Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam
Demolish Kafir/ Mushrik/ Munafiq-manufacturing factories, says Sultan Shahin, defending New Age Islam against Talibani onslaught
... As a community we are more reactionary and obscurantist that positive and progressive. We live in fear and denial. There is noting wrong with us; it's all Jewish conspiracy, Hindu conspiracy, Western imperialist conspiracy, etc. etc. We love living in the past, in the land of pointlessness. So our discussions too are not so much about issues of today as about the bygone past. We revel in discussing ad infinitum the dirty politics of seventh century Arabia and taking sides with one or the other party. We have no present and no plans for the future. As a community, that is. Some individuals, of course, do have plans for themselves as well as for the community and a vision of regeneration for Islam and the Muslim community. But they are reviled for thinking of this word rather than the other world where 72 houris are waiting for them impatiently in a land of milk and honey and of course, plenty of liquor. (In the case of poor women, of course, only their husbands, if any, would be waiting there, and yet some of them become suicide bombers, for some reason.)
War on Terror
Was Miliband really speaking for Britain? Why is UK a sanctuary for jihadis?
For two reasons it is necessary to return to the subject of Kashmir and the penchant of the United States and Britain to meddle in it, though the days of their mediation ended long ago. The first is the appalling behaviour of the British foreign secretary David Miliband who was visiting India from January 13-15, linked the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Tayyaba's horrific attack on Mumbai with the Kashmir issue. He pontificated that India needed to "incentivise Pakistan" by showing "some movement on Kashmir". And, for good measure, he absolved the Pakistani establishment of any blame for the Mumbai outrage, thus contradicting on Indian soil a statement Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had made a few days earlier. -- Inder Malhotra
Right honourable intentions By Prem Shankar Jha
