Niall Ferguson in Newsweek: In Samuel Huntington’s version of the post–Cold War world, there was going to be a clash between an Islamic civilization that was stuck in a medieval time warp and a Western civilization that was essentially equivalent to modernity. What we’ve ended up with is something more like a mashup of civilizations,… Read More »
Since I have a background in Development Studies, and I am currently trying to develop a research plan for an ethnographic study of the Nigerian financial sector, the following, from Bill Maurer, Professor of Anthropology and Director, Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, University of California, Irvine, resonates quite powerfully with me: Because European systems of… Read More »
1. On the Islamic origins of the World Trade Centre architecture 2. What percentage of salary increase would satisfy Indian lawmakers? (This is not a tip for Nigerian lawmakers.) 3. On the importance of field research for development economics (Almost there, economists, almost there.) 4. What about the foreskin? (On male circumcision.) 5. A Beninese… Read More »
A reader writes: Without undermining the intellectual capabilities and the personal achievements of Ms Hirsi Ali, she often comes accross as self-overestimating and excessively self-benefitting. Since she stepped out of the islamic faith, she seems extremely obsessed with projecting islam in a negative light. For a self-proclaimed islam expert, I would appreciate a discuss that… Read More »
From The Economist: For anyone who has ever felt a tinge of rose-tinted nostalgia for the traditional, Ayaan Hirsi Ali provides a bracing, and on the whole healthy, cold shower. Having experienced traditional society from the inside—in the form of a Muslim Somali family headed by a well-known politician who practised polygamy and left a… Read More »