Rounded Analysis On Contested Issues; Spotlighting Blind Spots; Politics, Religion, Travel, Books
Karbala, where the shrine of the Prophet's grandson Hussain has stood for centuries as a symbol of resistance against tyranny, was in 2016 fittingly the nerve centre of the war on terror group ISIS
Abraham is believed to have first heard God’s voice in Ur, which is not just an example of Iraq’s storied past but also of how Abrahamic religions are joined at the hip
Bahrain has been a trendsetter in the Middle East including in introducing greater participation of women in political and public spheres that have inspired other Gulf nations to follow suit
To showcase the broad-based resistance against ISIS, we were driven to Baghdad's riverside palm tree-shaded Jadriya locality for a show of Shia-Sunni unity by commanders fighting the terror group
Volunteers of al-Hashd al-Shaabi were deployed as shock troops and negated ISIS's advantages of surprise, sudden attack, and ambush
Iran built a corridor of influence extending up to the Mediterranean when the US left Iraq in 2011 and left the field open for its archfoe and helped Tehran keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria and support Hezbollah in Lebanon
Ahl al-Bayt (people of the Prophet Muhammad's household) are known as nur-e-Muhammadi, or the bearers of his light, as well as his trustees ‘privy to his esoteric and religious knowledge'
Successes against ISIS would have been impossible without national unity when the bloody civil war deepened Shia-Sunni fissures
The reputation of Iraq's ayatollahs has been in sharp contrast to those in neighbouring Iran, who have since Ayatollah Khomeini-led 1979 revolution personified bogeymen in the US and Europe
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
