Tariq Ali is not afraid to criticize ““ in fact, he is
critical of the capitalist West, communist Soviet Union and all
religions.
A prolific author, filmmaker and historian who has called the
United States the root cause of all the fundamentalist activities
in the world, Ali is coming to campus on Thursday to speak about
the social and political changes in Latin America.
The lecture will center around the challenges Latin America is
facing under reform-oriented leaders such as Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales, and how they follow
and differ from the tradition of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, said
Tom Mertes, administrator at the UCLA Center for Social Theory and
Comparative History.
The discussion of the present current of left-wing politics in
Latin America coincides with Ali’s newest book,
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope,” Mertes
said.
“(Ali) uses history very carefully and makes powerful
arguments. … He has a global perspective,” Mertes said.
Ali said in an e-mail interview with the Bruin that he believes
that domestic social reforms under Chavez and Morales are more
successful in fighting off what he called “U.S.
imperialism” than what has been done in other nations, such
as the armed resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Though his latest book is about Latin America, Ali is best known
as an author and historian who studies Islamic states and the
West’s role in Islamic nations and the rest of the world.
Born to communist parents in British India, now part of
Pakistan, in 1943, Ali said his socialist views, not his atheist
beliefs, have shaped his perspective.
The political order he advocates is social democracy, with
socialism instead of capitalism, which he said is incompatible with
democracy.
Under Ali’s view of a good social order, the world is not
dominated by markets and profits. Social provisions would be
protected, not privatized and used for private gain, he said.
“We need a world that is not dominated by the market and
the drive for profit,” Ali said, adding that democracy
permitted by capitalist nations is not truly democratic.
For Ali, capitalist nations only permit democracies that support
and perpetuate the same capitalist ideas.
His belief in political activism as a means to bring about
change began early, during his college years in Pakistan. He was an
outspoken critic of the military dictatorship in Pakistan and was
banned from speaking publicly by the government.
Fearing his life was at risk due to his public activism,
Ali’s parents sent him to Oxford University in Britain, where
he joined leftist groups and soon became involved in protesting the
Vietnam War.
“It was my continent which was under attack. I knew we had
to do something about it, and I got very engaged in helping to set
up the anti-Vietnam War movement in Oxford first, and then
nationally,” Ali said in an interview at UC Berkeley in
2003.
Since then, Ali has held views which draw much controversy, such
as assertions regarding U.S. imperialist motives.
In his book “The Clash of Fundamentalisms,” written
in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Ali said the U.S.
economic and military policies are the parents of all
fundamentalism.
“This empire, the most powerful in history, now uses its
economic and military muscle to reshape the world according to its
needs and its interests,” Ali said in an interview with Z
Magazine in April 2003.
He also accused the U.S. of installing cooperative leaders in
foreign nations.
“The difference between the American empire and previous
empires is that the United States usually prefers to work through
local compradors, local rulers who are on their side. They
don’t like ruling directly because they know it’s an
enormous expense. Why send your own people out to run a country
when you can find locals to do it?” he said in the Z Magazine
interview.
Ali said in the e-mail interview that he sees the U.S. military
domination in the world manifesting in the 121 U.S. military bases
around the world that are helping to preserve the world order
favorable to the U.S., as well as by the occupation in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
But Ali has also been called a Saddam Hussein apologist by
Sydney barrister Jim Nolan in an article in The Age in 2003.
“In Ali’s long diatribe in the New Left Review one
looks in vain to find a single mention of the genocide, the mass
graves, the torture chambers or the fascist ideology that lies at
the heart of Baathism,” wrote Nolan in the article.
But while he criticizes the West for its behavior, Ali also
faults Islamic nations for their religious fundamentalism.
A committed materialist, Ali said religion is against
rationality and it is oppressive in that it forbids free
thinking.
“In many parts of the Muslim world, (religion is) what
holds them back. Biology can’t be taught in many Muslim
countries, because to teach it means you give people other
ideas,” Ali said in the Berkeley interview.
He has also written that Osama bin Laden and Muslim religious
leaders should not be the future of Islam, a future he said would
result in oppression and backwardness.
To solve this problem, in “The Clash of
Fundamentalisms” Ali called for the strict separation of
religion and state, the dissolution of the clergy, and the right of
Muslims to have their own interpretation of religious texts.