I shall be in London next two days. Come say hi.
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June 2010
An essay by Professor Emeritus C.M. Naim, University of Chicago. A messenger brought me some news. It began: Darul Uloom Deoband, the self-appointed guardian for Indian Muslims, in a Talibanesque fatwa that reeked of tribal patriarchy, has decreed that it is “haram” and illegal according to the Sharia for a family to accept a woman’s [...]
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David Bordwell, John Ford, silent man One headliner is the early Ford series: all his surviving silents, plus a selection of rarely-seen talkies. The first one screened, The Black Watch (1929), concentrates on the Khyber Pass incident of 1914. Captain King is assigned to India while the rest of his Scots regiment is sent to [...]
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Pakistan’s originary myth is tied to a spectacular episode – I have written about this here and here but, let me quote from a Social Studies Textbook for the sixth grade, used nationally in Pakistan: Before the dawn of Islam, the trade relations had been setup between India and the Arabs. The Muslims invaded the [...]
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I urge every reader to sign your name, begin at the beginning. To: Government of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani Senate Chairman Farooq Hamid Naek Speaker Fehmida Mirza Ambassador Hussain Haqqani Your Excellencies, The May 28th massacre of Ahmadis in Lahore is a tragic reminder of the state of siege [...]
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The World Cup, whenever it comes, becomes such a part of my everyday that I feel like I have always been watching it, that there is no time when I don’t have another contest to look towards or examine after. I walked down the street, and in a shop window, they had a tv. A [...]
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When: Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 5:00pm Where: 5 Holden St., North Adams, MA 01247-2423 What: A LAPATA SHOW! Three Generations of Rockwell Creators: For the first time ever, the artwork of three generations of Rockwells will be displayed in the Berkshires, as the work of Jarvis and Daisy Rockwell is exhibited in North Adams [...]
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My piece, House on the Hill, June 13, 2010 in The Express Tribune about the illusion of safety which envelops the Sunni upper-middle-class. There is the majority, the people who live in this house. They are always Sunni Muslim — though they are quite capable of throwing this or that “Sunni” faction out in a [...]
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From Paul Bowles, Their Heads are Green and their Hands are Blue (New York: Random House, 1963): 57-8 The most satisfying exposition I have seen of the average Hindu’s feeling about this exalted beast is a little essay composed by a candidate for a post in one of the public services, entitled simply “The Cow.” [...]
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From a press-release by Asia House, UK, for Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco: For decades, the Filipino community has watched the UK media perpetuate the negative stereotypes of the Philippines. After the latest PR beating, from BBC2’s documentary ‘Explore’, many from the Filipino community in the U.K yearn for the ‘other truths’ of the Philippines to [...]
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Jacqueline Rose. “‘J’accuse’: Dreyfus in Our Times” London Review of Books, Vol. 32 No. 11 · 10 June 2010. And yet, what is crucial about Lazare – and the reason he brings my journey to its end – is that he demonstrates so clearly that to fight for justice as a Jew, against a pseudo-universalism [...]
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I want to share these two poems with you. One comes from a place far from the site of the massacre and the other from its very neighborhood; one comes from within and the other from without. They are the voices everyone in Pakistan should hear. I. Salma A writes: A Poem by Saqyb Zirvi1 [...]
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Letters to the Editor, The Daily Times, Saturday, June 05, 2010: Sir, Last January, a retired schoolteacher was killed in Ferozewala only because he was an Ahmedi. A reporter for your paper filed several brave reports, and stopped only when the four accused men were allowed by the authorities to simply walk away. I saved [...]
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*The punishment is called “Murgha bana na” (to make one into a rooster). One is to grab the ears from behind the legs (not like this). Uncomfortable! And quite popular in schools across South Asia as well as in other settings. The gentleman above, holding the Murgha pose, was washing his rickshaw in the surf [...]
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There is some confusion among the twitterati about the “tangent” in regards to the column by Mosharraf Zaidi which anchors the second part of my post on Ahmadi legal history. So allow me to be frank here. Zaidi writes: Most Pakistanis, however, far and widely disconnected from what has come to represent “liberal” in Pakistan, [...]
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I. Who exactly is a Muslim? It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this is a question with a rather long history. Islam’s first split – the Shi’a/Sunni/Kharajite – was a split over leadership and community but the debates revolved around self-definition vs oppositional-definition. Many, if not all such schisms occurred as, participated in, or were reflected [...]
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This picture, posted by Zackintosh on his twitter feed, immediately arrested me. It was taken at/outside the Karachi Press Club, at a gathering meant to show solidarity of the Lahore massacre – sadly, a rather non-event. It was the hand-written white sign in the middle, held high. The gentleman holding up the sign seems mature, [...]
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