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, Punjab
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, Ali quit the IMG and joined the Labour
Party to support Tony Benn in his bid to become
deputy leader of the Labour Party.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, Clash of Fundamentalisms,
aimed to put the events of the September 11
attacks in historical perspective.
He followed that with Bush in Babylon, which
criticised the 2003 invasion of Iraq by American
president George W. Bush.
The book uses poetry and critical essays in
portraying the war in Iraq as a failure.
Ali believes that the new Iraqi government
will fail.
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.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 ==
Ali currently lives in Highgate, north 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.
Growing up in a secular family that was more
culturally Muslim rather than religious, today
he describes himself as agnostic.
== 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
== See also ==
List of British Pakistanis
== References ==
== External links ==
Tariq Ali Official webpage
Appearances on C-SPAN
Tariq Ali at the international literature
festival berlin
