Merryl Wyn Davies tries to make sense of values in the post-truth age; Kabir Helminski provides a primer on Islam and human values; Boyd Tonkin welcomes strangers; Mohammad Moussa urges us to embrace pacifism; Gail Boxwell learns the meaning of 'givenness'; Hannah McClure whirls into ecstasy; a story by the father of Catalan literature, Anselm Turmeda; and Maha Sardar's list of ten

Ziauddin Sardar dismembers post-truth angst; Richard Appignanesi mourns the loss of world; Barnaby Rogerson traces the history of the word demagogue; Bhavik Doshi is disturbed by the populist rhetoric of the Indian diaspora; Scott Jordan watches anxiety-drenched movies; Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton is unimpressed by 2017 Venice Biennale; and poems by Carole Smith.

Shanon Shah tries to unravel the paradox of Bangladesh; Hassan Mahamdallie has strange encounters in Dhaka; Zeeshan Khan asks real Bangali Muslims to raise their hands; A Qayyum Khan thinks Bangladeshi politics is trapped in a fraudulent circle; Dina M Siddiqi visits garment factory workers; Irum Shehreen Ali refuses to take sides in the battle of the Begums; Anato Chowdhury laments the murder of gay activists; Onjali Q Rauf is angry at the plight of the female victims of the Independence war; Sharbari Z Ahmed juggles her identity as an American Bangladeshi writer; Sadaf Saaz comes to

Boyd Tonkin surfs the coast of utopia, Bruce Wannell explores the Gardens of Paradise, Hassan Mahamdallie joins the community of Findhorn, Marco Lauri dissects ibn Tufayl's utopian masterpiece, Medina Whiteman's parents escape to Andalucia, Nazry Bahrawi reflects on the Islamic legacy of utopian thought, Sadek Hamid dissects Khilafatopia of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Yasmin Khan reads contemporary Muslim utopian fiction, Colin Tudge seeks a utopian transformation, Naomi Foyle locates utopia in her ordeal of illness and recovery, Noor Iskander photographs utopian landscapes and Merryl Wyn Davie

Samia Rahman is perplexed by our complex network of relationships, Aamer Hussein looks back on his affectionate bonds with the great Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder (aka 'Annie'), Syed Nomanul Haq follows classical scholars seeking royal patronage, Piro Rexhepi crosses borders in the Balkans, Annalisa Mormile traces the roots of disunity in the EU family, Benedikt Koehler highlights how the Italian scholar of

Shanon Shah suggests PostWest is a speculative concept that obscures as much as it explains, Jasper M Trautsch explores the concept of the 'West', Roger van Zwanenberg explains how the West became a dominant world power, Gordon Blaine Steffey suffers from PostWest anxieties, Amrita Ghosh goes in search of the 'East', Shiv Vis