: “All academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact (of imperialism).”  What Edward Said says in a sophisticated way can be put in cruder words as follows. The fact that Europe colonized the globe created a superiority complex, which did not allow them to see the rest of the world as equal human beings. This superiority complex colors all western literature as well as their “social scientific” knowledge of the East. The counterpart to this is the inferiority complex of the East, generated by centuries of defeats and domination by the West. This has left us paralyzed in a state of hopelessness and despair. We feel incompetent and ignorant, and so leave diagnosis of our own problems to foreign experts. We also lack the confidence to take steps to solve them.

Psychotherapy for these complexes requires reading and understanding non-Eurocentric accounts of both European history and Islamic history. All my articles meant for general public are directed towards different dimensions of solutions to these fundamental problems we face. A small set of selected articles is FEATURED every month — these are ones which generate the most interest, usually. A collection of essays which develops an Islamic WorldView as a counter to Eurocentric History is available from: An Islamic WorldView, Collected Essays

The Rise of the West: Was this due to intellectual and moral superiority of Europeans? My articles dispute this standard explanation, and provide alternatives.

“Greed is Good” (Wall St. Motto) — In all civilizations including middle age Europe, greed has been considered harmful and evil.  To understand modern western mentality, which influences the whole world, it is essential to learn the story of how this changed, and greed became a virtue.

The Failure of Economic Theories: There is a huge mis-match between what conventional economic theories say and real world economic events. My articles explore the many dimensions of this mis-match.

Power and Knowledge: How can it be that conventional economic theories are so easily proven wrong, and yet continue to be widely believed and taught in universities throughout the world? To answer this requires learning more about the nature of human knowledge. Knowledge which justifies and celebrates existing power structures dominates in the media.

Social Activism: Ideas have the power to change the world, provided that they are combined with the right actions. Wrong methods of implementation can lead to frustration and failure. These articles discuss the right ways of acting to change the world.

IDEAS for future articles