16 quotes found
"Any discussion of Muslim intellectual life in the twentieth century must take into account the defining context of modernisation, with its dislocating effects on structural, economic, societal, political and cultural realities in Muslim countries."
"In recent decades, new voices have appeared on the contemporary Islamic intellectual map, vying for a place with the now hugely influential Salafi approach to Islam, generally characteristic of Islamism, and that of its traditionalist opponents. These are the voices of new Muslim intellectuals which, taken together, capture an emerging trend in Muslim interpretation."
"In its distinctive strategy and internal dynamics and its rich intellectual tradition, Hizb al-Tahrir points up the heterogeneity of twentieth-century Islamist protest movements in the Middle East."
"While modern changes were intrinsic to Western historical development, they were largely seen by Muslims as alien and enforced."
"But the most vocal and articulate on anti-democracy views among these groups is Hizb al-Tahrir, founded in Palestine in the 1950s but currently active internationally, in particular in Britain, Pakistan and some Arab countries...Hizb al-Tahrir calls for a campaign of education and intellectual debate which would lead to the re-establishment of the khilafa. While employing the concept of the 'Islamic State', Hizb al-Tahrir espouses the traditional belief that the restoration of the khilafa is both necessary and sufficient to resolve the problem of governance. Even Hizb al-Tahrir, however, could not resist the seduction of democratic procedures. The khalifa has to be elected, and consultative councils form part of the structure of power."
"[Do you believe that the Jewish people deserve a state?] No, definitely not! The Muslim people don't deserve a state, the Christian people don't deserve a state [...] People of faith deserve that their religion be respected. People, who are part of a national movement, deserve a state. [But] Judaism is not nationalism. Judaism is a religion. Zionism is an ideology that believes that Judaism is a national movement, but most Jews even today don't believe [that...] If it was possible to create a Jewish State not at the expense of the Palestinians and without dispossessing the Palestinians, [...there would be] no problem with the idea of a Jewish state."
"The debate between us is on one level between historians who believe they are purely objective reconstructers of the past, like [Benny] Morris, and those who claim that they are subjective human beings striving to tell their own version of the past, like myself. When we write histories, we built arches over a long period of time and we construct out of the material in front of us a narrative. We believe and hope that this narrative is a loyal reconstruction of what happened — although as was discovered by historiographers Morris had never bothered to read — we can not ride a train back in time to check it. Narratives of this kind, when written by historians involved deeply in the subject matter they write about, such as in the case of Israeli historians who write about the Palestine conflict, is motivated also — and this is not a fault but a blessing — by a deep involvement and a wish to make a point. This point is called ideology or politics. Zionist historians wanted to prove that Zionism was valid, moral and right and Palestinian historians wished to show that they were victimized and wronged.... I had a different point to make: I condemned the uprooting of the Palestinians and the violence inflicted on them, as well as the de—Arabization of Jews who came from Arab countries to Israel, the imposition of military rule on Palestinians in Israel before 1967 and the de—facto Apartheid policies put in place after 1967."
"I am socialist. [...] I think both my political commitment and historian known position developed simultaneously. And one supported the other. Because of my ideology I understood documents I saw in the archives the way I understood them, and because of the documents in the archives I became more convinced in the ideological way I took. A complicated process! Some colleague told me I ruined our cause by admitting my ideological platform. Why? Everybody in Israel and Palestine has an ideological platform. Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers."
"In both books Pappe in effect tells his readers: "This is what happened." This is strange, because it directly conflicts with a second major element in his historiographical outlook. Pappe is a proud postmodernist. He believes that there is no such thing as historical truth, only a collection of narratives as numerous as the participants in any given event or process; and each narrative, each perspective, is as valid and legitimate, as true, as the next. Moreover, every narrative is inherently political and, consciously or not, serves political ends. Each historian is justified in shaping his narrative to promote particular political purposes. Shlomo Aronson, an Israeli political scientist, years ago confronted Pappe with the ultimate problem regarding historical relativism: if all narratives are equally legitimate and there is no historical truth, then the narrative of Holocaust deniers is as valid as that of Holocaust affirmers. Pappe did not offer a persuasive answer, beyond asserting lamely that there exists a large body of indisputable oral testimony affirming that the Holocaust took place."
"The lantern which William of Malmesbury used to guide his steps when he was writing his ' ... was the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, annals written in ; and it remains the surest guide. It is particularly valuable, because the first draft, at least, of that part of the Chronicle which covers most of 's reign was put together before the king's death, ... a circumstance which ensured that the events recorded were not chosen so as to explain either the or ."
"William Rufus had a remarkable career, even for the late eleventh century, when opportunities for the adventurous and talented were plentiful. Born into the middle ranks of the French aristocracy, and only a younger son, he rose first through the achievements of his father, William 'the Conqueror', duke of Normandy, and then through the misfortunes of his elder brothers. Still a landless when his father died in 1087, he took whatever chances came his way, and by the time of his own premature death thirteen years later had become a king of great renown. He was acclaimed by soldiers for his chivalry and magnanimity; and the flaws of his character proved to be no hindrance to success."
"On the 1170, the morrow of the , that is to say, Tuesday, 29 December, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, of the whole of England and of the , was murdered in his cathedral church by four noble knights from the household of his lord and former patron and friend, King Henry II. He had just celebrated what was thought to be his fiftieth birthday. The horror which the killing inspired and the miraculous cures performed at his tomb transfigured the victim into one of the most popular saints in the late-medieval calendar and made one of the greatest pilgrim shrines in the West. The modern , although doubtless better organized, gives some idea of medieval Canterbury with its phials of water tinctured, if faintly, with the blood of the martyr, and its highly charged atmosphere, a combination of the pathetic hopes of the sick and the jollity of the holiday-makers. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales kept the saint's memory green after the Reformation, and the drama has attracted distinguished modern playwrights."
"Barlow's intellectual and scholarly qualities are arguably most evident in his editions of complex and technically difficult Latin texts, whose meaning he would elucidate with an almost unrivalled brilliance, and in the writing of biography, a genre about which he thought very deeply, as befitted someone who had contemplated a career as a novelist in his youth. Edward the Confessor (1970), William Rufus (1983) and Thomas Becket (1986) are all very important, and demonstrate a profoundly insightful and carefully reasoned determination to penetrate the religious attitudes of the historians of the 11th and 12th centuries in order to reveal the secular world beneath."
"are marshalled in the service of satire against powerful individuals and s, to degrade and belittle them; excreta are not on the whole used as images of celebration and festivity ..."
"If someone was to ask us to describe our , we might be hard pressed to find anything to talk about that we might say was at all interesting, because daily life suggests routine, and routine by definition involves things that are not out of the ordinary."
"... most sociologists who would want to talk about wine for one reason or another probably have some personal interest in it. Why spend so much time building up a for something you cannot stand, or which—if you are an alcohol-abstainer—you are opposed to on moral or some other grounds? After all, if you publicly present yourself as an analyst of wine, you are publicly associating yourself with it, and audiences will read you as linked to wine in some way. (The hostile reception to wine talks I have given, by students who seemed to be of a religious fundamentalist persuasion, is a case in point.)"