By Telos Press · Thursday, March 11, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan talks with Elham Manea about Switzerland’s recent decision to prohibit the wearing of full facial coverings in public, thereby restricting the burqa and the niqab. Manea’s new book The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism, which investigates the broader context of this decision in comprehensive detail, is now available from Telos Press in our online store for 20% off the list price.
An excerpt from the article:
 European democracies differ from America’s in notable ways, and many Americans have reservations about the Swiss prohibition: Aren’t burqa bans an illiberal curbing of religious and expressive freedom? By some reports, fewer than 100 women in Switzerland wear the burqa. Do they constitute so great a threat to the venerable Swiss nation that their constitution, which guarantees freedom of faith and conscience, has to be amended to alter their sartorial practice?
Aware that judgments from afar can sometimes be glib, I put these questions to Elham Manea, author of a book published last month titled The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism. . . . Ms. Manea is quick to dismiss the argument that the ban curbs freedom. You can’t separate the burqa and niqab from their “religious and political contexts” and turn this into “a simple question of ‘choice.'” The burqa didn’t “come out of nowhere” and Muslim women haven’t “decided to embrace it on a whim.” Many Western feminists, she says, tend to “neutralize the context, as if it is of no consequence.” She urges those who are squeamish about the ban to ask which ideology teaches women to cover themselves completely. What are its theological features? What does it say about women?
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By Thomas Brussig · Monday, March 8, 2021 This essay was published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 9, 2021, and appears here in translation with permission of the author. Footnotes have been added for clarification. Translated by Russell A. Berman, with comments here. The author intends the title as an ironic reference to Chancellor Willy Brandt’s 1969 statement that Germany “must risk more democracy.”
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 The corona crisis remains an experience of helplessness, even though infection rates are falling. Despite all the limitations on everyday life and despite the start of the vaccinations, an end to the restrictions is nowhere in sight—even though a few countries have succeeded in stopping the virus. The feeling of helplessness in the face of corona is due to the fact that we have had to surmount the corona crisis with the tools of democracy.
Sigmund Freud spoke of “three blows to humanity”: first, the Copernican worldview that pushed us out of the center of the universe; second, Darwinism, according to which we did not descend from God but from monkeys; and third, psychoanalysis, which teaches that we are not self-determined but only act due to hidden, unconscious, and instinctual motivations. Now we can speak of three blows to democracy, although it was only thirty years ago when liberal self-consciousness stood at its high point. According to the popular thesis of an “end of history,” market economies and democracy had achieved such an indisputable victory that nothing would stop their spread around the world.
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, March 8, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
A distinctive feature of public debate in Germany involves prominent literary authors, especially novelists, expounding on current political matters in major newspapers. Thomas Brussig’s essay “Risk More Dictatorship,” translated here, belongs to this genre. Known especially for his satire of East Germany, Heroes Like Us, Brussig chose a provocative title that seems to echo and respond to Chancellor Willy Brandt’s appeal more than fifty years ago to “risk more democracy.” Brandt was speaking in 1969 at a pivotal moment in the history of West Germany, indeed of the whole world, in the face of the protests during the previous year; Brussig in contrast appeals for “more dictatorship” in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, which he depicts as a potentially similar turning moment, with an accelerated “learning process,” that calls old certainties into question. These include the “end of history” claim that liberal democracy is inevitable; Brussig suggests that the “impotence” of democracies in the face of the pandemic raises the question as to whether other forms of government might be superior. The Chinese model of dictatorship casts a shadow across the essay.
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By B. Venkat Mani · Friday, March 5, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
On February 2, the second day of Black History Month, a tweet from a Black woman in the United States unleashed a war of words in India, with global resonance. Rihanna, the Barbados-born U.S. singer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and cultural activist posted a one-liner: “why aren’t we talking about this?!” with the hashtag #FarmersProtest and a link to a report about the government of India shutting down internet services in areas bordering the national capital, New Delhi, where farmers have been carrying out a movement to oppose three contentious farm laws.
Rihanna’s tweet went viral. The climate activist Greta Thunberg, Hollywood actor John Cusack, U.S.-based lawyer and supporter of Black Lives Matter Meena Harris, former adult star Mia Khalifa, Instagram influencer Amanda Cerny, R&B singer Jay Sean, and music composer Dr. Zeus all expressed support for the Indian farmers’ protests in their own independent tweets. Kisan Ekta Morcha, the official twitter account of the United Farmers’ Front, thanked Rihanna for her support of the movement, and countless Indians praised her for drawing international attention to the movement.
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By B. Venkat Mani · Friday, February 26, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
On November 26, 2020, when international borders were still partially closed due to the global coronavirus pandemic, a new democratic and peaceful movement was taking shape in India, led by farmers. They wanted to register their protest against three contentious agricultural reform laws covering “Produce Trade and Commerce,” “Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services,” and an amendment in the definition of “Essential Commodities.” Thousands of men, women, and children from the farming communities of the northern states of Punjab and Haryana left their homes and fields and drove on tractors and pick-up trucks hitched with “trolleys” (trailers) to New Delhi.
At the borders of the national capital of the world’s largest democratic nation, the farmers witnessed the full display of the power of their own elected federal government. Their attempts to enter the city were blocked by the deployment of a heavy police force, and the capital was closed off at several points; excavators were sent to dig up trenches, elaborate multilayered barricading was erected with massive concrete boulders generally used to prevent the impact of bombings, iron grills normally used in India to control traffic and set up temporary checkpoints were placed, covered with barbwire to assure extra security, and if all of this was not enough, water tankers were brought in to spray cold water on the farmers, who were also beaten up with lathis (batons).
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By Dieter Schönecker · Tuesday, February 23, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
To begin with, Kant was a racist. Some philosophers still hold he was not, but it’s hard to see why (though it may well be disputed whether Kant’s racist thinking is also reflected in his moral philosophy). Kant was not only a racist because he, incidentally, as it were, said some really condescending things about Native Americans, Black people, and a number of other peoples. Kant’s racism has a reason, a specific rationale and theoretical background. But Kant is not only a racist. He’s also, I submit, a semi-racist, an ethnicist, and a cultural chauvinist. I will first briefly explain what all this means. My focus, however, is on another question: Those who have successfully debunked Kant as a racist (such as Charles Mills) all too easily identify one of the four races that Kant postulates, to wit, the so-called “white race,” with white Europeans (both old and new). But this is a mistake. The white race Kant talks about, I further submit, is not to be identified with white Europeans.
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