Ramadan and the Vulgar Profligacy
I am a Muslim who does not fast. An oxymoron? Not at all. I am no more an oxymoron than some scrupulous Muslims who fast and have sumptuous iftars, eat from dusk to dawn. I have simple breakfast, a very simple lunch and a glass of juice at night. My intake of food is far […]
The Syrian cauldron
World anxiously anticipates in the midst of all-around violence the day when Bashar al Assad may join Hosni Mubarak and Qaddafi. On August 2, when this analysis was being written, agencies reported that Syrian Army which backs President Bashar al Assad, let loose a spate of violence in the capital city of Damascus. In the […]
Batman’s Shots: The Larger Violence
Slavoj Zizek has said to the effect that when the twin towers in the US were bombed, those whose window into the outside world were only television and game consoles thought that the towers were falling on screen and the bombing was orchestrated not by the dreaded Al Qaeda but at one of the state-of-the-art […]
Pilgrimage: Beyond Destination
There isn’t a thing called way; rather it is what you make when you walk, goes an Urdu saying. Le Grand Voyage is about the paths one is bound to take in a life time. Not in the obligatory sense of the ritual pilgrimage. It is rather about the paths one needs to traverse inside […]
The Rohingya Genocide
The very mention of Myanmar or Burma brings to our mind the picture of a military junta which has continued to ride a roughshod over the people for many decades and of Aung San Suu Kyi who is leading a frontline battle against the junta. None needs to be informed that a majority of people […]
Why don’t we care?
It did not take much time for him to realize that the woman whom he has identified as the personification of love and innocence got bedridden not out of any serious physical illness. So did her physicians, either. Medical tests to which she underwent proved anything which justifies her condition. Specializations changed. General medicine, orthopedics, […]
Accounts Termites won’t gnaw
While writing the feature on Ibn Battuta which you can read in this issue of Islam Interactive (link), I was wondering about the sense of propriety of Abu Inan Faris (1348-58). The reigning Marinid Sultan of Morocco, when he assigned the task of travelling with the great geographer and dictating his words to Muhammad Ibn […]
Asra Nomani: Road to Revelations
Asra Nomani’s ‘Standing Alone in Mecca’ says how the hajj became the catalyst to her empowerment as a woman in Islam There are , proverbially, thousand and one roads to Makah, the holy land of Islam. In the age of science and technology, thanks to winged ships; the number of routes to Makah grows unlimited. […]
AL Biruni: Romance, Voyage and Science
They were star-crossed lovers. Yet stars made them lovers. When Muhummad Ibn Ahmad Abu Rayhan Al Biruni (973-1048) was living in the observatory of Khawarism King Abu Nasr Mansur, he stole the heart of the king’s sister Rayhana-later to be known as Lady Rayhana-and she stole his, as well. But Rayhana (whom later al Biruni […]
Words that Traced Footprints: Survey of Travel Writings
Travel narratives have become one of the most popular and acclaimed literary genres in the recent times with many notable writers giving their travel accounts about diverse lands. These narratives included descriptive accounts of geography, monuments, and customs of foreign lands each visited. A sheer number of books were published about foreign travels and adventurous […]
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