The rise of the culture of death that we are witnessing today in our societies is an infallible sign that many in the West and elsewhere have given up the project to think and to feel responsible toward the concept of “humanity” which transcends them or even to sacrifice, in the extreme, life itself to that which makes life meaningful. In short, I cannot overcome the impression that Western culture is threatened far more by itself than by Islamic fundamentalism.

Many of Tagore’s views on nationalism, education and dialogue of cultures are intellectually valid, and some off his ideas have attracted and influenced contemporary thinkers and writers both in India and abroad. But let us ask the question: What relevance does Tagore have to us “post-moderns” as we live the first decade of the new millennium?

As odd as it may sound, reading philosophy in Tehran can not only be spiritually comforting, but also politically empowering. It is an open challenge to the monologism of tyrannical thought, but it is also an invitation to become a responsibly dialogical self in a culture that has systematically sheltered itself from the Socratic task of learning through asking questions and “living in truth”.

The Israeli – Palestinian conflict is neither a clash of cultures nor a clash of religious traditions, but it is a clash of intolerances and prejudices among two rescued nations who share the same life boat.

Confronted with technology of execution, it will not help us to close our eyes to the reality of state crimes. As it appears, belonging to a common world as ours is synonymous to a shared suffering. Suffering refers to our being immersed in the human web of human relationships and making sense of our humanity in the world.

The central question addressed to Islamists in particular and to the Muslim world in general is to know the ways in which they can come to terms with their own experience of modernity, because modernity is more and more an intrinsic value and a lived practice.

As long as the constitution remains in force in Iran, the tension between the ‘republican’ and the ‘Islamic’ will continue. The crisis, therefore in Iran is basically over how political agency and political sphere are defined in the country.

The unfortunate reality is that Iranian politics has been shaped and practiced for over centuries within a culture of violence that too often rewards unjust and criminal behaviors