Prodiscurs

I am honoured to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of  Egypt 's advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I am grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. I am also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum. We meet at a time of tension between the  United States and Muslims around the world – tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the west includes centuries of co-existence and co-operation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a cold war in wh...

  Lately politics have come to be on the center stage again. In these last days I re-read Adam Smith and Bernard Crick (the title of this post is a title from a book by the later). Although those two thought in many ways very differently there are certain commonalities. As a founding father of liberalism, Adam Smith had the same suspicion as Crick, a democratic socialist, about ideologies. His works on macro economics or political economy (as you prefer to see it) had the same ethical constituent bases. Using different methodologies, concerned about different aspects of the well being of the State they couldn't care less about ideologies, political fashion trends and social fashions. The focus of Smith was on economical behavior and regulation, the focus of Crick was on ethical collective behavior (sometimes different from individual moral conviction). Despite so many years between the work of each other and the difference in the approach it's amazing to see how the fundamen...