The United Nations in 2022 declared March 15 as International Day to Combat Islamophobia. Now it has decided to have a special envoy onboard to initiate specific actions to combat Islamophobia. DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM hopes the decision will go a long way towards addressing the problem.

The two-party system is not good for the American democracy and, by extension, for the world. Smaller parties and their candidates must be promoted by the electorate, observes DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM

The world is witnessing conflicts and wars on multiple continents besides being afflicted with economic inequality, environmental degradation, moral depravity and political chicanery. In such troubled times, Islam can guide us to the straight path, observes DR. MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM.

The Caste Survey campaign – its intent and urge to challenge the Brahminical hegemony, is born out of Mandal doctrine which shook the political landscape in India in the past.

DR. MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM argues the case for upholding the rule of law, resolving conflicts peacefully and strengthening respect for human rights.

At a time when the world is witnessing conflicts and wars on multiple continents, it becomes incumbent upon us to argue the case for peaceful conflict resolution, restraining the use of force, upholding the rule of law and inculcating respect for human rights.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Indian Constitution is comprehensive since it is secular in the first instance and embraces the rights of all groups, all classes of people and communities. The constituents produced a constitution which aimed at granting equal rights to all people, making it sure that no one has supremacy and privilege over others, no discrimination is made against any person, those communities and groups of people who were denied justice, equality and freedom, those who were deprived of human rights and subjected to oppression and barbarity- all of them should get justice, status of equality, no one should be despised on the ground of caste, region, language, or for any other reason. 

New Delhi, Dec. 15, 2023: With immense grief and sorrow, Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam, Chairman, Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, offers his deep condolence on the sad demise of Prof. Dr. Syed Khalid Rashid, who passed away today morning after a prolonged illness in Malaysia, Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rajewoon!

Save the Constitution and Freedom of the Country by Dr. M. Manzoor Alam 

Save the Constitution and Freedom of the Country - (islamicvoice.com)

Celebrated intellectual, General Secretary of All India Milli Council and Chairman, Institute of Objective Studies, Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam is seriously sick these days and under treatment at Delhi’s Max Hospital. Though bed-ridden, he has issued the following statement addressing thinkers, intellectuals, heads and responsible persons of different organisations:

“Climate change is affecting almost every aspect of human life. At times reports on the issue read like a horror story. The situation calls for action with great urgency,” observes DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM

I’m reading a report on climate change and farming in the context of China in The Economist (‘A growing problem’, July 15th 2023). The report turns the spotlight on massive floods and scorching heat in the country and the toll they are taking on the farmers besides affecting food supplies. It seems the situation will get worse in future.

We need to bring about an urgent reform in the education system as a huge number of unemployed as well as unemployable youth could jeopardise India’s economic development, warns DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM

I have always believed that education is the key to economic growth and human development. Good quality education is a necessary precondition for advances in social sciences and humanities, science and technology, as well as agriculture and healthcare sectors. It ensures efficient public administration as well as private sector growth. Above all, education guarantees an individual’s right to a dignified life.

“Artificial Intelligence can revolutionise our economy and society; however, it should be regulated to make it humane,” observes DR MOHAMMED MANZOOR ALAM

French poet, playwright and novelist Victor Hugo once remarked, “You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” Today Artificial Intelligence (AI) is such an idea.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

In democracy people are the mightiest. Who will hold the supreme authority, which party will form the government are the decisions people make, but practically this is demonstrated when people exercise their intellect, they are awakened, they know their rights and the power of their vote.  When people understand the power of their vote, they exercise it judiciously and entrust power to a party which shows concern for the welfare of the people, ensures peace in the country and respects the rights of the people. 

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has again created history after winning Turkey’s presidency that cements his two-decade long tenure as head of the state.

I have closely watched Mr. Erdogan’s phenomenal rise from being a mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s to becoming prime minister in 2003. And now he becomes president for the third time.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

We take pride in the fact that India is the world’s largest democracy. We feel fully justified in celebrating our democracy as we have independent institutions such as judiciary and election commission, for checks and balances. If a peaceful transition of power is a mark of a mature democracy, we can claim that we are a mature one. Above all, we have a wonderful constitution that promises us liberty, equality, fraternity and justice. This remarkable document intends for our country to be governed by the rule of law. It is based on the principles of “inalienable rights of citizens, independence of judiciary, free and fair elections and freedom of the press”.

New Delhi, Feb. 20: Prof. Akbar Husain (Retired), Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, and Member, General Assembly, Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, was invited by the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education, Chikushi Jogajuen University, Fukuoken-ken, Japan, to deliver Open Guest Lectures on Psychological Well-being on February 09, 2023 and Social Well-being in Indian Context (Global Psychological Support Possibilities) on February 10, 2023.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Since time immemorial, India has been home to various cultures, customs, and traditions, and it has accommodated followers of several religions who have been conducting their social life according to their own customs and personal law. India is also a secular and democratic country, but here the meaning of secularism is different from how it is understood in Europe, where secularism means distancing from religion, in other words, not believing in any religion.

New Delhi, January 20, 2023: With immense grief and sorrow, the Chairman, office-bearers, and members of staff of the Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, offers its deep condolence on the sad demise of Dr. Nafees Ahmad Siddiqui, who passed away yesterday morning at New Delhi.

The book under review is an outcome of understanding the social exclusion, ethnoreligious discrimination, and current political system and culture in India. It dwells on the exclusion and discrimination of Muslims in the sphere of power, opportunities, and equality.A collection of nineteen essays of reputed academicians focus on the concept of minority, understanding communalism, crucial aspects of the Constitution, the judiciary’s response, enforcement agencies, sociological study of Muslim labourers, and educational backwardness of Muslims in the country.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

When we assess the progress of a country, it is often the social indicators that decide the country’s development and the well-being of its people.  India has repeatedly scored poorly on social indices in many sectors in recent times. When we talk about the progress of any society, one of its indicators of development is lower crime rates which consequently open a series of multilayered discourses on prison and its inhabitants.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

G20, a strategic intergovernmental forum, was established in 1999 as a response to the financial crisis of the 1990s. Comprising of 20 members (19 countries and the European Union) that constitute the world’s 85 per cent share of the GDP and 60 per cent of the world population, the main objective of G20 is to deal with the pressing global economic and geopolitical issues. G20 members include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The members meet annually to deliberate on achieving economic stability and delve into other critical challenges faced by the member countries and their impact on the global economy. 

Uploaded on November 26, 2022

The following letter dated 24th November 2022, was sent by Dr. M. Manzoor Alam, Chairman, Institute of Objective Studies, to Datuk Seri Dr. Anwar Ibrahim, Newly-Elect Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The dates for upcoming assembly elections of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh have been declared, and it is our responsibility and duty to take part in them with open eyes and awakened sensibilities. It is very interesting to note that, unlike many first-world countries, independent India adopted a very progressive approach in granting voting rights to everyone without discriminating on the basis of class, caste, gender, etc.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Democracy is defined by the participation and free will of the people it governs. Democratic states are ought to maintain the quintessence of democracy—equality, justice, liberty, and fraternity—that sets it apart from other forms of governance. The landscape of the world’s largest democracy, as decided by its framers, was set at the core of supremacy and freedom of choice of its ordinary people, empowering the people to have a voice in matters relating to their socio-economic, cultural and political well-being. The strength of India’s democracy has been compromised, following multiple incidents that violated the essence of democracy in the last few years, especially for the last eight years. The lack of accountability and the deafening silence showcased by the authority has further deepened the withering of democratic ethos.

Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi has been presented with Mahatma Award 2022 for Social Good and its Impact on October 1, 2022 at IIC, New Delhi

The 'Mahatma Awards' were constituted and inspired by the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi in 2017 in the United States and for the past few years national and international organizations have been awarded in New York City and New Delhi. The year 2019 on the eve of 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi the award was brought to India and awarded to Organization and Individuals from Government, Corporate Sector, Nonprofit, Development Sector and Public Sector in India. The Award is supported by Aditya Birla Group and Eternal Gandhi Initiative.

An article of Zafar Anwar - Published in Akhbar-e-Mashrique on 2nd September 2022

The Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, with a consistent 36 years tradition of contributing always to nation building through objective studies and healthy practices of academics, took part in the ongoing celebration of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, an initiative of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India to  commemorate the celebration of 75 years of  Independence of India,  and organised a flag-hoisting programme at its premises followed by a lecture on "Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav: The Significance of Tiranga"  delivered by Prof. M. Afzal Wani,  Pro-Vice Chancellor, IILM University, Greater Noida, Vice-Chairman, Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, and Former Member of the Law Commission of India on August 13, 2022. 

Uploaded on August 10, 2022

Viewpoint

WHY DISPARITY IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF LAW?

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Legislation and its implementation are very significant in any society, country and organization for the preservation of peace, security and the protection of human rights. Every institution is guided by rules and regulations. Laws and the Constitution are framed to run every ordinary institution and country so that a well-organized course of action is in place to ensure peace, security and complacency for everyone. Therefore, laws are defined as a system devised on the basis of accumulative principles, which any institution enforces to organize a particular society; this serves as the foundation of the collective attitude, affairs and performance of any society.

The following letter was sent by Dr. M. Manzoor Alam, Chairman of IOS to Mr. Joe Biden, President of United States of America on August 2, 2022 through H.E. The Ambassador, The Embassy of United States of America in India, New Delhi.

Over the years, technology has changed by leaps and bounds. The technological advancement in each sector has revolutionized our society and economy to a great length. We cannot escape and ignore technology at any cost. The use of technology has changed how we work, access information, learn, teach, etc. The abundance of access to technology and its tools in contemporary times is a testimony to prophecies made in reference to technological advances. 

 “FOLLOWING RAMADAN DEMONSTRATE PERSISTENCE AND PRUDENCE!”

Message given by Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam on the eve of Eid-ul Fitr 

In an interview with the Millat Times (Urdu daily, Delhi), published on May 2, 2022, on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr, Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam, General Secretary, All India Milli Council, said that the Blessed Month of Ramadan is bidding farewell. Guided by the Divine help, we tried to benefit ourselves from this month; we kept fast, offered prayers, recited the Holy Qur’an, tried to understand its meaning and commentary, gave charity and did our best by all possible means to create strong bonds with our Lord.  We should also think if, in the context of the prevailing circumstances, we are ready to get necessary lessons from the Noble Qur’an. Dr. Manzoor Alam said that it is necessary to reflect on such questions.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The development of any society and country depends on the delivery of justice. Social justice, harmony in society and the prevention of riots guarantee the progress and growth of humanity. A country or society can be called developed in the real sense only if justice thrives there, and people’s life, property and honour are secure; where people are allowed to speak the truth and live with full freedom, feeling safe; where people are confident that if they are oppressed, action will be taken against the transgressors who will be booked under the law of the land, and criminals will get due punishment for their misdeeds. When there is assurance that the Judiciary will deliver justice and police will perform their duty honestly, while investigative agencies will act without any bias, and if it happens, the transgressors and criminals will not dare to oppress and coerce the innocent in future. 

New Delhi, April 28, 2022: An Iftaar program, followed by dinner, was hosted by the Institute of Objective Studies for its staff members in the conference hall of the Institute yesterday. It was joined by the staff of All India Milli Council, Ta’awun Trust and Feature and News Alliance (FANA), besides the Chairman of the IOS, Dr. M. Manzoor Alam, General Secretary, Prof. Z.M. Khan and Finance Secretary, Mohammad Alam.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The main objectives of government formation for building the country and establishment of democracy revolve around giving rights to people, creating equality in society, ensuring justice to every individual and guaranteeing people’s freedom. Several departments are established to implement this basic agenda; such departments are kept apart from each other and are given functional autonomy.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Oh, you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you may learn piety and righteousness” [Quran, 2:183] 

Islam categorizes the month of Ramadan as sacred, contemplative, and full of kindness and positivity. Muslims are given one dedicated month (Ramadan) to reflect on their deeds and try to become the best version of themselves. This Holy month is not just about fasting; fasting is just one of the many aspects. It opens many avenues to seek refuge under the guidance of Allah and repent for all the sins committed knowingly or unknowingly. 

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

It is an obligatory duty of every society to secure women’s rights, making their freedom certain, granting equality and protection by all means. Islam and the Merciful Qur’an have paid special attention to this aspect, stating all kinds of rights given to women. Besides Islam, other religions too have emphasised women’s rights, focusing on their freedom and protection of their modesty and chastity. Yet, there exist, even today, several societies where women are not given respect and protection; women there are exploited, denied equality and freedom.

Political Empowerment of Kashmiri women at the grassroots level

By Zafarul-Islam Khan

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The framers of our Constitution dreamt of an ideal nation, which aspired to be inclusive and respected the nation's rich diversity. Striving at the nation's prosperity and progress, India's Constitution embraced a democratic ethos that was ahead of its time. The far-sightedness of these leaders could be summed up as phenomenal. The extensive constitutional debates at the time of its formation is a testimony to the efforts put in by the founding fathers of our nation to make India an inclusive country that it intended for.

BOOK REVIEW

Malika B. Mistry (2021). Muslim Women in India Education and Exposure to Media. New Delhi: Genuine  Publications & Media Pvt. Ltd., pp. 212, price INR 895.00.

By N. Benjamin, Professor, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, Maharashtra.

Jharkhand Journal of Development and Management Studies
XISS, Ranchi, Vol. 19,  No. 4,  October-December 2021,  pp. 9067-9069

Muslim Khawateen aur Hijab: Fikr ke Naye Goshe by Kethirine Bollock

Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes by Katherine Bullock

The discourse around hijab or headscarf being oppressive is not new. From European to South-Asian countries, all of them have, at some point, made it controversial to an extent to get this piece of clothing banned (France). 

Assembly elections 2022 in five Indian States will be held between February 10 and March 7 for which polling will take place in several phases. Elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur have assumed great significance in the present environment. Among the five election-bound states, Uttar Pradesh is the most important state, which is presently under Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) rule, and BJP has in its kit bag nothing but prejudices and promises. 

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The pandemic metamorphosed into tragedy for people across countries. It was more brutal for the unprivileged who suffered on many fronts. In India, the second wave turned people’s lives upside down; many lost their lives, loved ones, social and economic security, mental health, etc. In a democracy, if a country undergoes a tragedy, the government is expected to function accordingly, especially keeping in focus the needs of marginalised sections, who bear the brunt of such humanitarian crises. The budget is one such policy that gives people hope for a better life, where all the sections of society eagerly lookout for schemes and plan for their representation in society with equity.

