Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali (born the October 21st 1943 with Lahore) is a Historien, writer and political commentator Britannique, of origin Pakistanaise. He is the author of a great number of works, in particular on the South Asia, the Moyen the East, the Histoire of Islam, the American Empire and political resistance.

He is member of the editorial board of the New Left Review , and contributes regularly to The Guardian , CounterPunch and with the London Review off Books . He is leading director of the London publisher Verso.

Biography

Tariq Ali, the elder one of three children, was born and was high with Lahore, in the British Raj, maintaining the Pakistan. Its father, Mazhar Ali Khan, was journalist, while its mother, Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (girl of Sikandar Hyat Khan which directed the Moslem Ligue and managed the province of the Penjab in 1937), was militant.

Whereas he studies at the university of Penjab, he organizes demonstrations against the Pakistani military dictatorship. His/her uncle is then Pakistani chief of the military informations. His/her parents decide to make emigrate Tariq Ali in England to study with the Collège of Exeter, where he studies philosophy, politics and economics. He is elected president of Oxford Union, company which organizes debates.

Its notoriety starts to grow during the Guerre of the Vietnam, during whom he devotes himself to debates against the war with personalities like Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. With the wire of time, Tariq Ali becomes increasingly critical towards the foreign politics of the the United States and of Israel and imposes itself like an international figure for the Opposants on the foreign politics of the United States. It is also vigorous opposing American relations with Pakistan which tended to support the military dictatorship against the democracy.

Credit in the New Left in the years 1960, it was lengthily associated with the New Left Review . Attracted in the revolutionary socialist movement through its participation in the newspaper The Black Dwarf , it joined in 1968 the party Trotskyste International Marxist Group (IMG). He becomes then member of the international executive committee of the Fourth International (unified Secretariat). He would have inspired with the Rolling Stones their “most political” song, “Street Fighting Man”, recorded in 1968.

In same time, he is candidate for the IMG at the time of the British parliamentary elections of February 1974. In 1981, the IMG east dissolves when its members join the Workers party. Tariq Ali then ceases his activism in the revolutionary left and supports Tony Ben. He becomes owner of a company independent of production for television, Bandung, which produced programs for Chanel 4 in the years 1980.

In 1990, it publishes the satirical novel Redemption , on the incapacity of the trotskystes to face the collapse of the Eastern bloc, and in which it parodies many personalities of the movement trotskyste. In Clash off Fundamentalisms , it replaces the Attentats of September 11th, 2001 from the historical point of view, by tracing the history of the Islam since its origins. Its work Bush in Babylon constitutes a criticism of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the US president George W. Bush. It estimated whereas the Iraqi temporary Gouvernement would fail in its mission.

Critical of the Néolibéralisme, it was present at the Worldwide social forum of 2005 with Porto Alegre (Brésil) and one of the nineteen to sign the Manifeste of Porto Alegre.

He currently lives with London with his partner Susan Watkins, editor association of the New Left Review .

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