Rounded Analysis On Contested Issues; Spotlighting Blind Spots; Politics, Religion, Travel, Books
Shrines of Prophet Muhammad's grandson Imam Hussain in Karbala and his father, Imam Ali, in Najaf funded the Saraya al-Atabat and deployed them for their protection as well as to fight ISIS
Iraq’s religious leaders issued a statement in March 2020 repudiating and condemning the violence of ISIS while underscoring the terror group's crimes impacted members of all religions
The Iraqi clergy effectively tapped into the doctrine of martyrdom in the fight against ISIS by invoking the Battle of Karbala in which the Prophet's grandson Hussain and 72 of his companions and family members laid down their lives resisting an unjust ruler
Shah Rukh Khan, India's biggest film star, defines the potential of Indian soft power in unlikely places such as Iraq where hardly anyone even understands the language of his films
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the secular Turkish republic, banned Sufi orders, put mosques under government control, mandated officials to wear European-style brimmed hats, and banned Arabic as part of sweeping measures to impose secularism on Turks
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
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
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
Mutanabbi Street is named after poet Abu al-Tayyib al Mutanabbi, one of the leading lights of the Islamic Golden Age when a spirit of openness fostered the pursuit of knowledge and big science
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
