Books
A Touchstone to Measure Your Gandhi
In Mahatma Gandhi’s life, opposites collide in such a way that we can defend him as rightly as we can demonize. Idealism and realpolitik have never vied with each other so powerfully in the life of any other person. Faisal Devji brilliantly captures this dilemma in his new work on Mahatma Gandhi: The Impossible Indian, […]
A Refuge of Diversity
Ever since Islam rose up against religious persecution in other faiths and became refuge for the oppressed, it has been a targeted creed for despotic as well as fanatic religions, which opposed the very idea of egalitarianism. For them, the idea of Islam was intolerable as it would ruin their power in the following years. […]
Asghar Ali Engineer: An Incomplete Story
Asghar Ali Engineer (b.1931) is a pioneering Indian scholar and the author as well as editor of more than fifty books. He is both an activist and intellectual known for his profound commitment to issues of social justice in Islam. He has written extensively on justice, liberation, gender, reform, peace, violence and modernism. His new […]
How Muhammad Matters
Biographies of Prophets are written not just for passive reading. Edification is one of the intentions of early writers of Sira. All authors of Muhammad’s biography have explored/explore how the life of the last Prophet of God matter to them, their society and culture. So have/do the the encomiums being sung as part of mawlid […]
Religious Right and the Human Rights: The Case of VIBGYOR
The media, endlessly hunting for scoops, apparently missed or rather deliberately averted a recent episode of dissonance involving the Sangh Parivar and a Kashmiri documentary featuring the plights of the 1991 Kupwara rape victims. For the corporate-controlled media, the subject either lacked adequate sensationalism to grab enough audience or posed a threat to its identity […]
A Door Opening into Rumi
Rumi is one of the literary sensations especially in the West . He serves as a beacon of hope for a lot who are lost in the desolate world of spiritual famine. He is a friend of the love-starved romantic and a master of the traveler on the metaphysical quest. The most widely read poet […]
Abandoned in Abandon
One day I ended up with Pradeep Sebastian’s Groaning Shelf, an engrossing account of a book lover. The book has arrayed an assorted group of some interesting characters: Rick Gekoski, the book collector, who bought the very first edition of Vladimar Nebakov’s Lolitha for a whopping $ 4000 to later sell it for a more […]
Memoir of a Brave Muhajjiba
Of supreme importance though it is, marriage is not given the gravity it deserves in our society. In the East, marriage is a social contract with religious and cultural significations and values. As for Islam, someone who is married has completed one third of his/her religious duties. For centuries, someone getting prepared for marriage considers […]
Food, Tradition and Religious Other
“I love food. I enjoy eating out. Even more, I love preparing food and sharing it with others. Many of my fondest memories and formative experiences are associated with meals …………….. I have been fortunate enough to grow up and live in committed, supportive Jewish communities, and many of my meals have taken place within […]
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 […]
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