Category Archives: Uncategorized

It was a summer afternoon in school on 14 April 1999 in Pakistan’s capital. I was a 16-year old GCE student, preparing to sit my exams that May. The school I attended was a small one, founded two years earlier … Continue reading →

  When Raphael Lemkin went in search of a word that would provide the archetype to define the most heinous of crimes against humanity, skeptics of language trivialised his efforts arguing that, “a word is a word is a word.” … Continue reading →

As the gruesome scenes from Brussels emerged on Tuesday, they bore an uncanny resonance to feelings I brought home from my recent trip to Pakistan. Visiting the country I grew up in for the first time following the dreadful Peshawar … Continue reading →

Can Britain be said to have become dangerously diverse since it opened its shores to migrants, particularly from Commonwealth countries, following the end of the Second World War? That appears to be the message implicit in the former racial equality … Continue reading →

I remember singing along to an oft-recited Hindi poem as part of a 13-member peace delegation to India in the summer of 2001. One couplet always resonated with me deeply, reminiscing the loss of humanity, its words ran something like … Continue reading →

    These have been troubling times for adherents of the Islamic faith with the rising tide of extremism along with an increasing number of Muslim scholars and clerics attempting to monopolise a singular path to salvation. Most Muslim-majority countries … Continue reading →

Decembers are a poignant time of year, as we reflect on the receding shores of time, it is as if with each year one wave of our life disappears into the distant horizon. This December, my reflection took me down … Continue reading →

In his recent piece in The Times, Matt Ridley speaks of how Muslims are “turning away from Islam.” In a scathing and passionate article, he chastises jihadism and militant Islam and suggests humanism and secularism as antidotes to the same. … Continue reading →

I had just come out of an enriching and thought provoking discussion on whether religion is really violent in Saint Anthony’s College Oxford, delivered by the witty yet incredibly persuasive Karen Armstrong, when news of the deadly attacks in Paris … Continue reading →

The Malaysian Court of Appeal has ruled recently that the word “Allah” falls unreservedly within the Muslim faith, precluding the Catholic Church in the country from using the term in its newsletter, The Herald. The appeal, which was led by … Continue reading →