Quick Facts
Biography
Tariq Ali (; Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی; born 21 October 1943) is a British-Pakistani writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, political activist, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. He read PPE at Exeter College, Oxford.
He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970), Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1983), Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), Bush in Babylon (2003), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), The Duel (2008), The Obama Syndrome (2010), and The Extreme Centre: A Warning (2015).
Early life
Ali was born and raised in Lahore in British India (later part of Pakistan). He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan, who was the daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan, who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab from 1937 to 1942. Ali's father, Mazhar, had been "mobilising peasants in his family’s fiefdom" when he was invited to join the Pakistan Times by Mian Iftikharuddin, later becoming sympathetic to the Communist cause, although he never joined the party. Ali's father and mother, who were cousins, eloped; his mother later said: "Mazhar left for the Middle East on military service. I was very pregnant by then. We didn’t see each other for two years. Our son Tariq was born while Mazhar was away. By the time he returned, I had joined the Communist Party. I had given away my entire trousseau, including the family jewels, to the Party".
Emerging activism
Ali first became politically active in his teens, taking part in opposition to the military dictatorship of Pakistan. An uncle who worked in the Pakistani military intelligence warned his parents that Ali could not be protected. His parents therefore decided to get him out of Pakistan and sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1965. In 1967 Ali was one of 64 prominent figures, including the Beatles, who signed a petition calling for the legalisation of marijuana. Ali's tenure at the Union included a meeting with Malcolm X in December 1964 during which Malcolm X expressed deep consternation about his own risk of assassination.
Career
His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. He testified at the Russell Tribunal over US involvement in Vietnam. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies. He was also a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy. He was one of the marchers on the American embassy in London in 1968 in a demonstration against the Vietnam war.
Active in the New Left of the 1960s, he has long been associated with the New Left Review. Ali inserted himself into politics through his involvement with The Black Dwarf newspaper, he joined the International Marxist Group (IMG) in 1968. He was recruited to the leadership of the IMG and became a member of the International Executive Committee of the (reunified) Fourth International. He also befriended influential figures such as Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
In 1967 Ali was in Camiri, Bolivia, not far from where Che Guevara was captured, to observe the trial of Régis Debray. He was accused of being a Cuban revolutionary by authorities. Ali then said: "If you torture me the whole night and I can speak Spanish in the morning I'll be grateful to you for the rest of my life."
During this period he was an IMG candidate in Sheffield Attercliffe at the February 1974 general election and was co-author of Trotsky for Beginners, a cartoon book. In 1981, the IMG dissolved when its members entered the Labour Party: the IMG was promptly proscribed. Ali then abandoned activism in the revolutionary left and supported Tony Benn in his bid to become deputy leader of the Labour Party that year.
In 1990, he published the satire Redemption, on the inability of the Trotskyists to handle the downfall of the Eastern bloc. The book contains parodies of many well-known figures in the Trotskyist movement. In 1999 Ali strongly criticised US and UK interventions in the Balkans in the piece Springtime for NATO.
His book Bush in Babylon criticises the 2003 invasion of Iraq by American president George W. Bush. This book has a unique style, using poetry and critical essays in portraying the war in Iraq as a failure. Ali believes that the new Iraqi government will fail.
His previous book, Clash of Fundamentalisms, puts the events of the September 11 attacks in historical perspective, covering the history of Islam from its foundations.
Ali has remained a critic of modern neoliberal economics and was present at the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he was one of 19 to sign the Porto Alegre Manifesto. He supports the model of Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
He has been described as "the alleged inspiration" for the Rolling Stones' song "Street Fighting Man", recorded in 1968. John Lennon's "Power to the People" was inspired by an interview Lennon gave to Ali.
In an article published in CounterPunch, he responded to the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy and said: "The Bavarian is a razor-sharp reactionary cleric. I think he knew what he was saying and why. In a neo-liberal world suffering from environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, repression, a 'planet of slums' (in the graphic phrase of Mike Davis), the Pope chooses to insult the founder of a rival faith. The reaction in the Muslim world was predictable, but depressingly insufficient."
Ali has also written in favour of Scottish independence.
During the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016, Ali was one of the few figures on the left to support Britain leaving the European Union.
Screenplay
Tariq Ali's The Leopard and The Fox, first written as a BBC screenplay in 1985, is about the last days of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Never previously produced because of a censorship controversy, it was finally premiered in New York in October 2007, the day before former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to her home country after eight years in exile.
