Auteur/autrice : Heidi Barathieu-Brun

Linked to our presentations of Baharistan-i-Shahi – A Chronical of Mediaeval Kashmirby, and also of Books and articles of K.N.Pandita.

Born in Baramulla in 1929 in an ordinary Kashmiri Pandit family, Kashinath Pandita did graduation from St. Joseph’s College in Arts with English literature. The tribal raid of October 1947 destroyed his family like hundreds of other Pandit families in Baramulla.

After doing M.A. from Punjab University, he served as Lecturer in State Degree Colleges and in 1958 earned a scholarship from the Indian Ministry of Education for higher studies at the University of Teheran, Iran. Four years of study and research at the University of Teheran earned him a Ph.D. in Iranian Studies meaning history and civilization of Farsi speaking peoples.

He joined Kashmir University in 1963 and it’s Centre of Central Asian Studies in 1976. He rose to become Professor and Director of this Centre till his superannuation in 1987.

Kashi Nath Pandita – India

He is not only the first Kashmiri to obtain Ph.D. from Teheran University but is also the first to have worked in close collaboration with a number of Central Asian Academies of Science particularly the Tajik Academy. From 19976 till present day, he has been visiting and interacting with Central Asian academic community almost every year or two. His travelogue titled My Tajik Friends won him Sovietland Nehru Award 1987. This work has been translated in to Russian by the Tajik Academy and is considered a valuable contribution to Indo-Tajik friendship.

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Linked with our presentation of Cruel to be kind?.

He said: « It’s a very scary time. I think there was a lot of reason to be afraid that the post – Cold War world, the world of globalized, multinational capitalism, was going to be a lot less democratic anyway than what preceded it. And with terrorism, it seems to me the risk has now been ratcheted-up ».

He said also: « What’s happened is both on the right and the left has been a revival of this millenarian fantasy of American omnipotence. The human rights and humanitarian left thinks the United States can right all the wrongs in the world. And the hard Wilsonians, the right neoconservatives, think the United States can remake the world in its own image. Both of these things seem to me to fly in the face of history and reason. The United States is a great power, but no great power is omnipotent. That’s, again, why the human rights left scares me as much, if not more, than the Bush administration ». (Both on March 11, 2003 during the berkeley interview).

David Rieff – USA

He says about his book « Humanitarianism, the Human Rights Movement, and U.S. Foreign Policy »: … Humanitarian fills, as it were, an idealistic vacuum. Although it comes to prominence in the late sixties with the Biafran war, it really becomes an important idea in the eighties … In Europe, the great modern humanitarian movements — Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, and the like — are largely left-wing movements … and they are disenchanted. They are people who read Hannah Arendt and Solzhenitsyn. They are people for whom the God failed.

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He is designing and writing philosophy courses, he chairs the Start Writing programme which consists of six short online writing courses, including courses on writing fiction, plays and poetry. He is best known for his introductory Philosophy books: Philosophy: The Basics, Thinking from A to Z, Philosophy: The Classics, Philosophy: Basic Readings, Freedom: An Introduction with Readings, and The Art Question. His main research area is the aesthetics of photography, which was the subject of his PhD thesis (Cambridge, 1989) and of a number of articles.

Nigel Warburton – England

Nigel Warburton joined the Open University in 1994. He is currently working part time. He has given talks on his research in aesthetics, photography and architecture, to audiences in a wide range of institutions including Tate Modern (where he regularly teaches courses on aesthetics), Tate Britain, the Barbican Art Gallery, The Victoria and Albert Museum (Bill Brandt Centenary Conference), the Architectural Association (Ernö Goldfinger Centenary Conference), Birmingham Library, The Photographers’ Gallery and the Goldfinger House, as well as to various university Philosophy departments. He also regularly speaks to conferences of A level Philosophy and Religious students. (Read more on this article on Open Academy).

