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There was a good moment in Islam when people were actually challenging authority at every level. Very different from the world we live in.

Tariq Ali

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Tariq Ali
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: October 21
Film Director
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Peace Activist
Politician
Screenwriter
Writer
Moments
Challenging
Live
Islam
Different
Authority
Every
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Good
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World
Challenges
People
Actually
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More quotes by Tariq Ali

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One cannot discuss Europe without understanding US imperial hegemony, both globally and certainly in Europe as it stands.
Tariq Ali
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The European Union is a union of the extreme center. It's a banker's union. You see how they operate in country after country, appointing technocrats to take over and run countries for long periods. They did it in Greece they did it in Italy they considered it in other parts of Europe.
Tariq Ali
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This is the permanent tension that lies at the heart of a capitalist democracy and is exacerbated in times of crisis. In order to ensure the survival of the richest, it is democracy that has to be heavily regulated rather than capitalism.
Tariq Ali
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Desperation is the result of globalization.
Tariq Ali
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I think the United States and its British attack dog are not taken seriously anywhere in the world and can play no role in helping a political solution.
Tariq Ali
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I think to compare Germany to the Third Reich is utterly ludicrous.
Tariq Ali
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The United States is now The Empire. There isn't an empire there's The Empire, and that empire is the United States.
Tariq Ali
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One could think of ways to defeat the censor. I could put up the answers on my Facebook page or website or Counterpunch. In today's world it's not easy to suppress information. Technology has helped us a great deal.
Tariq Ali
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Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran. And he said, Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one.
Tariq Ali
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To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.
Tariq Ali
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The European Union is effectively a union dominated by the German political and economic elite. Its main function is to serve as a nucleus for financial capitalism and to ease the road for that capitalism. The other functions just irritate everyone: it's undemocratic decisions are not made by parliament the European Parliament is not sovereign.
Tariq Ali
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The whole history of the 20th century is a history of resistance groups which are either nationalist or, in large parts of the Muslim word, religious groups.
Tariq Ali
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The European Union has lost virtually all of its credibility amongst large swaths of the European population.
Tariq Ali
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That natural disasters are required to provide Americans with a glimpse of reality in their own country is an indication of the deep rot infecting the official political culture.
Tariq Ali
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In the West, since the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union, the one discipline both the official and unofficial cultures have united in casting aside has been history.
Tariq Ali
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We have populations now in the West with a very short memory span. One reason for this short memory span is that television over the last fifteen years has seen a big decline in the coverage of the rest of the world.
Tariq Ali
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Tragedies are always discussed as if they took place in a void, but actually each tragedy is conditioned by its setting, local and global. The events of 11 September 2001 are not exception.
Tariq Ali
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Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.
Tariq Ali
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Terrorism emanates from weakness, not strength. It is the sign of despair.
Tariq Ali
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Terror breeds terror. I am completely opposed to both state terror and those who respond in a similar way. There is no justification for any group that associates itself with the Left to kill innocents and encourage suicide bombings.
Tariq Ali