The theme of the conference "Towards a Secular Islamic State" which the Muslim Institute held late last year is, for me as a European, a particularly interesting one, since it originates and is promoted, in my opinion, from the cultural basis of Muslims who live in the west and are integrated in Western ...

KARACHI: Hauled off buses, targeted in their clinics, on boulevards, in alleys, in shops, in offices, in processions and pilgrimages, is there any place left safe for Shias in Pakistan? At Ashura, they were chastised for taking out Moharram processions and giving terrorists an open field in which to attack. Till yesterday, they might ...

The protests in Shahbagh errupted apparently spontaneously in response to the first verdict handed down by Bangladesh's domestic tribunal for war crimes committed during the war of independence in 1971. The primary demand? The death sentence. In 1973, the Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat) was banned from politics soon after ...

The place looks and feels unreal. That's the conclusion I reach every time I visit a Gulf state. It is not just the Disney World architecture, the obscene display of wealth, the ubiquitous presence of poor migrant labourers, the insidious racism of the natives, and the segregation and seclusion of the women. What really strikes you is ...

This past Sunday, the Lahore-Islamabad stretch of the Motorway collapsed. Let me explain. The Motorway is not just a road. It is a system with a structure, an environment that impacts behaviour and is in turn affected by it. To put it another way, the Motorway is a physical communication system, which allows for uninterrupted, relatively ...

The massive shelling of Gaza by Israeli forces, which they say is in retaliation for rocket fire from Hamas, has predictably led to everyone in the western world assume their traditional positions. I don’t want to argue about which side is right or wrong, because clearly the world is starved of that debate. Yesterday the Jerusalem ...

I do like cold West London evenings. It reminds me of the time when I used to meet up friends for a religious natter (which may be an oxymoron!) in the Hammersmith area. There is certainly a different ‘feel’ to West London than East London where I’m used to. I was happy to find myself in the part of the metropolis last ...

Like ‘armed gangs’, armed Islamists are one of the Syrian regime’s self-fulfilling prophecies. Most grassroots organisers and fighters are secularists or moderate Islamists, but the numbers, organisational power and ideological fervor of more extreme and sectarian Islamists are steadily rising. So why is the revolution ...

Until his elder brother Basil died in a car crash, Bashaar al-Assad, Syria’s tyrant, was planning a quiet life as an opthalmologist in England. Recalled to Damascus, he was rapidly promoted through the military ranks, and after his father’s death was was confirmed in the presidency in a referendum in which he supposedly achieved ...

This video is not suitable for children nor for those of a nervous disposition. I include myself in the latter category. At first I couldn’t watch it, then I made myself do so in order to hear the words. Before the usual “Freedom? You want freedom?” the torturee is forced to declare that Bashaar al-Asad is his ...