In 2009, Ali, alongside Mark Weisbrot wrote the screenplay to the Oliver Stone documentary South of the Border. This gave a favourable account of Hugo Chávez and other left-wing Latin American leaders. Interviewed in the documentary, Ali explained the role that Bolivian water privatisation and the 2000 Cochabamba protests played in eventually bringing Evo Morales to power.
Personal life
He currently lives in Highgate, London with his partner Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review. He has three children: Natasha from a previous relationship and Chengiz and Aisha with Watkins.
Works (partial list)
- The New Revolutionaries: A Handbook of the International Radical Left (editor), New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1969. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-79860
- Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970). ISBN 978-0-224-61864-9
- The Coming British Revolution (1971). ISBN 978-0-224-00630-9
- 1968 and After: Inside the Revolution (1978). ISBN 978-0-85634-082-6
- Chile, Lessons of the Coup: Which Way to Workers Power (1978) .ISBN 978-0-85612-107-4
- Trotsky for Beginners (1980). ISBN 978-0-906495-27-8
- Can Pakistan Survive?: The Death of a State (1983). ISBN 978-0-8052-7194-2; (1991) ISBN 978-0-86091-260-6
- Who's Afraid of Margaret Thatcher? In Praise of Socialism (1984). ISBN 978-0-86091-802-8
- The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on 20th-Century World Politics (1984). ISBN 978-0-931477-56-0
- An Indian Dynasty: The Story of the Nehru-Gandhi Family (1985). ISBN 978-0-399-13074-8
- Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (1987). ISBN 978-0-00-217779-5
- Revolution from Above: Soviet Union Now (1988). ISBN 978-0-86091-268-2
- Iranian Nights (1989). ISBN 978-1-85459-026-8
- Moscow Gold (1990). ISBN 978-1-85459-078-7
- Redemption (1990). ISBN 978-0-7011-3394-8
- Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992; 1st in the "Islam Quintet"). ISBN 978-0-7011-3944-5
- Necklaces (1992)
- Ugly Rumours (1998). ISBN 978-1-85459-426-6
- 1968: Marching in the Streets (1998). ISBN 978-0-7475-3763-2
- Fear of Mirrors Arcadia Books (4 August 1998). ISBN 978-1-900850-10-0; University of Chicago Press (10 Aug 2010). ISBN 978-1-906497-15-6
- The Book of Saladin (1998; 2nd in the "Islam Quintet"). ISBN 978-1-85984-834-0
- Snogging Ken (2000). ISBN 978-1-84002-163-9
- The Stone Woman (2000; 3rd in the "Islam Quintet"). ISBN 978-1-85984-764-0
- Masters of the Universe: NATO's Balkan Crusade (2000). ISBN 978-1-85984-752-7
- Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002). ISBN 978-1-85984-679-7
- Bush in Babylon (2003). ISBN 978-1-85984-583-7
- Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (2005). ISBN 978-1-84467-029-1
- Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations with Tariq Ali (2005). ISBN 978-1-56584-954-9
- Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror (2005). ISBN 978-1-84467-545-6
- Conversations with Edward Said (2005). ISBN 978-1-905422-04-3
- A Sultan in Palermo (2005; featuring Muhammad al-Idrisi and Roger II of Sicily; 4th in the "Islam Quintet"). ISBN 978-1-84467-025-3
- The Leopard and the Fox (2006). ISBN 978-1-905422-29-6
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006) ISBN 978-1-84467-102-1; revised edn. (2008). ISBN 978-1-84467-248-6
- A Banker for All Seasons: Bank of Crooks and Cheats Incorporated (2007). ISBN 978-1-905422-65-4
- The assassination: Who Killed Indira G? (2008) ISBN 978-1-905422-85-2
- The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008). ISBN 978-1-84737-355-7
- The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom: and other Essays (2009). ISBN 978-1-84467-367-4
- The Idea of Communism (non-fiction) (2009). ISBN 978-1-906497-26-2
- Night of the Golden Butterfly (2010; 5th in the "Islam Quintet"). ISBN 978-1-84467-611-8
- The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (2010), ISBN 978-1-84467-449-7
- On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation (2011), ISBN 978-1-60846-149-3
- Kashmir: The Case for Freedom (2011), ISBN 1-844-67735-4
- The Extreme Centre: A Warning (2015), ISBN 978-1-78478-262-7
- Permanent Counter Revolution (2016), ISBN 978-1-78478-432-4
- The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution (2017), ISBN 978-1-78663-110-7