Sufism and its reality
Summary of a speech delivered by Syed Asmat Gilani Up till the 19 century, the dominant thought in the West was that ‘science’ was…
Kashmir,Azadi and Arundhati Roy
UPDATE: Arundhati’s brutally frank piece where she asks this question: The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation…
Capital shock
My op-ed published in the NEWS. This was also posted at ATP and a robust discussion took place there. A week long sojourn in…
Weird science – the perils of Muslim scholarship
I am posting Ziauddin Sardar’s article published in the New Statesman (August 21,2008) that explores the ‘nonesense” of some Muslim scholars who claim that…
Sab Thath pada reh jaye ga…(When the gypsy-headman leaves)
These pithy Urdu verses by Nazeer Akbarabadi lament that all will be abandoned when the Banjara (gypsy), the headman or Naik in the folklore,…
Issues in Madrassa Education in India
Yoginder Sikand’s new book Issues in Madrasa Education in India published by Hope India, Gurgaon is a promising publication. Here is a review by…
The sway of the Bauls: Oblivious minstrels of soul
“The sway of the Bauls: Oblivious minstrels of soul” “By Ratnadeep Banerji – Organiser – New Delhi, India Weekly issue: August 17, 2008 Baul…
Lal Shahbaz Qalander of Sindh
Source here Shahbaz Qalandar was born in Marwand to a dervish, Syed Ibrahim Kabiruddin whose ancestors migrated from Iraq and settled down in Mashhad,…
National identity sans freedom
A few quotes from this article in the Hindustan Times – incidentally it also includes what I rambled…. Freedom means everything. But I’m not…
Beyond Borders – with Shubha Mudgal and Tina Sani
My article published in the Friday Times (Aug11-18) Days after the recent skirmishes at the Line of Control, when the composite dialogue between India…
Adieu Mahmoud Darwaish
Courtesy AHRC I come from there I come from there and I have memories Born as mortals are, I have a mother And a…
Sir Salman Rushdie’s fatwa against freedom of expression
Khaleej Times – 11/08/2008 BY SHAJAHAN MADAMPAT SIR Salman Rushdie, that beloved symbol of freedom of expression, has now turned Khomeini, so to speak,…
Visit to Sindh, Udero Lal (the story of the Dalits in Pakistan)
Yoginder Sikand writing at DNA South-central Sindh isn’t quite a favourite holiday destination, but I spent a fortnight there while on a vacation in…
The pursuit of the Southasian past
Moving beyond the colonial-era understanding of the history of the Subcontinent gives us a whole new way of looking at the Subcontinent’s past. This…
Delhi by the book
Published in The News What motivates me to write? Lacking an appropriate label, a catchy boxed tag such as a historian or a sociologist,…
A modern Ottoman – the Turk Gulen wins the intellectuals’ poll
The Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, winner of the intellectuals poll undertaken by Prospect, has been hailed as “the modern face of the Sufi Ottoman…
Kabir, Bulleh and Lalon – Petals of a mystic lotus
The subcontinent during the 15th century witnessed the coming of age of a process that started brewing with the arrival of Central Asian Sufis,…
O my Lord, if I worship you
Today I was directed to this excellent blogsite devoted to Rabia Basri’s poems – found this bold poem by Rabia, an early Sufi from…
A ‘counter-view’ of suicide-bombing
The victims are not exclusively Americans and Jews but in countries like Iraq and Pakistan, Muslims themselves. What is even more traumatising "which arouses…
A brush with the new – Asim Butt’s Art
What distinguishes Asim Butt from his generation and perhaps the preceding generations of artists is the sheer originality of his vision and an iconoclasm…