Every Muslim yearns to perform the Hajj at least once in a lifetime. It is one of the fundamentals of Islam but like all other aspects of Religion, Hajj, too, has been ritualised and, therefore, trivialised.
‘What shocked you most in Bosnia?’ people keep asking me since I got back. Probably a reply bewailing the gutted houses or the glutted cemeteries or the vandalised mosques is what they expect.
With Greece, Armenia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, China and others engaged, to varying degrees, in attacking Turkish interests or blocking Turkish influence in Europe and Central Asia, Turkey is not short of enemies.
A battle is coming to a head in Turkey. A battle which may release the republic from the clutches of the local and international Mafia or it may lose for Turks the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and lead to the eventual creation of a Kurdish entity- a second break-up of the Great Turkish state.
What do Indonesia, Nigeria and Sudan have in common? They are huge countries, in terms of area and population, which are overwhelmingly Muslim but with Christian minorities and ethnic diversity that the west uses to destabilize these potentially rich and powerful States.
For one who was an arch atheist, with a communist activist for a father, who could not accept Islam, knowing that it ‘required one to be strictly disciplined’, Abdullah Adiyar, the celebrated South Indian poet, playwright, orator and journalist of the Tamil-speaking world had come a long way when he breathed his last on 19 September.
America is a deeply divided society. Nothing symbolises this better than the perception of blacks and whites towards O J Simpson, the celebrated football player whose trial has gripped America for more than two years.
Sudan’s borders with Ethiopia had always been peaceful and, therefore, lightly defended with only symbolic units in the border posts. Kurmuk and Qaysan were two such small garrison towns on the Ethiopian borders.
Daniel Koat Mathews is a veteran of Sudan’s southern rebel politics. It goes back 34 years ago, to 1963, when he helped to found the first Ananya rebel movement. He had since been an active member of the South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM)...
That US foreign policy is hostage to Israeli/zionist interests is no secret. With the appointment of Madeleine K Albright (the ‘K’ stands for Korbelova, later abbreviated to Korbel!) as US secretary of State, it has once again brought this into sharp focus.
The US has openly joined the conspiracy not only to bring down the government of president Hasan al-Bashir in Khartoum but also pave way for the dismemberment of Sudan.
The work of the Muslim Institute after its formal establishment in 1973, and particularly following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1978-79, made Dr Kalim Siddiqui a senior and respected figure in the global Islamic movement. However, in Britain he remained relatively little known outside the circles of Islamic activists.
The inauguration of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain on January 4, 1992, was greeted by a frenzied attack from the British media and establishment. For some days, Dr Kalim Siddiqui was the most hated man in Britain, attacked by Conservative government ministers and opposition leaders alike, and vilified in the press.
Dr Kalim Siddiqui referred to the Muslim Parliament as both 'a minority political system for Muslims in Britain' and a 'non-territorial Islamic State.' Many people regarded these terms as meaning the same thing, and being virtually interchangeable. Dr Siddiqui, however, understood and meant them quite differently, and the distinction is vital to appreciating his vision of the Muslim Parliament.
In a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic country, that India is, secularism has been a far cry. The Muslim community has been the worst victim of this pseudo-secularism.
What is there in the jungle? Plenty. There are thousands and thousands of trees - big trees, small trees, dead trees, cut-up trees. And climbing these trees are the vines and lianas. Underneath, on the ground surface is a layer of leaf-litter, fully decomposed or in various stages of decomposition.
People in Africa have good reason to be wary of the new, USS 25 billion initiative launched by the United Nations on March 15 to help the impoverished continent. Called the ‘System-wide Special Initiative on Africa,’ the programme will be phased over a 10 year-period.
Last month, Shaikh Hasina Wajed, leader of the Awami League, was sworn in as the prime minister of Bangladesh, thus ending 21 years in the political wilderness.
Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of Turkey’s ‘Islamic party’, was finally confirmed in the prime minister’s office when he won a vote of confidence on July 8.
HINDUTVA is specifically a post-colonial development which took birth under the impact of British Orientalist scholarship and which imparted a great deal of its own meaning and political content to Hinduism.
