A Pakistani intellectual, Khurshid Ali Singay, in correspondence with me wrote about the situation there:
“I can assure you again that in this side of the world, being an intellectual—secular or religious—means reading Marx or some Postmodernist thinkers. Marx is the hero both for the commoners and the literate. British philosophers, Empiricism and Liberalism are either taken as the negative opposite or have quite gone lost. Islamism—both militant and political—share with Postmodernism their hate for the West. They share ‘anti-west’ between them. I don’t know whether that’s the only defining link between them or whether there are some other historical/philosophical roots to it.
“The worst is: all graduates who get the chance to the universities of US and UK, come back becoming hardened leftists, postcolonialists or any such variant; thence on, they produce students like them in bulks. They seldom return as Liberal enthusiasts. That’s too strange and sad!
“Just to let you know about the situation on ground: I could not take a Liberal topic for my PhD Thesis, as one of the available supervisors was Foucaultian, one Nietzschean, one postcolonialist and the last one hard Islamist. I had to manoeuvre my PhD through.
Further, Dr. Singay writes:
‘From my lived experience I can tell you that Muslim ideology has been led by Leftist and Postmodernist thoughts since last century. The point of intersection of the two is being anti-West. As a matter of fact, Muslim civilization entered modernity in the light of Counter-enlightenment project. The later emergence of militant Islamism was the incarnation of German and French ideals. Here, when a young student is excited and wants to study some philosophy, there is mora than 80% chance that he will get introduced to either Marx or some Postmodern philosopher. Modernity, Enlightenment, Empiricism and Liberalism are highly neglected terms this side of the world, even derided if had to mention in a forum. British philosophers have almost gone out of fashion, only retained in course books alone. The trajectory of Muslim civilization has been: Reformation, Counter-enlightenment, Anti-Liberalism. So, I believe Re-enlightenment is the need of this age; the West must re-inforce the project again.’
So I’m pleased that my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault has entered the fray in Pakistan. Here’s the interior cover design:
Dr. Nazir Azad’s translation of EP was also published in India in 2023. Urdu is the first or second language of 230 million people in Pakistan and India. (I also now know that in Urdu my name is: اسٹیون آر سی ہِ کس.)
Information about other editions and translations of the book is here, including the audiobook edition below: