What is Possible Now

Preface 1. Islam versus Islam The Judgement against the Egyptian Quran Scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd 2. The Thousand Voices of Silence The Situation of Artists and Intellectuals in Iran 3. Sympathy for the Satan After the Attacks of 11 September 4. The Soft Words of Violence After the Beginning of the War in Afghanistan 5. What Alternative? Before the War in Iraq 6. Right Again, Sadly The Attack on the Synagogue in Istanbul 7. Strategy of Escalation On the Hostages in Beslan 8. Good Thing You're Educating Me... Confusion in the Integration Debate 9. Desperation and Enthusiasm After the French Referendum on the European Constitution 10. Hate Pictures and Hysteria The Dispute over the Muhammad Cartoons 11. Relying Only on Strength Makes Israel Weaker On the War in Lebanon 12. We are Murat Kurnaz Before Foreign Minister Steinmeier's Testimony to the Bundestag Investigative Committee 13. The Message of Cologne The Discussion on Building a Grand Mosque 14. Death on Wednesday? The Trial of Ayatollah Boroujerdi in Tehran 15. Rejection of Europe The Swiss Referendum on the Prohibition of Minarets 16. State Without a People The Recent Mass Protests in Iran 17. Allianz Lecture on Europe 18. Triumph of Vulgar Rationalism The Outcry over Martin Mosebach and the Ban on Circumcision 19. Too Late for Good Conscience The Civil War in Syria 20. Farewell to the Middle East The 'Islamic State's' March on Baghdad 21. Stop the 'Islamic State'! The Threat of Genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other Ethnic Groups in Iraq 22. The European Ideal is Sinking The Mediterranean Sea as a Mass Grave 23. At Our Children's Cost Europe after Brexit 24. What We Can Do in This Situation After the Attacks in Ansbach, Würzburg and Munich 25. The Weight of Two Sacks In Search of the Last Blind Spots of Progress in China 26. The Laughter of Nasrin Sotoudeh Iran on International Human Rights Day 27. For Three Dollars a Day After the West's Withdrawal from Afghanistan 28. No Programme but Politics The

Navid Kermani is a writer and scholar who lives in Cologne, Germany. He has received numerous accolades for his literary and academic work, including the 2015 Peace Prize of the German Publishers' Association, Germany's most prestigious cultural award.

"Among the most thoughtful intellectual voices in German today."
New York Review of Books
 
"Navid Kermani shows us what it means to be a critical intellectual today."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
 
"The most interesting voice Germany has."
Die Welt
 
"When reading Navid Kermani's essays, Kent's line from King Lear comes to mind: "I'll teach you differences." Navid Kermani is a master of differences and an enemy of rash judgments. His analyses of current political and cultural crises are eye-opening and often disturbing in the best sense of the word."
Wolf Lepenies, Rector Emeritus, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
 
"From a considered examination of the proposition that it was the Afghans who brought down the Berlin Wall to a scintillating essay on gender in language, What is Possible Now is a dazzling, provocative and thoroughly engaging survey of our times that is nothing less than essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where we are now and what is still possible."
John Burnside, University of St Andrews