Throughout the freedom struggle movement of India, Muslims played a quintessential role, which remains largely sidelined in the nationalist narrative of the nation. The exclusion of Muslims in the narrative is manifold- the historical bias and hatred leading to "othering" of the community, to say the least. In the present times, Muslims are often questioned by the Hindutva forces and asked to prove their patriotism to the country. Clearly, it is in conflict with the historical facts of Muslims and their contribution to the making of Independent India.

The IOS has been proactive in bringing Muslims and their experience into the mainstream narrative of India at large through research, academic programs, publication, etc. Below is a list of literature based on the historical facts published by the IOS to highlight the glorious participation of Muslims in the independence movement of 1947.

The book Vision 2025 Social Economic Inequalities: Why Does India’s Economic Growth Need n Inclusive Agenda is an excellent work by Amir Ullah Khan and Abdul Azim Akhtar on the exclusion study of Indian Muslims. The book is very successful in representing the socio-economic status of the Indian Muslim in-depth, systematic and full of evidentiary articulations. 

Book Review

QURANIC GUIDANCE: THERAPY AND ISLAMIC COUNSELLING INTERVENTIONS

by Akbar Hussain. New Delhi, Institute of Objective Studies, 2021, pp. 76. ISBN: 9789384973971.

The need for trained Muslim counsellors to serve as chaplains has grown exponentially in our times owing to peoples’ modern lifestyles. And as Islam is an all-embracing way of life that caters for the needs of those in distress, in hospital, prison or at home, the author has accomplished a valuable task in encapsulating both the theory and practice of counselling along the Islamic lines. 

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Democracy, secularism, and composite culture constitute the peculiar identity of India. For centuries, followers of different religions, cultures, languages, racial groups, castes, and regions have been living together. All these features have conferred on India a peculiarity and significance, but in the present time, conspiracies are being hatched to destroy the fabric of the composite culture of India. In the cover of religious extremism, the country is being ruined. By putting forward extremist religious predators, plots are being made to pitch followers of different religions against each other.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Occurrences related to violence, hatred and communalism are on the rise. Political leaders and some protégé having links with political parties are bent upon spitting venom. Many a people occupying high offices act venomously and carry venom in their voice against Muslims; they cross all limits in their malicious treatment of minorities, Dalits and the weak. Such leaders and hate-mongers include persons from top to bottom. The latest statement from RSS Chief, Mohan Bhagvat, in which he talks about Muslims’ “Coming Home” (Ghar Wapsi). In the course of a programme, he urged the participants to take an oath to work on the ground for Muslims’ coming home.  Preceding this event, he falsified history saying Islam reached India by the use of sword and through invaders. Sometimes, he says that all citizens of Bharat are Hindus. Scores of his statements promote violence, hurting the sentiments of minorities, while also violating the rights to equality, justice and freedom.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

All Humans are the Children of Adam, the Father of all humans across the world. Humans living in America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and humans living in any part of the world, or living on the moon or wherever he has settled, all of them share a common descent. All humans trace back their genealogy to Adam.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

26th November is observed as the Constitution Day in India- the Constitution was adopted on 26th November 1949, following the ardent and extensive deliberations after India's Independence in 1947. The framers of the Constitution are still remembered for their dedicated effort to put forward a holistic and inclusive document, which aimed for political, social, economic, and cultural equality amongst the people of India.

Book Review

The book Muslim Women in India Education and Exposure to Media by Malika B. Mistry

Addressing gender disparity in Muslim education by M.A. Siraj

New initiatives have shown that more and more Muslim women can be brought into educational mainstream across all markers like literacy, general enrolment ratio, academic attainments and media exposure.

Conditions today are, to a great extent, similar to the conditions, which had been created in the country at the time of the foundation of the All India Milli Council. We may recall the memories of the year 1992 when the entire country was thrown into the fierce fire of communalism, putting into dust the real identity of India, which consists of democracy, secularism, and unity in diversity. In such an atmosphere, the All India Millia Council embarked on its noble journey. All Praises are for Allah that under the patronage of Maulana Syed Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadvi, with the guidance of the jurist of his time, Maulana Qazi Mujahidul Islam Qasmi, and in association with innumerable theologians and intellectuals, the All India Milli Council reached several milestones.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam 

Pegasus, owned by the Israeli tech company, NSO Group, is spyware that, once planted in a device, transmits all the details without any prior approval or even a click by an individual. It made headlines in India in November 2019.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

World is susceptible. Conditions change every next day. In comparison to the past, the picture of the present tends to be different, while the idea of the future rests on a distinct notion. In the preceding century, some changes came about. In the last fifteen years, conditions are changing at a fast pace. 

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

“Every 11 minutes, someone dies of hunger” - Oxfam

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam 

“The law is meant to be my servant, not my master, my torturer and my murderer.” - James Baldwin.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

For centuries, Bharat has been an embodiment of diverse cultures and languages. The salient feature of the country is that it is a home to different communities representing a variety of culture. One territory, one region, but each of them represents a distinct lifestyle and diverse culture in the society. Eating and drinking habits, dressing styles, etc. have been dissimilar from each other, still this is such a distinctive quality of Bharat, which is not seen in the entire world. History is a witness to diverse communities, people from different strata and races living in Bharat with their distinct culture.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Five years ago, when Saudi Arabia proposed Vision 2030, the highlight of the project was improving the economy of the Kingdom, along with bringing reforms in governance, laws, socio-political and cultural sectors, and environmental-related issues. Today, the status of the ongoing project stands firm and clear, moving swiftly towards the end goal. Saud bin Mohammad Al-Sati, Saudi's Ambassador to India, very proudly listed out some of the achievements of Vision 2030. The objective of modernizing and transforming the administration with a diversified approach to policies and laws has been fruitful for the Kingdom as more than 45 percent of the 500 promised reforms have been successfully delivered. 

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The swift takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban had left the world aghast and shocked. After two decades of the Imperialist occupation of the country, the Taliban has emerged as the lone winner as the American-backed Afghan administration dissolved within a few days. This takeover would prove to be a game-changer in the geopolitical scenario and the international political relationships between countries.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

In our considered opinion collective leadership is absolutely indispensable to assure progress of Muslims; to resolve numerous issues; to create mutual amity and harmony; to avoid confusion, eradicate disintegration and promote national integration. So long as collective leadership does not spring up into existence, collective leadership will not emerge.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Amidst  the  edge  of  the  second  wave  of  the  pandemic,  India  celebrated  its  75th anniversary  of  freedom.  The  milestone  was  honored  with  seeking  pride  in  India's achievements over the last few years.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Allah the Almighty has entrusted to the Muslim ummah the responsibility of the leadership of communities, their guidance and treading them on the straight path. The Holy Qur’an has made it clear that the Muslim ummah should feel concerned for communities, admonish them, bring them on the straight path, and to save those who have gone astray. Responsibility of performing this task is given to the Muslim ummah. Besides this, it is demanded from the collective leadership that it should implement the commands of Allah the Praiseworthy; the ummah is expected to give effect to the messages of Allah the Almighty on our land by means of collective leadership. The ummah is also required, in the wake of circumstances of the present time, to give precedence to collective leadership.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam 

“Majoritarian tendencies, whenever and however they arise, must be questioned against this background of our constitutive promise.” — Justice Chandrachud

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The spiral of Covid-19 across the country has exposed our unpreparedness for this scale of national health emergency. Sadly, instead of concentrating on the fight against the deadly pandemic some media outlets are still trying to blame (without justification, of course) Muslims for the spread of the disease. In short, they are not interested in fighting the disease, but in a communal campaign against Muslims. 

