Pakistan has a Bhutto problem. Now reaching a third generation, its latest incarnation is the current chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party: 24-year-old Bilawal Bhutto. The young aristocrat follows a line of succession that includes his father, outgoing President Asif Ali Zardari, his mother, assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and most importantly, his grandfather, popular statesman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. (More…)
There is no shortage of lessons to be learned from the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Americans of conscience, however they may feel about the verdict, should examine what this says about our attitudes. Those attitudes are reflected not only in how we deal with the violence on our own streets, but also around the world. (More…)
As a Pakistani immigrant, I often feel alienated by American pop culture. Even though I identify with a lot of it, I also find it foreign, and occasionally, have to check out in order to recharge. This was especially the case two weeks ago, when I took a train into Manhattan in order to see a classical Persian music concert at Café Nadry.
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On Tuesday, Jews will observe Tisha B’Av. It’s a sad and solemn holiday, which mainly commemorates the destruction of the two Holy Temples, and which has subsumed many other tragic events that have befallen the Jews over the centuries. Those events continued into the 20th century, as on Tisha B’Av in 1942, the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the extermination camp, Treblinka, began. (More…)
I have not fasted for years. I rejected Ramadan along with the doctrine of Saudi-Pakistani Wahhabism. For me, Ramadan was another reminder of a Salafist ritualistic obsession. I never saw this as inherently a problem. However, I began to note that for the higher classes, Islam seemed to have deteriorated. (More…)
It’s hard not to hope that Egypt gets the democracy it deserves. In the wake of the second ouster of a head of state in two years, such hopes might be elevated. However, the current state of affairs in the Middle Eastern country is not an optimistic one. (More…)
Ten minutes off a flight from Tel Aviv, the television monitors were running a story on terrorism. “Big raids against Islamists,” the caption declared in German, beneath a photo of Muslims knelt in prayer. Security forces had just raided sixteen separate locations in the north, searching for wanted Salafists, from a banned organization. (More…)
It was, and likely remains, standard practice for troops deploying to our current theatres of war to be briefed by an official from the British equivalent of the NSA, known as GCHQ. Our man was a rather dusty-looking character, who seemed more like an academic than a spook, as he ambled out onto a stage to give us a briefing on information security. (More…)
It’s May, 2013. I’m standing by a metal detector near the entrance to the masjid. There is an old man sitting a few feet from me. I close my eyes and feel the evening sun on my face, as Urdu phrases begin dancing through the air. I look over at the man singing, his fingers pressing against an instrument that sounds like an accordion. I breathe in as he sings his dervishes. (More…)
Single-state advocates may have a surprising new ally. Likud legislator Tzipi Hotovely believes that the two-state solution is dead, and that Israel should annex the West Bank, granting citizenship to its Palestinian residents. Hotovely, the Deputy Minister of Transportation, is a rising star in her party. While her extremist views are not typical of Likud, her one-state solution is becoming popular amongst Israeli conservatives. (More…)
The fight, in which Clément Meric died, apparently started over some shirts. An 18-year-old student at Paris’ prestigious Sciences Po, Meric was headed to a clothing shop in the 9th Arrondissement when he encountered a group of skinheads headed to the same store. His killer, Esteban Morillo, is alleged to have been associated with the rightist Jeune Nationaliste Révolutionnaire, the largest organized skinhead group in France. (More…)
I have many relatives who despise Shi’i, Sufi, and Ahmediyyah Muslims. Their religious practices are regarded with great suspicion. The main cause is Saudi-Pakistani incitement against their alternative religiosity, whether in Shi’i veneration for the Imams, the diversity of Sufi mysticism, or the Ahmeddiyah acknowledgement of a messianic Mahdi figure. (More…)