Some of Nigel Warburton’s lectures in Philosophy at the Open University:

THE BASICS OF ESSAY WRITING ROUTLEDGE (20 Jun 06), Everything you need to know;

PHILOSOPHY: THE TEXTBOOK ROUTLEDGE (Del Jun 06), Destined to be the market leader for the next generation of philosophy students;

PHILOSOPHY: THE CLASSICS (3RD EDITION) ROUTLEDGE (1 May 06). At the Open University.

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Linked with the presentation of Statement by IBN WARRAQ on the World Trade Center Atrocity, and linked with the presentation of Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society, and the article When Ibn Warraq met Edward Said.

Linked also with My comment to a new fatwa, and with Democracy or Islamocracy, and with WAFA SULTAN.

Ibn Warraq says: « How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? »

Ibn Warraq – another Muslim with a Fatwa – book see here on Amazon.com.

News on Ibn Warraq on April 2006:

See on FrontPage Magazine on April 18, 2006: An even more stringent critique is provided by the pseudonymous Ibn Warraq in ‘Why I Am Not a Muslim’, which was published in 1995, but has gained renewed attention since 9/11.[15] Raised as Muslim in a Muslim country, but now a secular humanist who admires John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Hayek, Warraq wrote this book (its title inspired, of course, by Bertrand Russells ‘Why I Am Not a Christian’) in response to the 1989 Salman Rushdie fatwa. « It is rare in one’s life, » Warraq writes, « that one has an opportunity to show on what side of an important life and death issue one stands -the Rushdie issue and the rise of Islam are two such issues and this book is my stand. » He does not pull punches: « The horrendous behavior toward women, non-Muslims, heretics, and slaves manifested in Islamic civilization was a direct consequence of the principles laid down in the Koran and developed by the Islamic jurists. Islamic law is a totalitarian theoretical construct, intended to control every aspect of an individual’s life from birth to death. » He admits that the theory has not always been put into practice -that Islamic culture, in other words, has often been less severe than the Koran prescribes -but adds that sometimes, as in the case of female circumcision, it has been more severe. « What Esposito and all Western apologists of Islam are incapable of understanding, » Warraq insists, « is that Islam is a threat, and it is a threat to thousands of Muslims. »

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Linked with our presentation on The Word in Times of Crisis.

And linked with our presentation The Andalus Publishing House.

Yael Lerer publishes Arabic literature in Hebrew. Youssef Hidjazi spoke with the young Israeli about her interest in authors like Mahmoud Darwish, Mohamed Choukri and Huda Barakat, and about the difficulties she confronts as a publisher of Arabic literature in Israel. (See on Quantara.de).

Yael Lerer – Israel

She says: I learned Arabic ten years ago for political and ideological reasons, and I consider myself very lucky – it allows me to read Arabic literature and gives me special insights into Arab culture. Because of this personal experience, I decided to let others share this privilege. Once I began studying Arabic, I learned more than I had originally planned; I discovered my interest in Arabic literature and poetry and realized how foreign Arab culture had been to me before that. Even though I have had Arab friends, colleagues and comrades-in-arms for years. Four years ago I began building up a new publishing house, Al-Andalus, to publish Hebrew translations of Arabic literature. My original approach was cultural, through literature; I did not become politically active until later on. After five years working in the Israeli Parliament every day for Dr. Azmi Bishara, I simply couldn’t stand the work any more and decided to give it up. The Arab members of the Israeli Parliament are confronted with Israeli racism on a daily basis, and I found that impossible to take. (See a very long interview, conducted by Youssef Hijazi, translation from German by Isabel Coleon, with © at Qantara 2004, on Quantara.de).

Excerpt: … Yael Lerer, editor of the Andalus publishing house, Osnat Trabelsi and Prof. Avi Oz are doing all they can to contribute to the success of the project, … about creating ‘The Freedom Theater’, Mrch 5, 2006 … (go to The Freedom Theatre).

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