Articles
Mandela and Islam in South Africa
Lots of Muslim friends accompanied Mandela in his long walk to freedom. Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada, Ismail meer, Yusuf Dadoo, Fatima Meer, Amina Cachaliya, Rahima Moosa, Ibrahim Rasool, Imam Hassan Solomon are some of them, the last two holding high official posts later. Imam Abdullah Haroon embraced martyrdom in the dungeon of Apartheid in 1969; Ibrahim […]
New Year Promises
The year 2013 has just gone by and while I am writing this, there are fireworks colorfully greeting the year 2014. To look back, we have had many things to be pessimistic about the next year. The yawning gap between the rich and poor; a bleeding Middle East and the Zionist hubris; no end to […]
A Lesson in Democratic Ethics and Pluralism
National struggles against colonialism enriched Afro-Asian nations with some leading figures, who set an excellent democratic model. Until Nelson Mandela’s departure, we had had the last remaining personality among them. Nelson Mandela is remembered the world over not just as an emancipator, but for having unified a society divided by apartheid. A society which has […]
Reflections of a Quran Translator
The following is a transcription of the speech the author delivered at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, for Launch Conference for the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe (CHASE) which is dedicated to the study of the reception and understanding of Arabic and Islamic culture, science and religion in […]
Mandela’s Gandhi: The Meaning of Violence in Resistance
One of the important similarities between Gandhi and Mandela was nothing but the milieu which made them. Though Gandhi focused his attention to the Indians who lived in South Africa, he has witnessed racism there so much as to make it a reference point in his political activism in India. About it, Mandela later acknowledged […]
Limits of Translations
For the vast majority of people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the Qur’an is only accessible in translation. But translations have been a source of controversy throughout Muslim history. The need and desire for translations arose as soon as Islam spread beyond the Arabian Peninsula, where the growing number of new converts to the faith did […]
‘A politician, not a Mahatma; an episode, not an epoch-maker’
A Transcript of Ambedkar’s comments on Gandhi in an Interview with the BBC in 1955. I met him first in 1929 through the intervention of a common friend of ours, who asked Gandhi to see me. Gandhi wrote to me, saying he would like to see me. I went and saw him. That was just […]
Gandhi and Indian Muslims: Overlaps and Conflicts
This is an excrept from Roland E Miller’s article gleaned from Indian Critiques of Mahathma Gandhi, Edited by Harold Coward, Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 State University of New York What did Indian Muslims think of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi? When Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1891–1989), the stern Pathan leader who […]
The fate of Jews at Banu Qurayza
Below is the transcrption of the speech by Sheikh Sayed Ammar Nakshawani about the story of the alleged massacre of Jews from Banu Qurayza There are many events in the life of prophet Muhammed, which we may find it difficult to digest in the context of pluralism. The alleged massacre of Jews of Banu Quraiza […]
EU backs to end apartheid condition in India
The European Union passed a resolution against caste-based discrimination in India, amid widespread reports that Dalits were denied their basic human rights. The resolution came after strenuous efforts by South Asian Campaigners against atrocities towards Dalits. The International Labour Organization estimates that the lower castes are subjected to labour victimization, with forced and bonded labor […]
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