The Magician in the Siege Perilous: Comments on Pervez Hoodbhoy’s New Book. Book Review: Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistan: Origins, Identity, and Future, Routledge 2023

The book under review is a collection of essays analyzing Pakistan’s past, attempting to reevaluate it in a critical, myth-debunking way, and describing the country’s present state while formulating some prescriptions for the future. Many parts of the book reveal the author’s deep insight, showing the fallacies of the official discourse in Pakistan. However, Hoodbhoy’s discourse is often flawed by his disdain for religion, resulting in shallow and biased (if not simply wrong) analyses of Islamic-based thought, and by his inability to reconcile his commitment to modernism as a foundation of good politics with democratic principles.

The Magician in the Siege Perilous: comments on Pervez Hoodbhoy’s new book. Recenzja książki Perveza Hoodbhoya: Pakistan: Origins, Identity, and Future

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