Highlighting the sceptical strain: An interview with Tariq Ali

Abstract

This interview with Tariq Ali focuses on his historical novel sequence the Islam Quintet, and took place over several email exchanges in spring and summer 2015. Over the course of the correspondence, Mr Ali graciously offered further insights into his initial responses, which allows the interviewer to link specific discussions of his novel Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree and the rest of the Islam Quintet to wider issues of the interplay between fiction and history, the place of academic discourse, and the role of an anti-imperialist critique.

Keywords:

• Usable past
• anti-imperialism
• activism
• Muslim societies
• Islamic empires

Acknowledgment

Credit for providing the photo of Tariq Ali to Nina Subin.

Notes

1. Ali recommends Asin Palacios’s ([1926] 1968) Islam and the Divine Comedy and Michele Amari’s [1854] 2008) Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia.

2. Through The Bandung File for Channel Four, Ali produced a documentary, Islam in Spain: The Final Solution, featuring novelist Juan Goytisolo (Ali 1992).

3. See Ali (2009).

4. See Cilano (2013), chapter 3: “Islam Before Pakistan” (89–103).