By Anwaar Hussain Condolences, Norway. Our hearts ache for you in this time of incredible sadness and shock. As more than 90 of your families bury their dead, we stand with you in solemn sorrow. And welcome to the world of right wing zombies. These are words written by the citizen of a country that [...]

By Anwaar Hussain The religion that once rewrote the parameters of human civilization in three continents, whose mighty empire once spanned the globe from the Central Asian Steppes to the shores of Atlantic, today feels threatened by a peasant woman. Its adherents want to kill this woman, a Christian mother of five, for having supposedly [...]

By Irfan Husain ALTHOUGH I get my share of spam in my inbox, I often receive very interesting and useful links as well. One took me to a recent debate at New York University. Organised by Intelligence Squared, the topic was ‘Islam is a religion of peace’. IQ2 has become an increasingly important forum for [...]

By S Ifitkhar Murshed “Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny,” declared Edmund Burke, the brilliant 18th-century Irish statesman who served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of the Whig Party. The purpose of all laws is to protect, and not persecute, citizens. Any deviation from this norm [...]

By Anwaar Hussain There is something wrong with me. I see the everyday killing of Shias, Ahmadis and Christians in my fatherland and something in me recoils in horror. While the gruesome acts of these killers are met with a mute applause by most of my countrymen, why is it that these revolt me? They [...]

By Anwaar Hussain So what do we have in the aftermath of the Lahore massacre in Pakistan? No protests against the killings, no joint condemnation from the flag bearers of Islam who foam at the mouths at a mere hint of any ‘danger to Islam’, no conciliatory gestures towards the victims, no nothing. We have [...]

By Masood Hasan The Goddess of Despair and Despondency has taken up permanent residence in this 63-year-old-country which lurches from crisis to crisis every single minute of the day. She has spread her shroud of death over this land and watches from afar as we implode within and impale without on poisoned spears that inject [...]