Movies

Does Germany indeed welcome you?

Does Germany indeed welcome you?

To watch Almanya : Willkommen in Deutschland is quite fitting in this time. In translation, it is ‘welcome to Germany.’ We wake up every morning to the gory news reports about Syria and the nightmarish reveries of people dying in droves. Juxtaposed with this is Pope Francis’ benevolent appeal to Christendom to open its gates for refugees […]

September 15, 2015 Shameer. KS
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A Black Friday in Bombay: Film Review

A Black Friday in Bombay: Film Review

A critical appraisal of Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday (2007) in the aftermath of Yaqoob Memon’s execution for his alleged involvement in the Bombay blasts, which the film purports to narrate. An adaptation of the book by author/journalist S. Hussain Zaidi, Black Friday, released in 2007 took three years to see the light of day. It […]

August 19, 2015 Ali Ahsan
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Is this the end of Iranian cinema?

Is this the end of Iranian cinema?

I have had occasions to reflect on the fate of what we can now call a post-national cinema, a proposition not so outlandish in the heightened age of transnational globalisation. The idea is based on a conception of national cinemas, or any other national cultural movement, as predicated on national traumas. The leading Iranian film-maker […]

February 20, 2015 Hamid Dabashi
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Books

Eco: The Ego Buster

Eco: The Ego Buster

A week before he departed, I Amazonned Umberto Eco’s Prague Cemetery. Was it a mere coincidence or was it a premonition that the author is soon destined for a cemetery? I have never loved Eco as a novelist. I loved his prose, however. His Misreadings is not only a fun to read but it provokes […]

March 5, 2016 Deepa Ravi
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A ‘Bagful’ of Tear-Wiping Humor

A ‘Bagful’ of Tear-Wiping Humor

  WRY HUMOUR. In one word or two, that’s what Anees Salim’s VANITY BAGH is. The tongue-in-cheek humour permeates every sentence and every word of the book. The book is in the form of a narrative or rather monologue by Imran Jabbari, an accused in the 11/11 serial blasts and sentenced for sixteen years in […]

January 4, 2016 Dr.K. Ahmed Anwar
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Sharjah Turns New Pages

Sharjah Turns New Pages

  Conveying somber mood over his non-participation this year, MUHAMMED NOUSHAD remembers the 30th Sharjah International Book Fair and the encounters he had with the people and books during the fair, as the event this year  has ended three days ago. In a November midnight in 2011, Ali Ahsan and I landed in Sharjah Airport, […]

November 17, 2015 Muhammed Noushad
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Person in Focus

Towards an Islamic Decoloniality

Towards an Islamic Decoloniality

Dr Syed Mustafa Ali contributes to the robust academic-activist enterprise of decoloniality with his original ideas on Islamic decoloniality. Syed Ali teaches at The Open University in Milton Keynes (UK) as a member of the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology. The project of Islamic decoloniality he pioneered exposes various lacunae in leading decolonial projects […]

April 25, 2016 Dr Syed Mustafa Ali/ Shameer KS
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Food

Fasting: Is it abstention or Starving?

Fasting: Is it abstention or Starving?

I have been witness to a conversation passed off between two train passengers who so shrewdly modulated their voice as to be overheard.  Here is my attempt not to be fictitious in its reproduction. A: your Ramadan fasting is around the corner. And you are going to starve us Hindoos, aren’t you? B: why starve […]

June 4, 2015 Shameer K.S
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Blogging Verses

The Spiritual Wardrobe

The Spiritual Wardrobe

Once a Sufi was asked why he wore blue robe. He replied: “The Prophet left us three things: poverty, knowledge and sword. The sword was taken by kings, who misused it; knowledge was chosen by scholars, who were satisfied with merely teaching it; poverty was chosen by dervishes, who made it a means of enriching […]

June 30, 2014 A.K ABDUL MAJEED
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Fiction Shelf

Eco: The Ego Buster

Eco: The Ego Buster

A week before he departed, I Amazonned Umberto Eco’s Prague Cemetery. Was it a mere coincidence or was it a premonition that the author is soon destined for a cemetery? I have never loved Eco as a novelist. I loved his prose, however. His Misreadings is not only a fun to read but it provokes […]

March 5, 2016 Deepa Ravi
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Guest Column

‘I am fascinated by the question of what God’s problem with poor people is’

‘I am fascinated by the question of what God’s problem with poor people is’

‘Committed’ and ‘multi-pronged.’ The adjectives fit well with Dr Farid Esack, his oeuvre, and academic as well as activist engagements. He published Quran, Liberation and Pluralism in 1997; the work was noted for its academic solemnity as well as earnestness to take the message of the divine text to all it matters. In 1999, his […]

January 18, 2016 Farid Esack / M Noushad
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The Muslims who Shaped America – From BrainSurgeons to Rappers

The Muslims who Shaped America – From BrainSurgeons to Rappers

What have Muslims ever done for America? If your sole source of information were Donald Trump, you’d think that the answer was not much – apart from murdering its citizens and trying to destroy its values. The Republican presidential hopeful has called for a halt to Muslims entering the US until American authorities “can figure out” […]

December 22, 2015 Stuart Jeffries
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Loving Compassion in Islam and Buddhism: Rahma and Karunā

Loving Compassion in Islam and Buddhism: Rahma and Karunā

Compassion, even on the human plane, is not just a sentiment, it is an existential quality. This existential quality presupposes a concrete sense of participation in the suffering of others, as is expressed by the etymology of the word: com-passion means to ‘suffer with’ another. The metaphysics of tawhīd finds its most appropriate ethical expression […]

December 9, 2015 Reza Shah-Kazemi
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