I was gonna stay away today – recuperating from last night’s Kerrymania. Yet, the world rudely intervened. Yesterday, a suicide bomber attempted to assassinate PM-designate Shaukat Aziz. He was campaigning in Fath Jang in the Attock district for the August 18th election. 6 people were killed in the attack. Shaukat Aziz escaped unhurt. I hate [...]
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For various reasons I have been reading Chattopadhyaya’s Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims. One of the strains that I am trying to trace are the terms occuring in epigraphical evidence for Muslim invaders. The earliest references to Muslims occur far too late in the 8th century to make me happy (c. 730s). [...]
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My dear friends and neighbors have officially moved out and started the trek towards Woodsville, South Carolina where Lisa is gonna kick it old school as new faculty. On N.P.R. you hear, “This part of the program brought to you by the generous support of YadaYada”. If the last 5 years of my life were [...]
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When expectations are met, the roar can be deafening. And the roar around Barack Obama’s speech is indeed deafening. All are believers now. You can watch the speech here (about 18 min). The speech itself spoke powerfully to all the things I consider to be unique and great about this country and it’s people. His [...]
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The Democratic National Convention is on. I watched a bit of the Fox coverage (they had the missing Utah hiker), CNN (Wolf was hitting on Judy while Jeff looked askance) and MSNBC (Ron Reagan was trying to get girls to flash him. I think). The world would be a terrible place without C-SPAN, I must [...]
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There is a line uttered by a Texan candidate in the 2002 primary filmed in the PBS documentary Last Man Standing: Politics – Texas Style. Here is what the documentary showed him saying: Our God is not their God. First of all, the God of the Bible is a God of love and redemption, who [...]
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On Sunday, India and Pakistan will meet in Colombo, Sri Lanka for their first round match in the Asia Cup. Pakistan is defending the title it won in 2000. India is defending the can of whup-ass it opened on Pakistan in 2004. Yes, Pakistan has the new coach but if their performance against Sri Lanka [...]
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Couple of posts ago, I heaped scorn on a crazy mullah and wondered if there needs to be a public rating system on Imams and other religious figures. Marlowe, always up for giving people monkey-heads, agreed with me. Today, I thought about it a little more seriously after reading the “good” news that Hashem Aghajari’s [...]
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I admit that I am a techno-geek. I also spend approx. 4 hours a day in the stacks here at Regenstein. And some readers of CM have complained that there is not enough “tech” and lots of “history”. The actual word of complaint was “shibrum-shibrum”. To placate that reader I offer this news about robotic [...]
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Here I do my duty as a sane human being by pointing out the absurdity that is the very prolific, Islamic scholar Maulana Imran Hosein. Let me just note what this particular ‘alim wants to do: Establish a Muslim village in Trinidad and Tobago. Speaking of the plan yesterday Maulana Imran Hosein said it was [...]
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In the Blue Mountains of western Tamil Nadu lies Otacamund or Ooty as it has been known through the centuries. Around these mountains (known as Nilgris) fought the Tiger of Mysore against the Company. The territory came into Company’s dominion after his defeat in 1799. Founded during 1815-25 by John Sullivan, this little hill station [...]
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Nothing is more fun than highlighting the oddities in History. Today, I bring to you the (fairly consequential) role played by Occultists in the nationalist struggle in India. Spiritualism/Occult was to the mid-19th c. what blogs are to the early 21st c. People getting together and talking into thin air. The interest in higher planes, [...]
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Some nights ago, I watched Ararat at the local student theatre. Outside the screening, the Turkish Students Association had put a huge poster saying “This Movie is Not the Historical Truth”. They were also passing out flyers that “disputed” the movie’s claims and sought to “balance” the picture. For those in the dark, the movie [...]
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One of the “perks” of living in Chicago is that you get to pay the City lots of money for various “privileges”. In the fiefdom of Daley, we are but serfs. The city makes you buy a city sticker to be displayed on your windshield that gives you the right to park your car in [...]
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BBC is running a story about the hardships facing models in Pakistan. The story is as old as it is trite (really? conservative Muslims have a problem with models?). I remember when this-model-whose-name-now-escapes-me decided to go to a beauty pageant in the late 80s/early 90s and the world crashed around everyone’s head. And keeping that [...]
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The mess Illinois Republicans are in is exquisite. After Ryan’s public outing, they have been turned down by almost every leading contender for the Senate bid (all hedging their bets for the 2006 Governor’s race) to the degree that a cigar-chomping, bad hipped, SUV driving Da Coach could be Da Candidate. Da Lame. I do [...]
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Elections are a funny thing in Pakistan. We don’t have them that often. When we do, they tend to be fixed. When we don’t, well…, we have Generals and Field Marshalls for those occassions. The current General in charge, President Musharraf, has “appointed” a Prime Minister. Shaukat Aziz, whom I introduced here, is due to [...]
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I saw a religious man, who had fallen in love with a fellow to such a degree that he had neither strength to remain patient nor to bear the talk of the people but would not relinquish his attachment, despite of the reproaches he suffered and the grief he bore, saying: I shall not let [...]
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I woke up to this. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. counterterrorism officials are looking at an emergency proposal on the legal steps needed to postpone the November presidential election in case of an attack by al Qaeda, Newsweek reported on Sunday. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned last week that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network [...]
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This short week was waaay too long. I am stuck. Not in a writer’s block but a reader’s block. I don’t feel like reading anything. I have to finish translating parts of this hyper-stylized persian manuscript but I haven’t looked at it. I have to send an abstract to someone kind enough to actually solicit [...]
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