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam

The Corona conundrum is deepening everyday as a spike is reported from most areas. There is a great scarcity of beds in government hospitals. Only till a couple of weeks ago the rich were certain that they would get a bed, emergency equipment and critical care in one of the several private hospitals in metros, even if it costs them Rs. 20 lakh for a period of hospitalisation. However, now these costly hospitals are reporting severe shortage of beds and critical equipment like ventilators.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam
General Secretary, All India Milli Council

Taqwa (piety) enriches humans with great virtues. Taqwa means being conscious and cognizant of Allah, of truth, of the rational reality, piety, fear of God. This Islamic term is often mentioned in the Holy Qur’an.

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Over the last few weeks I have been returning to this column to discuss how best to ensure dignity to the entire humanity as per God’s assertion in the Quran that He “made  children of Adam dignified.”

Heart-to-Heart III

Most Significant Period

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

From the first part of this series I have tried to explain the body and soul relationship of Islam and Ramadhan.Such significant events took place in the month that changed the courses of history and turned the world’s weakest faith group (in terms of numbers and resources) into a fast-growing super power ready to replace the eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Empire, the super powers of the time.

Heart-to-Heart II

Ten days to work for maghfirah

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Before beginning the second part of any current Ramadhan series I want to reiterate that it is not written in the format I did my earlier Ramadhan columns which were all written in the traditional, ulema-approved style. This was so even though I was not a trained a’alim.

Heart-to-Heart-I

Our capability to live through Ramadan

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Much of my Ramadan columns have, over the years, appeared with this heart-to-heart logo. This logo marked our concern for the right training of our faith community's youth.

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam

Peace is so critical for Islam that its very name is derived from the root salaam, which means peace. Without it a central Quranic text Allah laid down in the Quran that he made the children of Adam respectable.

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam

In the first article of this series we posited that God bestowed dignity on humans: men, women, blacks, whites, yellow races, the wheatish and the reds, as well as on followers of all faiths and atheists – Hindus, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, atheists, agnostics, animists and a whole range of in-between categories.

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam

As explained in the first part of this article the ‘post-human age’ dawning on us could be difficult for people who are not prepared for it. It will be a data-driven, Al-propelled, algorithm-dictated age...

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam examines some issues in the context of uncertainties in India and the world. 

Science, technology and future of civilisations. DR. MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM

Humans have divided large segments of time into aeons, eras, epochs and ages, millennia and centuries, and attributed those times with dominant features with appropriate age names, like stone age...

From the account the Prime Minister gave of his first 100 days in office in his second term (in Rohtak on September 8), it seemed this government has been particularly kind to Muslims and their interests. A few major “achievements” of his government had been Muslim-centered...

Over the last several months we have been hearing claims about the economy going great guns. Government leaders tell us that we are growing at 7 per cent a year while the US economy is going at 3 per cent only. However, we are not told that the US economy...

A few weeks ago I had written a piece, “Let’s give peace a chance.” In it I had argued for co-operating with the Supreme Court-ordered Ayodhya mediation committee that seeks to find an amicable out-of-court settlement of the dogged Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi...

A few days ago, in this column I had discussed how the Muslim representation in parliament had been brought down to a level at which this faith community of 17 crore people has been made politically irrelevant, voiceless, and pushed to the margins...

One of the less examined and analysed aspects of the recent Lok Sabha elections is the stark fact that the old dream of the Sangh to do politics without Indian Muslims has been fully realised. BJP has won an absolute majority in Lok Sabha, the House of People, without...

To achieve any targeted goal, there is a need to develop infrastructure accordingly. This is with all aspects of life whether it is agriculture, industry, education, religion etc. Educational institutions are meant to...

As I write this, the most precious moments of our lives are quickly passing by. The blessed days and nights of the holy month of Ramadhan that bring Muslims bounties of Allah, for our lives here on the earth and hereafter, are too short for the faithful...

Tawhid is the central organising principle of Islam. In its primary meaning, it is about the absolute Oneness of God. In its extended meaning, it is about the oneness of the entire humanity, as the Quran beautifully expresses it: all humans being the children of a single...

Peace (salaam) is an absolute value in Islam. Everyday we wish peace to each other, pray for peace through our greetings (Assalamu alaikum, peace be upon you), send salaam to our Prophet in our prayers...

For detail see enclosed article

The Muslim world’s educational status has been declining for centuries in relation to the others. Muslim minorities in India, China, Russia, European Union, the US, Canada or South America, too, are rarely among the best. What..

The visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to India at the head of a large business and official delegation this week is being looked up to with expectations of further deepening of relations between the two countries...

This letter is in response to your call to some familiar names in Indian Muslim society, a copy of which has been kindly forwarded to me by AOL director, Shri Gautam...

The rise of Anwar Ibrahim, leader of Malaysia’s ruling PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat) after years of imprisonment brings to mind the mythical Sphynx, the bird that was burnt to ashes and later...

The Narendra Modi government has railroaded the Triple Talaq Bill through Lok Sabha on sheer strength of a brute majority, contemptuously overlooking the Opposition protests and Muslim minority’s...

The Supreme Court verdict on the Rafale deal that supports government’s decision to clinch it and discourages any questioning of it has turned out to be based on a wrong and misleading account...

The extraordinary performance of Congress Party in major states of north Indian Hindi belt has proved that we are not living in Congress–mukt (Congress-free) Bharat as BJP would have us believe, but...

And with that I am going to make a paradoxical statement: whoever wins the Lok Sabha election in 2019 will be an unhappy person. The next prime minister from the party winning the majority seats would be...

On November 2, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a dramatic announcement. He has been making such announcements over the last four years, but this seemed magical. In a way...

Only last month RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat had, in a series of lectures, given a clear indication that the Sangh was moving away from its aggressive and highly divisive Hindutva stance. He...

What you don't seem to realise is that Mohan Bhagwat the head of the RSS in 2018, in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, has tried to put a pro constitution and pro Islam gloss on Hinduism...

When RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat made certain observations during a three-day lecture series at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan, a lot of people sat up and watched in sheer amazement. It seemed as if the traditionally...

Unity of the Ummah is a precious value in Islam. The reason is quite clear: people believing in a single, Almighty God (Allah) and his last Prophet (PBUH) and the Book of Allah revealed on the Prophet, the Quran...

Trust an ill-mannered buffoon to turn the sacred into the profane, or, at least try to. Cartooning, like journalism, art and poetry can come to the rescue when freedom, justice and human rights are threatened...

When Imran Ahmed Khan Niyazi’s Pakistani cricket team won the World Cup in 1992, the whole subcontinent, not just Pakistan, rejoiced in the victory. For the first time (and possibly for the last) cricket was a sport in India...

Please read the enclosed letter.

Research has shown that sharia councils are approached voluntarily and are often progressive

Written by Faizan Mustafa | Updated: August 10, 2018 12:05:13 am

The Quranic revelation began with Iqra, or Read. By the way, I have a clear preference for Read as the meaning of Iqra over Recite and Proclaim. I have a simple reason for believing that, because when the Archangel...

On July 30, the final draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) was completed in Assam that listed 2.89 crore citizens, out of 3.29 crore applications for citizenship. As many as 40 lakh people were excluded...

New Delhi, June 28: The IOS Chairman, Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam, has written a letter to President of Turkey, His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdogan, congratulating him on the impressive electoral victory of his party and his own victory in the presidential election.

