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
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
Tikrit was a test case for Iraq’s ability to unite the country after ISIS massacred 1,700 air force cadets, mostly Shia, at Camp Speicher there to drive a permanent sectarian wedge for the Iraqi state’s implosion
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'
Members of the clergy and officials in Iraq were at pains the negate the western projection of the war on ISIS in sectarian terms
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
