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
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
Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, and Christians continued living cheek by jowl rebuffing the toxic mix of religion and politics inside the warrens of Bab al-Sheikh, drawing inspiration from the 12th-century saint Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani, whose final resting place is located there
