Confronting Empire
$18
Long out of print. Haymarket has published it now with a new forward by Pervez Hoodbhoy. Confronting Empire is probably Barsamian’s most influential interview book.
“Eqbal Ahmad, perhaps the shrewdest and most original anti-imperialist analyst of Asia and Africa, [was] a man of enormous charisma and incorruptible ideals. He had an almost instinctive attraction to movements of the oppressed and the persecuted [and] a formidable knowledge of history. Arabs, for example, learned more from him about the failures of Arab nationalism than from anyone else. Ahmad was that rare thing, an intellectual unintimidated by power or authority.” — Edward W. Said
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Chomsky says:
OTHER PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“Fighting words, wise words, from one of the most powerful activist intellectuals of our time.” — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
“A dazzling intellectual encounter: thoughtful questions by a superb interviewer, David Barsamian—and brilliant responses by the extraordinary Eqbal Ahmad.” — Howard Zinn
“[Eqbal Ahmad] cared deeply and was willing to believe people could endure and be more brave and creative than they knew. He saw the big picture and still the value of individual stories. His incisive and lucid way of thinking and his voice are clear and sharp in these skillful interviews by David Barsamian.” — Pervez Hoodbhoy, from the Introduction
“For [those] who have missed Eqbal Ahmad in the year since he died, this book comes like rain during a drought.” — Radha Kumar, Council on Foreign Relations
“These interviews provide a wonderfully focused, yet wide-ranging compendium of Eqbal Ahmad’s worldview.” — Richard Falk, Princeton University
Authors
Eqbal Ahmad
Eqbal Ahmad was Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He had an extraordinary life. He was born in Irki, Bihar to an Indian Muslim landowning family. His father was murdered because he was parceling out land to peasants. Upon the partition of India in 1947 he went to Pakistan. He came to the U.S. to attend Princeton. He was in Algeria during the revolt against French rule. For many years he was managing editor of Race and Class. His articles and essays appeared in The Nation and other journals throughout the world. He wrote a weekly column for Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest English newspaper. He was one of the most original and influential anti-imperialist thinkers of his era. He was a leading figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement. He was a remarkable and persuasive orator. As a teacher, he was mentor and inspiration to many. He was a close ally of Edward Said, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Edward Said called him “an intellectual unintimidated by power or authority.” Confronting Empire and Terrorism Theirs & Ours are the two books he did with David Barsamian. Eqbal Ahmad died in Islamabad on May 11, 1999.
David Barsamian
One of America’s most tireless and wide-ranging investigative journalists, David Barsamian has altered the independent media landscape, both with his weekly radio program, Alternative Radio—37 years and running— and his books with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Richard Wolff, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said. His latest books are Edward Said: Culture and Resistance, Retargeting Iran, Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent Interviews with David Barsamian 1984-1996. And the latest book with Chomsky is Notes on Resistance: Interviews by David Barsamian 2019-2021. David lectures on world affairs, imperialism, capitalism, propaganda, the media and global rebellions.
In 2017 Radical Desi in Vancouver presented him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. He has collaborated with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet in events in New York, London, Vienna, Boulder and San Francisco. David Barsamian is the winner of the Media Education Award, the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its Top Ten Media Heroes.
Qalandar in Lahore –
It is a book that I keep with Black Jacobins, The Wretched of the Earth, and a few others I turn to it either in political impasse or heartbreak, or in moments of shared pedagogy. It’s a treasure. Thank you.
Noah –
Eqbal Ahmad was a pleasure to read. Great minds are so rare.