Category: Articles
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To recall, in part one of this article I argued that secular power is pervasive because it operates at the level of cognition. It creates a sense of paralysis by conflating a secular situation with reality as the natural and insurmountable order of things. This, in turn, makes it impossible for consciousness to make the…
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The Muslim Ummah finds itself in a world that is not of its own making—a world that can be characterized as a Secular Age. In this context, how are we to navigate an increasingly complex landscape beset by secularity? More so, how are we to think about Muslim futures? In particular, how are we to…
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The story of the modern state can be told in several ways. However, the most glaring problem we face when attempting any sort of genealogical reconstruction of its origins is that we often speak through the language that is bequeathed to us by modernity, thus inhibiting any sort of sustained critique. This is evident in…
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The long-standing and late Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, who reigned over Tunisia for almost three decades, represents but one of the encroachments of the modern liberal order in the Muslim world. In the year 1960, as part of an ongoing secularisation effort, Habib Bourguiba declared that fasting in Ramaḍān hampered economic productivity and asked Muhammad…
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The problem of identity is largely about the question of who sets the terms of the debate. Muslims find themselves in the middle of a long-standing rift between conservative ideology on one hand and a liberal and leftist ideology on another. Among other issues, Islam and Muslims feature heavily in the on-going debate. As the…
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A crisis is a turning point wherein an organism undergoes one of two changes; recovery or death. Put differently, it is the question of whether or not the organism’s internal capacities are strong enough to enable recovery without aid of an external mechanism. To illustrate, consider the average Covid-19 patient. The crisis does not depend…
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The Illusion of Realism: What is the Future of Muslim Politics? In our so-called “post-ideological” world, even the most sincere observers have fallen trap to a myth perpetuated by the liberal order: that strategic political action or realpolitik transcends (or is devoid of) ideology. A case in point is the Tunisian Nahda movement’s decision to…