Can a new kind of integrated knowledge-creation occur, that is outside as well as inside the post-Enlightenment western tradition? Book review.
The writer reflects on the role of language, foreign and Arabic, colloquial and classical, in Morocco; and on the appropriation, polarisation, and xenophobia of the Egyptian counter-revolution.
Daesh's depravity may be as much imitative as original; and the writer considers how the battle over freedom of speech is part of a bigger game, driving a wedge between France and its Muslims.
The motives of many young would-be jihadists are childlike—the appeal of becoming ‘super-heroes’ to fill an existential void. The author meets a comic book writer aiming to lead them in a different direction.
The author considers the wave of gory Isis propaganda and the violent wielding of an old tool with new vectors, a social media Tamburlaine; and remembers the Moroccans who served in the World Wars.
The author asks how small children will survive sukuns - Morocco's spoken tongue; ponders the word "museum"; and closes with a favourite Moroccan parable.
The author ponders literacy, the literate 'red blood corpuscles of society', and the way Arabic is taught in the Middle East and North Africa. He explores the shaky relationship between language and expression and closes with a story of an American seduced into 'deprovincialisation' by Arabic.
In which our author underestimates the good vibrations in British Film Week in Morocco, enjoys a steel band, and rejoices in the grit of a woman called Rabha. In Part Two he returns to the vexed question of language, concluding that the choice is between isolation and opening up.
The author considers how education may impact on a society's growing propensity to resort to violence. This column responds to criticism of the school system in Morocco with some thoughts of its own about the role of English, the lingua franca of international communication.
Our columnist warns western commentators quick to advocate caution to Egyptians, that if they are honest noone knows what is taking place in Egypt in these extraordinary days which we are invited to observe - from above. Down below, there is a small problem with driving, and not just in Ethiopia.
Self-awareness and cultural pride are very important. But are they to be centrifugal or centripetal? The ideologization of this issue is probably inevitable. Our columnist tackles the Berber question, and the continuing decline in Moroccan newspaper circulation.