The release of former Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim from prison following a royal pardon from Sultan Muhammad V on May 16, 2018 is a milestone in the country’s politics. That democratic...

As of writing these lines the second ashra (ten days) is coming to a close. The moment we get down to taking our iftaar of the 20th Ramadhan, the night of the 21st Ramadhan begins, as in the Islamic calendar...

By the time you get to read this, it will be the anniversary of a great turning point in Islam’s history: the 17th of the holy month when the crucial battle of Badr was fought between Muslims (who came from Madina)...

As I write this, it is the second day of the blessed month of Ramadhan in a large part of the world. The Ramadhan moon was sighted last evening in an unusually large swath of the globe. Thus a preponderant...

The count-down to the general elections - 2019 has begun. Prior to this, polls to several assemblies have become a focal point for the ruling party at the Centre, BJP, and opposition parties. After elections...

Justice Rajinder Sachar, who passed away on April 20, at 94, after a long life of fighting for public causes, was truly what we call salt of the earth. A judge in the illustrious tradition of VR Krishna Iyer and...

Around the time President Barack H. Obama came to the White House in his first term a rather intriguing piece by a famous columnist appeared in several newspapers. In it he wrote something to the effect that Obama’s middle name was Hussein, and he would tilt towards Iran, the country which lives for the Love of Hussein, the martyred grandson of the Prophet (PBUH).

When King Salman bin Abdul Aziz ascended to the Saudi throne on the death of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz the kingdom was at the cusp of great wave of far-reaching changes. A constant fall in oil revenues, expanding population, slow-down in the expansion and renovation of infrastructure and need for a fast pace of job creation had to be quickly looked into. The new administration took due note of it. The monarchy already had a blueprint for addressing some of these issues. The new order had just to improve it and quicken its implementation, besides creating newer plans and projects for an all-round security and growth and for the country to keep on playing its role on the international stage as the undisputed leader of the Muslim world.

In the early years of his rule, sometime in 1930s, King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud confided in a Western writer that he was fed up with rampant tribal raids on each other and on pilgrim caravans. He said he had been praying to Allah to send some rain so that the raiders could get busy with some form of agriculture and stay away from raids, which were desperate acts to find a living in brigandage, stealing neighbouring tribes’ cattle, looting pilgrims and trading caravans. The raids would often cause injury to both raiders and defenders, if not always death, in which a blood feud would ensue, just as it did before the advent of Islam, in the Jahiliyah, the age of ignorance.

Think of Saudi Arabia, and you think of the holiest of holy, the land most blessed by God, the land about which the Poet of East, Allama Mohammad Iqbal, wrote:

Among all the places of worship
Stands tall the first House of God
We (the Ummah) are its watchful sentries
As it (silently) guards over all of us

Please read the enclosed letter.

The NDA’s last budget is a sleight of hand to impress the rural voter in 2019. Urban voters, especially the youth, impressed by BJP’s promise of the moon, had voted wholeheartedly the Narendra Modi-led coalition...

The intractable Ayodhya dispute defies resolution. Not that men of faith and goodwill on both sides have not tried, or not tried hard enough to resolve it. Among the tallest spiritual figures who tried to untangle...

I am returning to this column, addressed particularly to the Muslim youth, after a while. The issue I want to talk about is the ubiquitous violence, sense of dissatisfaction and disappointment, rage and resentment that seem...

If anything, 2017 was marked by an all-pervasive sense of fear and loathing. Virtually everyday people were beaten up or killed for allegedly eating beef, conducting love Jihad, resisting ghar wapsi...

The US move to shift its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has reset the Mid-East political and diplomatic chessboard. Since President Trump’s announcement of the decision on December 6 it has become...

A summit is the top of a mountain. In diplomacy, a summit is a meeting of the top persons of countries–presidents, kings or, at the minimum, prime ministers. At the extraordinary session of Organisations of Islamic Conference...

US President Donald Trump in his familiar cavalier way has announced that the US embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem despite warnings from European and Muslim states that such a move would....

At a first glance, today’s theme is self evident and in no need of commentary. Women constitute about half of humankind and should therefore share the same responsibilities as men.

The term ‘humane’ according to the dictionary is compassion or benevolence; a humane society is therefore one that avoids pain or suffering to fellow humans. Sociologists consider a society humane if it is motivated by the most desirable of human values. It implies a society dedicated to the principles of justice, equality and fraternity and one in which its members are recognized and respected as human beings without differentiations of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

The following are some of my thoughts regarding women’s role in the construction of a humane society.

Besides the ascriptive roles assigned to them by society which, in any case, better-educated women resent, all other roles that women seek to play will have to be chosen by them only. Issues like what will be the size of the family that she (with her husband, of course) wants to raise is to be decided by the woman alone. After all, it is her body that will carry the baby for nine months and, after birth, it is she who will suckle the baby, look after it closely for a year or two, sleep and rise with her infant, and suffer severe sleep deprivation.

This is an SOS to halt the unprecedented escalation in the persecution of Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar. Over the last ten days alone, nearly 125,000 of them have fled over the border to Bangladesh to avoid...

Large crowds are a powerful symbol. Often they are an indication of something being wrong, something needed to be rectified by people in power. If the rulers fail to take note, a crowd has a way of turning...

The Prime Minister’s speech on Independence Day was, as usual, full of rhetoric and flourishes, but short on specifics. Some of his assertions were too good to be believed. Hence, it is of interest to look at the speech...

After decades of politics under the British Raj the Indian National Congress decided finally on August 8, 1942 that enough was enough and every mission, commission, petition and submission had become irrelevant. The people...

In the last piece we discussed how, with the Prime Minister’s public disapproval of goonda attacks on Muslims by cow vigilantes, we hope this mode of anti-Muslim violence will cease for a while for other modes...

After a relentless bout of persecution of Muslims over the last three years under well-orchestrated programmes like ghar wapsi, love jihad, and cow protection the Sangh seems to be preparing for a gear shift...

The guilt of fiendish murder of Junaid can not be sidelined by Hindu Majority under the slogan of “Not in my Name”. In fact Hindu majority will continue to be held guilty so long such devilish acts continue. These acts are a shame on our constitution and this challenge has to be met frontally.

The recital in the preamble to the Constitution that India is a secular state means that no religious group (including Hindus) can claim any special dominant position or status in the country.

When you get to read these lines only a day or, at best, two, of the holy month would be left before Eid celebrations. That is, only a small window of opportunity is left for believers to take advantage of to please Allah...

Like note ban, nobody knows whom the current meat ban is going to benefit. All that we know is that it has created extraordinary problems for the livelihood of two crore people, aggravated goonda...

On June 6 five farmers were killed in police firing in two separate incidents in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh. The police fired on large crowds of farmers demanding remunerative prices for...

Ashrah in Arabic means ten days. And, we are already well into the first ashrah of the holy month of Ramadhan. Though the whole month of Ramadhan is full of Allah’s Grace and Mercy, these particular days are known...

By the time you get to read this, only two days of Sha’abaan will be left. That is, only two days before the holy month of Ramadhan dawns upon us, bringing with it all the bounties and favours from...

As the issue of triple talaq or instant divorce among some sections of the Muslim community is fiercely being discussed in Indian electronic media, and people from the non-Muslim community...

aking note of Unique Identity Project’s limitations the Supreme Court of India first observed that Aadhaar card should not be mandatory. Over a period of time it seems to have come to the conclusion that Aadhaar...

