Category: English Blog

Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895) was one of the contemporaries of Karl Marx. Both worked in close association and are considered to be the fathers of Marxist theory. Engels came from a well off Prussian family. His father owned textile mills. His family raised him as a Christian yet he developed atheist ideas. More to the disappointment […]

Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is undoubtedly his most acclaimed work published in 1905. It was not translated into English until 1930. In this book, Weber tried to provide an alternative narrative of emergence of capitalism which was totally different from his predecessor, Karl Marx. While Marx saw religion as just […]

Saint Simon (1760 – 1825) was a nobleman by birth but renounced his title after the French revolution. He participated in the American Revolution and wrote actively on politics and society. For a short period of time, he indulged in business which he left after a feud with his partner. Then he studied physiology and […]

Ibn Taymiyyah (1263 – 1328) was an Islamic legal scholar. Some people trace the roots of extremism to him but his image as a reformist is contains more truth. He lived through a time when Muslims were under direct invasion of Mongols and Crusaders. Baghdad had already been plundered and caliphate had been disintegrated in […]

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was an outlier of his time. A statesman of Maliki rite, he spent his life in different city states of Northern Africa and Spain. He lived through the era of transition. Based on his observation of rise of fall of states, he came up with a general principle related to power and […]

Al-Farabi’s work, due to its extensive philosophical and religious nature – is not easy to comprehend. Scholars have contradicting opinion about what could be the nature of his political understanding. For intellectuals like Massimo Campanini, al-Farabi is a theologian and his political ideas are influenced by the religion to a greater extent. He perceives the […]