The Anatomy of Condemnation Politics
In international politics, condemnation is as much about decoupling the truth from its context as it is about demanding justice and channelling solidarity.
Tackling Ontological Insecurity: Hizb ut-Tahrir’s Appeal to Sweden’s Muslims
Sweden has a complicated relationship with immigration, and recent immigrants feel the brunt of failed policies and practices. The pan-Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir is capitalizing on Muslim immigrants’ experiences of isolation and discrimination.
UFOs, Aliens, and the Deep State
A whistleblower makes a bombshell claim that the United States and its adversaries are running secret programmes to retrieve and back-engineer vehicles of non-human origin. Is he telling the truth?
Immigration Control: Is the Price Worth Paying?
What consequences does immigration control have for our freedom? This question becomes even more apposite when states invoke citizens’ rights to justify immigration control. Immigration, so understood, constitutes a threat to the citizenry if not strictly regulated. That states often discriminate between citizens and non-citizens — apropos of movement across borders, access to essential services, …
Terror in the Name of God: Unearthing the Puzzling Link between Religion and Terrorism
Based on extensive fieldwork carried out in the hotbeds of religious violence and in-depth interviews with those who commit violence in the name of religion, Mark Juergensmeyer, in his book Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, seeks to understand the perplexing relationship between religion and violence. The author argues …
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Hindutva vs History
As a nationalist doctrine and movement, Hindu nationalism — or Hindutva — grew in parallel with the portrayal and solidification of Hinduism as a single, coherent, organised religious system. The former informed the construction of the latter, and a selective interpretation of the latter undergirded the former.1 In contrast with Nehruvian secularism, which is grounded …
Seeking Belonging through Religious Conversion: The Plight of the Undocumented in Sweden
Why is belonging so important? How far is one willing to go to gain a sense of belonging, and what does it cost? How do those uprooted from their homeland find a sense of belonging in exile, and what sacrifices do they have to make? For many, religion provides a sence of belonging. Consider the …
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Competing Fundamentalisms: Making Sense of the Theological Features of Religious Fundamentalism
We live in a post 9/11 world, where religious fundamentalism often engenders violent conflicts between nations and within nations, between religious communities and within religious communities. For example, religious intrastate conflicts tend to last longer than non-religious ones.[1] Moreover, negotiated peace settlements are unlikely in civil wars in which at least one belligerent party anchors …
The Climate Crisis: An Act of Epistemic Injustice?
Talking about the weather is often the last resort for immigrants like me to get painfully reserved Swedes to start chatting. In this age of climate crisis, possibly being the most climate-conscious people in the world, Swedes love to talk about the vagaries of the weather: how a cold snap in late spring hampered wine …
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Will the West’s newfound solidarity with the Afghan refugees last?
While a humanitarian crisis was unfolding on the tarmac of Kabul International Airport, through a televised address by the French president Emmanuel Macron, Afghan refugees caught a glimpse of what to expect in life on the run. Now accused of pandering to the far-right, Macron argued that his country must “anticipate and protect itself from …
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Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ at Sixty: A Philosophical Review
Introduction One of the earliest postcolonial theorists, the Afro-Caribbean philosopher Frantz Fanon (1925- 1961) made profound philosophical contributions to the freedom struggles of the colonised people around the globe. Born as the descendant of a slave, under the French colonial yoke in the Caribbean Island of Martinique, Fanon began his illustrious career as a soldier. …
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