Rounded Analysis On Contested Issues; Spotlighting Blind Spots; Politics, Religion, Travel, Books
The Iranian revolution and the captivity of 52 Americans crystalized dormant Islamophobia with ubiquitous Khomeini at its center decades before the US invasion of Iraq put another Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani under the global spotlight for entirely different reasons as someone unlike the Iranian revolutionary leader
Members of the clergy and officials in Iraq were at pains the negate the western projection of the war on ISIS in sectarian terms
The seeds of perhaps the most spirited fightback ever against terrorism were sown in narrow Rasool Street in Iraq’s Najaf, where Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa in 2014 from his small house urging all able-bodied men to resist ISIS Pope Francis on his way to Sistani's residence for a meeting in 2021. By … Continue reading Iraq Diaries: Ground Zero Of Spirited Fightback Against ISIS
In 2016, Iraq was reaping the bitter fruits of the adventurism of another westerner Paul Bremer, who fell back upon the colonial divide-and-rule policy to counter a broad-based challenge to the American occupation and prepared the ground for ISIS to tap into resentment over the Sunni purge
Colonnaded thoroughfare Al Rasheed Street was built to commemorate the Ottoman victory in Kut al-Amara during the First World War before the scales tipped in Britain’s favour and the British troops drove Ottomans out with the help of Arabs By Sameer Arshad Khatlani In March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the pretext of … Continue reading Iraq Diaries: Colonnaded Street And British Betrayal Of Arabs
Gertrude Bell helped in creating a geo-political order for the West’s benefit but the one that spawned schisms the Middle East continues to grapple with by deciding the future of Arabs without letting them have a say in it
A spirit of openness was fostered in what is now Iraq under the patronage of Abbasid rulers, who led from the front in their pursuit of knowledge at the peak of the Islamic Golden Age
Academic powerhouse Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) carried the global light of learning in Baghdad for centuries as a centrepiece of the Islamic Golden Age
A tapering gateway of inscriptions and geometric themes now leads to Mustansiriya University, one of the world’s oldest universities which survived the Mongol onslaught, floods, and manmade and natural calamities that claimed much of Baghdad’s heritage over centuries
12th-century saint Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani is an integral part of the spiritual life in my native Kashmir, the Himalayan Valley he never visited over 4,000 km from his burial site in Baghdad
