Articles
Jamaludheen Afghani and Decolonial Horizon
There is an avid interest in recent times in excavating in the multi-faceted career of Jamaluddin Afghani those factors which could help turn the tables on the colonizing power centres. Pankaj Mishra, a writer committed to the cause of decolonization in the era of globalization, notes in his well-documented From the Ruins of an Empire, […]
How to Transgender Islam
Joseph Massad, professor of Arab politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, is a towering post-colonial theorist and political scientist. Wide-ranging though his academic interests are, his writings primarily focus, just as those of his teacher Edward Said do, on the aggressive colonial politics of Israel and the western liberal nation states. At the theoretical […]
God as ‘She’
A group of women priests within the Church of England want to start referring to God as ‘She’ to combat sexism, the proposal gone controversial. ‘When we use only male language for God we reinforce the idea that God is like a man and, in doing so, suggest that men are therefore more like God […]
Egypt’s injustice system
Egypt’s justice system is almost completely devoid of justice. Perhaps those of us who have denounced Egyptian exceptionalism as a farce spoke too quickly. Egypt may be, after all, the only nation in the world with a justice system that convicts dead people for committing crimes from the grave and prisoners for committing street offenses from […]
Death sentence for freedom in Egypt
The regime seeks to take not only the lives of these defendants, but also the freedom to dissent of all its citizens. Like something out of a campy 1940s horror film, the dead are rising in Egypt and they’re terrorising the population. In the latest appalling decision by the Egyptian judiciary, Mohamed Morsi was convicted […]
Leviathan and Winter Sleep: What Do We Believe
A believer needs to have patience as well as mirth out of facing a barrage of questions. So the one who helps a believer is often a non-believer. Only in the context of scepticism can a true belief grow. Linguist Toshihiko Izutsu says that belief is progression, not a state in which people find themselves […]
Adonis: Words that Met Stars
A December dusk with cool breeze wafting all along. The 16th Doha International Book Fair was all set to begin. The pivot of Cultural programmes, a key event in the fair, is the chief guest Adonis, the most remarkable Arab poet of this era. A Khayma (tent) has been specially erected on the sidelines of […]
Unrest in Yemen: Beyond Sunni-Shia Cliches
‘Sectarian’ is the trait adjective in the media coverage on the contemporary conflicts in the North African/West Asian regions. However, by ‘sectarian’ they rarely mean the much-too familiar racial or communal sectarianism, but rather than religious sectarianism partitioned between the Sunnis and Shias. Why the word sectarianism acquires such an instant translation should be discussed […]
Fashion blogger Dina Torkia: ‘There’s a fear factor around the hijab’
In a lot of ways, Dina Torkia is a typical fashion blogger. The 25-year-old’s Days of Dolls site is full of pictures of her trying out new trends against an urban backdrop and has the usual smattering of self-promotion (for her recently launched clothing range). Torkia – who blogs under the name Tokio – also has the […]
Cow is a Secular Animal
It was in 1976 that the Maharashtra Government banned cow slaughter through the “State Animal Protection Act.”The BJP-Shiv Sena faction that came to power in 1995 amended this act by prohibiting the slaughter of oxen and bullocks along with the cow. It was this amendment that was sanctioned by President Pranab Mukherjee recently. Butthe print […]
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