The continuous engagement between the Supreme Court, the Union government and civil society for quite a while has obfuscated issues relating to the Aadhaar card. Despite such engagement since...

As the issue of triple talaq or instant divorce among some sections of the Muslim community is fiercely being discussed in Indian electronic media, and people from the non-Muslim community...

A recent expose by Rajasthan Patrika that had the potential to create a storm in the media and society has been quietly allowed to die down and buried in deafening silence by the same corporate...

Please read the enclosed letter.

What is demonetisation? An unfamiliar term became the flavour of the season this winter, replacing surgical strikes and fake encounters. The first point to be noted in this discussion on demonetisation is the tendency now to invent catch phrases with unfailing regularity these days. There are regular new additions to our vocabulary. Beef bans. BMKJ. Digital India. Smart Cities. Yoga day. Bullet trains. 15 lakhs in each account. Strong rupee. 12 million jobs. Patel statue. Neutralising terrorists. New education policy. Sedition. Each term is ephemeral, lasts a few days till a new one takes over.

New Delhi, January 28: The New Delhi-based Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) has decided to confer the 12th Shah Waliullah Award on journalist Iftikhar Gilani, strategic affair...

Now that we are in the fourth week of the first month of January 2017, we look back at the last century (1917-2017) as lost years for the Ummah, for which it has truly been a century of setbacks. Rarely any...

These days prime minister is becoming ‘’emotional’ on every issue and he feel that people are after him for waging a ‘war’ against high and mighty. We do not know what does that mean but I am sure the latest demonetization has shown that this war seems to be against India’s poor as high and might friends of the prime minister are enjoying their life well. Modi ji want to dig the record of past sixty years but I wish why not of past 2000 years of brahmanical hegemony? Every day, he brings new issue to remain in the news. This government is being run through TV channels as it seems, it can’t work peacefully without speaking loud. The other day after the so called surgical strike, the prime minister said, “I want to say that India is a ready for a war… India is a ready for a war on poverty. Let both countries fight to see who would eradicate poverty first… I want to tell the youth of Pakistan, let’s have a war on ending unemployment… I want to call out to the children in Pakistan, let’s declare war on illiteracy. Let’s see who wins. Let’s declare war on infant mortality and maternal deaths’, said the Prime Minister during a Public Meeting in Kozhikode, Kerala according to a report in the Indian Express on September 25th, 2016.

Sociology is an expanding and increasingly popular discipline across many parts of the world, particularly in the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan, India and Australia...

The unity, prosperity and wellbeing of Muslims as individuals, groups and countries is so important that by the time we come to the end of an article we realise that far more has remained unsaid than what...

Over the last couple of days I have frequently been returning to the content of the Prime Minister’s much-awaited address to the nation within hours of the beginning of the New Year. We had been hoping for some respite...

I am returning to this column within a week. The usual periodicity of this is once every month or so. The reason for this is the wide response to the last column under this title. The enthusiastic response to the article...

THE government, the Opposition and the public in general are rightly in panic awaiting the verdict on Babri Masjid by the Allahabad High Court – a situation brought about by the faltering non-secular stand by the governments concerned. The High Court is to give its verdict on the following points: (1) Was the place under Babri Majid the birthplace of Lord Ram? (2) Was there a temple on the land on which Babri Masjid was built?

I am returning to this column after a long while, in circumstances that are far from pleasant. Today, the Islamic world is a sad picture of disarray, anarchy and violence–internal as well as with others. From Afghanistan...

Education always plays a very important role in every one’s life. It makes an individual to internalize the value and norm of the society and simultaneously offers the specific skilled persons to serve different functions.

In 1950, India resolved to secure Justice, Liberty and Equality for all its citizens. Education is the best tool in hand to realise these noble goals.

With apology to Charles Dickens, we are living in the “best of times”, and we are living in the “worst of times”. This is an age of high level of prosperity for an ever-growing number of people worldwide, and alongside it, astonishingly fast growing inequality (the greatest in history in terms of numbers). Over the last two decades India has pulled millions of people out of poverty, one of the rarest of such feats. However, India still remains home to the world’s largest number of the poor. Nearly one out of the world’s five poorest persons lives in India, thus negating the country’s spectacular economic growth that has benefited the top ten percent of the country disproportionately more than the rest.

At the outset, it must be asserted that monetary and financial policies are made for the people, and people are not made for such policies. This basic principle seems to have been stood on its head in the present conundrum...

At an international seminar on Islamic higher education last month in the idyllic Maldives I made certain observations that were received with acclaim. The organisers asked me to chair the next session where...

Please click read more to see the enclosed pdf file.

This is like stating the obvious, but it needs reiteration here. There are two types of BJPwallahs: those who have come straight to the party, and those who have come via the RSS. As the RSS is the holding company of BJP, it naturally controls this party. A BJPwallah from the RSS is thus far more well-entrenched in the power structure of the party than his non-RSS counterpart. Quite obviously, the person with RSS background is more vicious and anti-Muslim. Narendra Modi is RSS man in BJP. That explains his enduring animosity against Muslims as evident in the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002.

Human sacrifice has been a part of history. The evil practice still continues in parts of the world, including India. We read reports of such sacrifices in India once in a while made to propitiate some goddess to ask...

The Prophet of Islam (PBUH), being unlettered, told Archangel Gabriel, when asked to read, that he was unlettered and thus could not read. Following a tight embrace by Gabriel (so tight that the Prophet [PBUH] thought his ribs would be crushed), the Prophet (PBUH) began to recite the revelation after the Archangel.

Former president Dr APJ Kalam’s death has brought back into discussion on his work, career and mission as the middle class India fed by absolutely communalized media has spared no time in making Kalam an ‘Einstien’ of India and perhaps the greatest president of India. Many called him ‘statesman’ while other said he was the ‘greatest’ scientist of the world. Indians are habitual of using adjectives to describe someone dear to them. Kalam was darling of India whose trolls hate those on social media as well as in public life who show their dissent to their futile and superfluous ‘vision’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he has lost a ‘margdarshak’ or what we term as guide. Was Abdul Kalam really a Margdarshak of Modi or RSS or they coopted him after his massive popularity with urbanized India with his ‘nationalistic’ views which attract the communalized middle classes.

As of writing this (afternoon of 24th Ramadhan in the subcontinent) much of the holy month is already gone. The first ashra (ten days) of rahmat (God’s mercy) has gone by ; the second of maghfirat (God’s pardon) too gone...

The evil mind that planned and executed Gujarat’s anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 and Muzaffarnagar killings of 2013 is back plotting a similar carnage before UP election next year. They claimed that Gujarat...

Killing somebody without justification is a great crime. It is a greater crime if the state is the killer, because the state is there to protect citizens, not to kill them wantonly. Also, destroying the evidence of the murder...

It is a privilege to be able to speak to you on this historic occasion to commemorate the centenary of Dr Baba Saheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar’s association with this prestigious institution, London School of Economics. As you know after finishing his masters at Columbia University in the United States, Dr Ambedkar came here for his Masters in Geography in 1916 as he wanted to complete his research here but was not allowed to do so. Finally, he registered as Ph.D student in 1920 and finished his doctoral thesis on ‘The problem of the rupee’ in March 1923 which was not accepted of reasons unknown though several experts feel that it was too revolutionary and anti ‘Empire’ that time to get accepted but finally it was resubmitted in August 1923 and accepted in November 1923.

