Rounded Analysis On Contested Issues; Spotlighting Blind Spots; Politics, Religion, Travel, Books
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
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'
Shias consider Ali ibn Abi Talib as Prophet Muhammad's only rightful heir while Sunnis revere him as a close relative of the Prophet as well as one of the four rightly-guided caliphs
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
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
The policies pursued in the aftermath of the 1979 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini-led Iranian revolution stoked sectarian hatred in the region but they have been discarded in line with the changed geo-political realities
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 or Dastageer Sahib is integral to the spiritual life in Kashmir, the Himalayan Valley he never visited over 4,000 km from his burial site in Iraq
