Tariq Ali, editor of the New Left Review, is a leading intellectual and a veteran political activist. A forceful critic of imperialism, religious fundamentalism and, in recent times, the 'war on terror', Ali has sought to expose structures of power and dominance. He has written over a dozen books including, Can Pakistan survive, The Nehrus and the Gandhis, Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power, The Clash of Fundamentalism, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq.
The grandson of a prominent politician of Punjab, Ali became interested in public issues early in life. Banned from participating in student politics in the 1960s by the Pakistani military dictatorship, he moved to Britain to study politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford. His interest in political activism grew and, in 1965, he was elected the president of the Oxford University Students' Union. Three years later, Ali led a massive protest march in central London to oppose the American intervention in Vietnam.
With his continuing opposition to global imperialism, Ali remains the most prominent figure of the anti-war movement in Britain. He is the vice-president of the Stop the War Coalition, whose call for protests prior to the Iraq invasion saw more than one and half million people on the streets of London. This was the biggest demonstration in the history of Britain.
Ali's recent book Rough Music: Blair/Bombs/Baghdad/London/Terror was written in response to the political crisis in Britain following the Iraq war and the July terror attacks in London. With three of the four bombers of Pakistani descent, Britain's 1.6 million Muslims, of which two-thirds are of Southasian origin, have increasingly become the focus of political discourse with their loyalties under the scanner.