I got into Palestine a couple of days ago, but have been wiped out by a combination of jet lag and Ramadan fasting. Since I lack bona fide theological commitments, the fasting (no food or drink from dawn to dusk) was intended as a kind of “spiritual experiment,” but is now starting to feel like the kind of experiment that Victor Frankenstein would conduct, at least if Dr. Frankenstein had no one to experiment on but himself. Continue reading
Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja
Pissed, Dissed, and Out $89.18
This is my Victim Impact Statement apropos of this post, hurriedly written before I leave for Palestine.
Essex County Prosecutor’s Office of Victim Witness Advocacy
Victim Impact Information Form
Prosecutor’s File #: 16-002203
Defendant’s Name: Michael Ramos
Your Name: Irfan* Khawaja
The Future of PoT
Summer is unmistakably here, with temperatures in north Jersey, at least, hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (40% humidity, no discernible breeze, no AC), and the spring semester (finals, grade appeals, plagiarism reports, graduation, etc.) a mercifully distant and fading memory. As PoT nears its second birthday (b. July 22, 2014), I thought I’d make a couple of proposals and announcements about the blog’s direction for the immediate future. I realize that that makes it sound as though PoT is about to get married, but it isn’t. It’s merely entering its terrible two’s. Continue reading
The Philosopher’s Tomb
Looks like the archaeologists have found Aristotle’s tomb:
ATHENS — A Greek archaeologist who has been leading a 20-year excavation in northern Greece said on Thursday that he believed he had unearthed the tomb of Aristotle.
In an address at a conference in Thessaloniki, Greece, commemorating the 2,400th anniversary of Aristotle’s birth, the archaeologist, Konstantinos Sismanidis, said he had “no proof but strong indications, as certain as one can be,” to support his claim.
Everyone join me in wishing our buddy Aristotle a happy birthday. We’re still talking about him after all these years! What a guy.
Next question on the agenda: so who owns the tomb? Seriously.
The Israeli Occupation: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It
Just a reminder for those in the area: I’ll be giving a talk on “The Israeli Occupation and Settlement Enterprise: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It,” this Saturday, May 21, at 11 am at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, located at 50 Cherry Hill Rd, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540. (I incorrectly described the start time in a previous post as 1 pm, but that’s when it ends.) The talk is sponsored by String of Pearls Reconstructionist Jewish Congregation of Princeton, and is open to the public. Thanks to Hilary Persky, String of Pearls’s Secretary, for the invitation. The talk takes place immediately after the Congregation’s Saturday morning sabbath celebration. Continue reading
Another Day, Another Assault: Everyday Life in Hebron
I’m practically counting the days until I can get on a plane and head back into stuff like this. It sure beats grading! Of course, the problem is that I’ll have a lot of grading to do, too. I just hope my pedagogical responsibilities don’t interfere with my tourist activities (NB: tourist, not terrorist).
Yes, don’t worry: I’ll have a camera, so I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures, maybe even do some filming! A PoT exclusive: you can watch me get beat up by young men who really ought to be doing something more productive with their free time than assaulting people for fun. Instead of doing that, why not register for my political philosophy seminar at Al Quds U? You have permission to audit the class if you behave. But leave the dog at home.
Moral of the story: the Israel Defense Forces aren’t occupying Hebron’s H2 zone to protect wogs. The’re in Hebron to protect thugs. Just so that we’re clear on that. Continue reading
Paging Miss Anscombe
Here’s my writing assignment for week 3 of Phil 250 EL, “Making Moral Decisions” (fully online section). All of the material covered in class was about the advisability or not of drug use; none of it focused on questions of legality or politics.
Directions: Write a 750 word essay outlining the basics of your views on the use of mind- or mood-altering chemical substances for recreational purposes. At one extreme, someone might argue that you ought never to take drugs for recreational purposes. At the other extreme, you might argue, with Sullum, that there’s nothing wrong with doing so. Where do you end up? In particular, how does autonomy figure into your answer?
Representative answers, Type 1 (all emphases added): Continue reading
AC/WTF in Lisbon: A Requiem Mass
I don’t understand this. I will never understand this. I try to come to terms with it, but words fail me. In my grief, I can only call upon the words of others, wiser than me.
“Mysteries like these can no man penetrate…”
–Voltaire, from “Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne,” on the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755“Oh Voltaire! Oh humanity! Oh idiocy!”
–Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, II.35“You been…thunderstruck!”
–AC/DC
It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. A long way down, too.
Postscript, May 9, 2016: OK, Axl/DC is starting to grow on me in a weird-ass musical Frankenstein’s monster guilty-pleasure sort of way. I mean, it could have been worse, but then, it could have been better (cf. Lizzy Hale).
Norman Finkelstein on Naz Shah’s “Anti-Semitism”
I just happened to read Norman Finkelstein’s recent interview with MintPress News, discussing the British Labour Party’s fundamentally ridiculous “anti-Semitism” scandal involving MP Naz Shah and others. I highly recommend it. I don’t agree with every last thing Finkelstein says (read it for yourself and decide for yourself), but I certainly agree with general point he’s making: the accusations of anti-Semitism being made against Shah are almost complete nonsense, and reflect an amazing double standard when it comes to the standards that govern acceptable political speech in the Anglophone world. No one seems to feel the need to make an argument for why Shah’s actions were anti-Semitic; the accusation is supposed to be too obvious to require argument. But there isn’t a particle of evidence to support the accusations in question: they seem literally to have been generated out of whole cloth, and accepted at face value despite that. Continue reading
Allah Save the Queen
So London just got its first Pakistani Muslim mayor.
I’m a Londoner, I’m European, I’m British, I’m English, I’m of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband.
Why do I feel such a powerful impulse to throw cold water on this? Is it because, as an apostate Muslim, I find something problematic about a supposed Muslim who lists his religious commitment fifth on a list of politically expedient identities that helped him win an election? Or is it because, as a person of South Asian descent, I just find loud public expressions of South Asian–sorry Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Nepali, Kashmiri, or Bengali identity really embarrassing? Continue reading
