Deadly Milestone

May 08, 2017 by Tanzeen Doha

In the rest of this essay, we examine the consequences of the May 2013 massacre in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We collected written memories, reflections, poems, novellas, videos, other literary and non-literary artifacts in the aftermath of the massacre. These are some of the forms in which the massacre is memorialized within the Islamist counterpublic. These materials are the remaining traces — like dried blood — of the actual sets of events. It is a living archive that not only allows an immanent embodied critique of a secular society, but provides a marginal possibility for a realist speculation in retrospect.

The Syrian War and the Western Left’s Myopia

January 28, 2017 by Tanzeen Doha

Syria's brutal repression of mass demonstrations across Syria in 2011 marked a decisive model of how authoritarian Arab regimes could avoid the fate of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt (and later, Gaddafi in Libya), who were seemingly swept away by popular revolutions, led by a coalition of leftist youth, liberal, constitutionalist reformers, and moderate, democratic Islamists, such as Ennadha and the Muslim Brothers. Bashar al-Assad and his 'Alawi generals and security officials were determined to eradicate the possibility of mass popular participation in political life, which would have made Baathist and 'Alawi control of the Syrian state and economy impossible.