From today, June 7, the holy month of Ramdhan begins in most of South Asia. In many parts of the world it began yesterday. The variation of a few hours is because of Islam’s lunar calendar which...

In the last article in this series we talked about how the ruling class seems to have taken the Rand Corporation report (to the US administration) suggesting that the poor of the Third World should be allowed...

Two years are now solidly behind Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of India. It is a moment of reckoning, time to question what he has delivered over these two years, how his team has functioned as cabinet...

After a couple of recent visits to Turkey, I have come to the firm conclusion that the country is reliving its grand Ottoman legacy under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan with its economic growth, conservative...

Sometimes towards the end of cold war, Rand Corporation, which conducts researches and writes reports for US government, its foreign policy and military establishments, prepared a report that had...

Recently we talked about how people have been killed in fake encounters. The police have claimed that the victims were terrorists, but courts found no proof of terror against them. Yet they got no...

Of late we have been witnessing a gruesome drama played by the UPA and NDA on the extrajudicial killing of Ishrat Jahan and some others in Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004 by Gujarat Police. The...

Over the last few years we have been seeing a cynical game being played with increasing enthusiasm by all kinds of politicians and organisations. People who were never the admirers of Babasaheb...

First of all, my apologies for returning to you a little late with this column. I had been travelling much of the time. This column, for a change, talks less about our religious, social and cultural like as Muslims...

The Aadhaar Bill opens the door to mass surveillance. This danger needs to be seen in the light of recent attacks on the right to dissent. No other country, and certainly no democratic country, has ever held its own citizens hostage to such a powerful infrastructure of surveillance.

There is general feeling in India that if the government at the Centre, or in some state, wants to distract public attention from an issue, it forms an enquiry commission, which sees to it that justice is delayed...

For all its appearances, the country is slowly, but steadily, being pushed towards an undeclared civil war. However, I must qualify my statement at the outset: because civil war is a precise term denoting an internal...

We are passing through a strange moment in our life where we are confronted with the evil described neatly by Macbeth’s witches: “Fair is foul, foul is fair.” In a moral reversal, language, too, has been turned upside...

Over the last few months it has become quite evident that the NDA government at the Centre is hostile to the life of the mind that universities signify. The government’s thinking on the subject is an extension of the Sangh’s thinking...

For nearly two months now the Kashmir valley has been on fire. A continuous curfew of 50 days or so was lifted earlier this week, but certain areas are still under curfew....

I am returning to this column a little earlier than usual. I must reiterate before proceeding further that this column is meant particularly for Muslim youth. The idea is that youth have vitality and extraordinary physical energy...

Over the last few weeks there has been a growing sense of uncertainty among Muslims when they read about attacks on their co-religionists, their religious symbols, and malicious statements against celebrities...

Over the last few years an impression has gained ground that Islam is violent and vengeful. This impression has been deepened and confirmed by violent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Yemen, all “Muslim” lands...

The last few weeks have been as disturbing as the preceding weeks. The slander campaign against Muslims accompanied by organised violence against them in different areas of the country and the...

There is a parliamentary ritual, a customary courtesy of the government represented by the parliamentary affairs minister made right before beginning of each session of this august body. Under this custom the parliamentary...

The Bihar elections have delivered a staggering blow to the NDA. They may not be a game-changer, but they certainly point to possibilities of a better performance by a secular front in the future...

With their political maturity and fresh thinking the people of Bihar have set a trend which is likely to be followed in other state assembly elections in near future...

As a roaring chorus of condemnation of the Sangh-inspired storm of intolerance rises to high heavens, the perpetrators of crimes against humanity are busy defending the indefensible. Sangh stalwarts, with...

The Dussehra address of the RSS chief is by now an established ritual to which Hindutva votaries look forward with great excitement and expectation. Even common Indians, not affiliated to the Sangh, are interested...

On October 12, Sudhendra Kulkarni, journalist and aide to former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, was forcibly painted black by Shiv Sena goons for attending the release ceremony of Pakistani politician...

Our food largely decides what kind of a body and mind we are going to get finally. If you eat carbohydrates (carbon + hydrogen) exclusively and shun proteins (nitrogen) you are certainly going to have more...

There is an Urdu couplet that can be loosely translated as: “When the gardener set my nest on fire, the leaves that I relied upon began to fan it.” Now that Muslims have been forced into a corner by communal organisations...

New Delhi, Sept. 28: The staff of Institute of Objective Studies, led by its Chairman Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, mourned the death of Islamic scholar and visionary leader of international Islamic...

I am returning to this column after a long while. But, better late than never. The occasion for writing this piece is the coming Eid al-Azha within the next few hours in our part of the world. This is the time to renew our commitment...

The circular issued by Maharashtra’s BJP government late last month has raised concern in liberal, informed sections all over India regarding its potential misuse by the police and administration to crush...

In Bihar, the BJP-RSS propaganda machinery has got a windfall in the form of religion-wise census. The foot soldiers of the Sangh are warning Hindus that the Hindu population growth has been slower than that of Muslims...

Over the last few weeks, things have not been going well for the country. A rash of anti-Muslim riots in Bihar, higher incidence of communal violence in the country compared to last year as per Home Ministry statistics...

Politicians everywhere are notorious for looking at political advantage through populist actions first and looking at its economic costs later. The PM’s announcement of Rs 1.25 lakh crore Bihar package before...

Of late the honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendrabhai Damoderbhai Modi, seems to be undergoing a profound change of heart. Shri Modi, who never tired of finding fault with Muslims–from their alleged...

We are meeting at a highly auspicious moment, blessed by God – the night of 29th Ramdhan in much of the Subcontinent and the night of 30th in many parts of the Muslim world. These are the most precious moments...

The fast unfolding Vyapam scandal is viewed by a substantial number of political commentators as an albatross around Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s neck that will certainly restrict his maneuverability and reduce him...

After a whole year of anti-Muslim slander campaign and sporadic violence against Muslims (to a lesser degree, against Christians as well), we had been hoping that the excitement of Sangh enthusiasts will wear...

The epidemic called the Islamic State (IS) has quickly spread from Iraq and Syria to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and, according to some reports, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is a dangerous trend that spells...

A democracy is known by its fair play to all its citizens and equality before law. Sadly, it has become a pattern in India that some go scot free and others are heavily punished for committing the same crime. The judiciary, helped...

On its own, yoga is like other systems of exercise that promote physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Despite its origins in a Hindu religio-cultural milieu, its widely acknowledged “founder”, Patanjli, was said to be an agnostic...

ssalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah, everybody. We are meeting in the first ashra (ten days) of the holy month of Ramdhan. This part of the month is rightly called Ashrah rahmat (Ten days of Allah’s Grace) Like any good thing in life...

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that achche din aa gaye (good days are here). The PM, in his own opinion and judgment, was sure that he had delivered on his electoral promise of achche din aaenge...

How many of us can afford a Rs 10 lakh suit? I think no Indian can do it, except the Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Modi, who claims to be the son of a chai wallah?...

In an open letter addressed to the citizens of the country published on 26th May 2015, i.e., on the occasion of completing one year of the Union government, the Prime Minister stated that government was dedicated to the poor, marginalised and those left behind. Sabka sath Sabka vikas, the slogan extensively used in BJP campaign, also conveyed the same idea. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna was also aimed at financial inclusion of the most deprived sections of the society.

