Of Muslim Women in India
May 6, 2016 6 min. read

After the 1947 partitioning, one third of the total Muslim population in the British colony were to remain in India. Today, Indian Muslims still have trouble finding their voice and a sense of community.

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Saudi Arabia’s Dangerous Gambit in Lebanon
March 7, 2016 10 min. read

Saudi Arabia’s decision to suspend $4 billion in military aid to Lebanon is the latest example of a meddlesome foreign power attempting to undermine Lebanese sovereignty to advance its own political agenda.

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Saudi-Iranian ‘Cold War’ Uses Sectarianism As Tool
February 11, 2016 7 min. read

Following Saudi Arabia’s execution of the Shiite Cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, observers of the Middle East are pondering a multitude of eventualities, many of which point to a hot conflict between the two regional powers.

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Joining the World in Prayer for Malala
October 12, 2012 6 min. read

Image lifted from http://paknews.pk The first thing that struck me as I read reports on Malala’s shooting was the village name: Saidu Shareef. Living in Pakistan, we have been conditioned to hear of shootings, bombings and barbarity across the country and get on with our day; unless you know someone who lives where today’s incidents took […]

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Pakistan and America – All the Same
April 24, 2012 5 min. read

image lifted from http://cdnnews.onepakistan.com Pakistan and the United States of America may seem like polar opposites, but when you push aside the semantics, you’ll find the same people everywhere: insecure, intolerant, injudicious and irrational. In Pakistan: The Domestic Violence Bill was first proposed in the Senate in 2009 and has since been lying dormant and the […]

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‘Til Kingdom Come
February 20, 2012 4 min. read

It’s never a dull moment in Pakistan, but various moments filled with dull people. A rally was held on January 28, in the city of Rawalpindi, against the establishment of a place of worship by the Ahmeddia community. The Ahmedi’s are a minority community who consider themselves a sect within Islam, but were declared non-Muslims […]

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Know Your Religion
January 27, 2012 3 min. read

A year ago I stumbled upon an interesting website. After relating a short story, it asked the reader to guess the religious context in which the tale was set. The questions varied from the way women dressed (burqa-esque, fully clad) to the practice of allowing men multiple wives. When I finished taking the quiz and […]

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The Crossroads of Religion and Politics
December 14, 2011 5 min. read

I had a friend in college who was discovering Islam around the time I was. Though we were both born Muslims, we were now understanding it and practicing of our own accord. We were not converts, but “Reverts”. After college, she went on to study Islam at a madrassa-esque school for women and I went on […]

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Persian Gulf’s Big and Lil’
November 23, 2011 3 min. read

I recently came across two worthwhile pieces on Persian Gulf states punching above their weight. The first is a New York Times analysis of Qatar, the lil’ oil rich country that could: Qatar is smaller than Connecticut, and its native population, at 225,000, wouldn’t fill Cairo’s bigger neighborhoods. But for a country that inspires equal […]

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2011 in Review – Religion & Politics
November 15, 2011 4 min. read

2011 – in the world of religion and politics, we have seen banning of Muslim “Hijab” in France, Congressional Hearings on “Radicalization of Muslims in America” and various similar acts across the globe; but what I keep coming back to in my mind are the lives lost on account of the Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan. […]

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Apostasy and Islam
October 5, 2011 5 min. read

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to death for apostasy in Iran – various Human Rights groups are now pleading for his release. Although the ruling itself is said to be questionable in light of the Iranian civil code, the ruling was passed under the Shariah. The Shariah, as we know it […]

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