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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
World
Challenges
People
Actually
Moment
Moments
Challenging
Live
Islam
Different
Authority
Every
Level
Good
Levels

More quotes by Tariq Ali

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The judgement makes no sense at all. It exposes the country, Turkey, to ridicule. It would have been so much better if Ahmet Davotgulu had behaved like a medieval jester, but no such luck for poor Turkey. Its Prime Minister is not taken seriously by too many people.
Tariq Ali
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Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.
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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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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The EU is an alliance that the Americans control, in which the EU of course has a great deal of autonomy, but in which it still is very dependent on the United States, especially militarily, but not only in that respect. So to blame the Germans for everything is an easy way out for some of those suffering in Europe today.
Tariq Ali
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The war in Afghanistan, the first war of the twenty-first century, shows the United States doing what it wants to do, not caring about who it antagonizes, not caring about the effects on neighboring regions.
Tariq Ali
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The function of a bourgeois democracy is to secure the consent of the masses to their own exploitation and oppression.
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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Most Iraqis, even if they hated Saddam and suffered, say life was much better under him than it was under the occupation and what's going on today.
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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Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.
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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American imperialism has always been the imperialism that has been frightened of speaking its name. Now it's beginning to do so. In a way, it's better. We know where we kneel.
Tariq Ali
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At the time of German Reunification, it was no secret that Germany would soon become the strongest political entity in the European Union. And that has happened.
Tariq Ali
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If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple.
Tariq Ali
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There are huge political problems in Germany, but German economic power is something which was bound to happen. The way out of this situation is through the further democratization of the European Union and a changing of its structures.
Tariq Ali
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Terrorism emanates from weakness, not strength. It is the sign of despair.
Tariq Ali
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Journalists go to press briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists too much.
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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One cannot discuss Europe without understanding US imperial hegemony, both globally and certainly in Europe as it stands.
Tariq Ali