Articles
America’s new villains
A video which was leaked through social media, including Youtube and Myspace, exposes some slides which characterises certain moderate Islamic groups as having infiltrated the public space, including media, education, government and military. In a slide, Al Jazeera reports, the photo of Al Qaeda militants beheading someone was shown with the caption: Violence of Muslim […]
Konya, Where The Past Transcends the Present
Last year in June, during my visit to Turkey I visited the Mevlānā Museum in Konya and it was indeed an experience that I continue to cherish in my heart. Mevlana Museum is the popular name of the Green Tomb (Yeşil Türbe), a splendid shrine where Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (d. 1273), popularly known in […]
Muhammad: In History and Piety
A manuscript copy of the Koran, written probably in the twelfth century in eastern Iran in a rather simple, late Kufic hand, has one notable peculiarity: the whole of Sura 112, the profession of God’s Unity, is written in unusually interlaced, powerful letters, and on another page, the word Muhammad rasul Allah, “Muhammad is the […]
The Visage of Prophet Muhammad
The Prophet’s Death More beautiful than all the periods of his life, was his death. We have been in the habit of considering death always as an uproarious affair. To borrow movie jargon, we appreciate action, battle and its clamor, scenes which have conflicts, panoramic backgrounds, hubbubs and in the words of actors, full of […]
Islam: The Dutch Connection
While concluding his celebrated work Orientalism, Edward Said says: ‘I consider Orientalism’s failure to have been a human as much as an intellectual one; for in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own,Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also […]
English Readers’ Roads to the Quran
One of the major arguments of all times is that we have not, nor ever, exhausted interpretation. The Quran should show light for all times and for all spaces. However, there are questionable assumptions and preconceptions which our selective and, rather, outmoded reading of the Quran made happen. Somehow, classical interpretations of the Quran became […]
Can Rouhani’s Iran be a healing to us (the US)
‘Iran’ ,’yeah, that fundamentalist country’, ’a country where women have no rights’, ‘a country that tries to wipe Israel from the globe’, ‘the new Nazis’. These are the major responses to any utterance of the word ‘Iran’. This is the popular western image of Iran. Iran, an Islamic country, was always in the forefront against […]
Lifting the Ban on Headscarf: A Paradigm Shift
Turkish Prime Minister recently announced a package of proposals that include lifting the ban on wearing of Islamic headscarves- a ban that barred women from wearing the Islamic-style headscarf in state institutions, part of the government’s long-awaited package of proposed human-rights reforms. Muslim Turkey, mostly following secular conventions in most walks of life, to the […]
Modi as ‘PM’: Anger Surges through Indian Intelligentsia
After the Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP) has announced as its Prime Minister candidate in the forthcoming Parliament elections Narendra Modi who is known to be the mastermind behind the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, oppositions from different parts of the country seem to be building up against him. His detractors include renowned economist and Nobel laureate […]
At NIC It’s Demand for Harmony and Modi’s Absence
The national integration council convened in New Delhi on Monday has called for measures to encourage communal harmony and promote national integration along with the steps for the safety and security of women and eliminating the crimes and discrimination towards the Scheduled Caste/Sheduled Tribes (SC/STs). The 148 –member council comprising union ministers, Leaders of the […]
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