Appeals To The Past Are Among The

The Central Fact For Me Is, I Think, That The [role Of The] Intellectual... Cannot Be Played Without A Sense Of Being Someone Whose Place It Is Publicly To Raise Embarrassing Questions, To Confront Orthodoxy And Dogma (rather Than To Produce Them), To Be Someone Who Cannot Easily Be Co-opted By Governments Or Corporations, And Whose Raison D'etre Is To Represent All Those People And Issues That Are Routinely Forgotten Or Swept Under The Rug.

This [terrorists Attacks On 9/11] Was Part Of Nothing. It Was A Leap Into Another Realm - The Realm Of Crazy Abstractions And Mythological Generalities, Involving People Who Have Hijacked Islam For Their Own Purposes. It's Important Not To Fall Into That Trap And To Try To Respond With A Metaphysical Retaliation Of Some Sort.

We Are At A Point In Our Work When We Can No Longer Ignore Empires And The Imperial Context In Our Studies. (p. 5)

It Was Thought That To Rally Islam Against Godless Communism Would Be Doing The Soviet Union A Very Bad Turn Indeed, And That, In Fact, Transpired.

Ironically, Many Of People, Including Osama Bin Laden And The Mujahedeen, Were, In Fact, Nourished By The United States In The Early Eighties In Its Efforts To Drive The Soviets Out Of Afghanistan.