Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali (Urdu: طارق علی; English: Tariq Ali; born October 21, 1943) is a British-Pakistani writer, historian, publicist, filmmaker, screenwriter, and left-wing public activist of a Trotskyist bent, a member of the editorial board of the New Left Review, and a regular contributor to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. He is the author of such well-known books as Clash of Civilizations (2002), Bush in Babylon (2003), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006), and many others.

In 1980, he coauthored Trotsky for Beginners with Phil Evans. In 1990, Ali published the satirical novel Redemption, which tells of the inability of Trotskyists to prevent the fall of the “socialist bloc.” The book parodied many well-known figures of the Trotskyist movement, including Ernest Mandel, Ted Grant, Tony Cliff, Alex Callinicos, Chris Harman, and Gerry Healy.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, the book Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity was published (the Russian edition appeared under the title Clash of Civilizations: Crusades, Jihad and Modernity), in which Tariq Ali analyzes the history of Islam, its culture, and the emergence and development of fundamentalist tendencies within it, as well as the role played in this by the leading capitalist states. The book Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, published in 2003, criticizes the American invasion of Iraq. The book is written in a distinctive style that combines critical essay with poetic language.