Senegal remains one of the most peaceful nations in the African continent. With a massive 95% Muslim population Senegal was a French colony and thousands were people were taken as slaves by the Europeans in the 17th century. The beautiful city of Dakar is a peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean with beautiful French influence on its broader roads and buildings which undoubtedly make life here fascinating with a grand mix up of French and African traditions.

Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahamtullah everybody. I am back to you with this column a little earlier than I usually do. The previous piece, “Know thy World” is being completed with this piece. The earlier piece said we have to practise...

I am returning to this column after a long time. I was kept busy by myriad other pressing engagements. As I had said at the time of the beginning of this column, I intend to reach out to the youth with it, particularly Muslim youth...

Narendra Modi government has come to power on a plank of “development”, a thriving economy and people’s economic wellbeing. In practice, it has ended up doing just the opposite...

The recent remark of the Prime Minister at the conference of chief justices and chief ministers of Indian states that “five star activists” are driving the judiciary was a clear attack on civil society, putting a question mark on the legitimacy...

MOSCOW – In a bid to rescue Russian economy, member of the Russian parliament, Duma, have submitted a draft bill to support Islamic finance, amid increasing sanctions from the West...

How do we judge the justice delivery system in India? Is it good, shoddy, or great? In fact, it is all the three at different times and levels. To be fair to it, its shoddiness does not always come from within it, but mostly from outside: the political...

How shoddy probe derailed Hashimpura case
The judgment says Uttar Pradesh agencies did not even adhere to the basic tenets of investigation

Iftikhar Gilani @dna

New Delhi: The recent acquittal of 16 Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel accused in the 1987 Hashimpura massacre in which 40 Muslims were killed not only highlights an unprecedented delay and denial of justice, but also brings to the fore how a shabby and an indifferent investigation can derail even an open-and-shut case.

One of the most famous lines on the official All India Radio news bulletins during communal disturbances used to be ‘ Sthiti tanavpurn lekin Niyantran me hain ( the situation is tense but under control) and police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the ‘sensitive’ areas. It was well known to us as what is ‘samvdansheel kshetra’ or sensitive areas. Most of these ‘sensitive areas’ were the Muslim localities in the walled cities, almost ghettoized in the aftermath of each ‘riots’ much to the comfort of the fanatics on both the sides who wanted to see such polarization to happen. The ‘sensitive areas’ terminology reflected the mindset of administration, police and the media in the independent India where Muslims are treated as ‘problem-makers’ and ‘obstacles’. During the ‘communal disturbances,’ the police ‘round off’ these ‘problem-makers’ and ‘obstacles’ as routine exercise to bring ‘peace’. Once when I questioned these things during a visit in the early 1990s, to Meerut on a fact finding mission, a very senior Professor in the Meerut University blamed me promote ‘Pakistanis’ in India and warned me from staying away from mini ‘Pakistan’ which was the walled city of Meerut. His argument was that Muslims are criminals and that is why they are largest in the Indian jails. I liked him because this professor did not have hypocrisy and he spoke from his ‘heart’ which is a reality of the middle classes upper caste Hindus in India at least at the moment.

Hundreds of pilgrims seek to see the sunrise on the bank of Ganges in Varanasi and the boatmen go on live commentary of these ghats narrating the mythological details and the most poignant moment come when you see the Manikarnikaghat, Dashashwamegha Ghat and Harishchandraghat reminding you the stories of Raja Harishchandra’s loyalty to his ‘profession’. In an indirect reference, these are the same ‘preaching’ which ask you to do thy duty while ‘result’ is not thy concern. Secondly, Raja Harishchandra is ‘applauded’ because he remained defiant in ‘asking’ for ‘money’ amidst a great human tragedy in which a helpless woman does not have the money to ‘pay’ the charges for funeral which the Doms performs. It means that we should not show any human spirit and value to any one when situation warrants and just be ‘committed’ to our ‘profession’. I think that is the most dangerous aspect of a philosophy which justified discrimination based on caste and gender.

It is time now for the Union government to have a fresh look at its decision to defer a Shariah-compliant mutual fund by the State Bank of India...

It was Mahatma Gandhi’s advocacy of ahimsa (non-violence) in general and his concern for cow protection in particular that is reflected in the Directive Principles of the Constitution making it incumbent on the state to work...

Subramanian Swamy takes the prize for being the most irresponsible political leader hands down. However, his latest provocation is a little too brazen and malignant even from his own standards...

The reverberations on Modi government’s first general budgets are still being heard, more clearly with the passage of time. In hindsight it looks like a feeble attempt to please everybody, but has ended up pleasing nobody...

Nobody sympathises with a rapist. All of us wish the worst to befall him: let him come under the wheels of a big truck. Or, even worse: let him be run over by a huge goods train and die a horrible death. Or, if we can be patient and wait for a...

Now that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal is the Chief Minister of Delhi, the people, including Muslims, are naturally looking forward to action from him to redress their long-standing problems...

As Indians, let us sit back and think for a while about what we got from the high-profile visit of President Barack Obama. Two tangible and one intangible outcomes are visible at this moment, about 72 hours after the visit ended...

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who died at 90 on January 22 after ruling Saudi Arabia since 2005, leaves a rich legacy of development, social and educational reforms and regional stability...

In a burst of anti-Muslim violence in a village of Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, hundreds of homes have been torched and the occupants made to flee for safety in the biting January cold...

Whom would you prefer to be with, if given a chance: Sarpnath, or Nagnath? Will you prefer one over the other, or would you avoid their company in any case? After all, both are cobras, unfriendly creatures...

Credibility is the main resource of a newspaper, magazine, radio station or TV channel. Nobody will ever touch a newspaper or magazine, switch on a radio or TV set if she or he suspects...

India is included among developing nations. Of course, there are areas where we have achieved much better results than expectations but there are areas which, even after 68 years of Independence, remain neglected.

On the sad demise of Saiyyid Hamid, former bureaucrat, eminent educationist and Chancellor of Hamdard University, New Delhi (who passed away yesterday...

It has been a year of disappointments and worries. The first half of 2014 was the last six months of UPA II, in which the corporate media did not see any merit. They spent those first six months ignoring the considerable achievements of the UPA government and building a crescendo of hope and hype about the next government, which they were sure would be a Modi-led one.

The gruesome murder of 142 students in a school of Peshawar by Pakistani militants, reportedly Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, is a reprehensible act of barbarity. Those innocent children were nobody’s enemies. The indiscriminate...

After years of effort the struggle for having a full-fledged Islamic banking system in India met with a moderate measure of success when the State Bank of India announced last week that it would launch a Shariah-complian...

Thanks to India’s strong democratic tradition, even Narendra Modi came to power after a regular vote. This tradition requires that new legislators and governments are allowed a fairly long grace period before their performance...

Recently, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an ASEAN summit that terrorism had no religion, Indian Muslims heaved a sigh of relief. This line, that “terror has no religion”, is a relatively new Sangh refrain, being mouthed...

1857 is a watershed in Indian history when with the fall of Delhi, British sway was fully established all over India. Men of substance and vision like Sir Syed were quick to realise that the rout had come because the Indian side had fallen behind the British in the realm of knowledge of all kinds, especially that of science and technology.

The get together of Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Deve Gowda and Sharad Yadav over lunch at Mulayam Singh Yadav’s residence in New Delhi has set off talks about revival of parts of the old Janata Party in coming days. The...

It is a reminder bell that rings every year which has not changed us to the core. The horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated by the political goons in the dark night of October 31st till a couple of days of November 1984 after the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was declared officially ‘dead’ and which remain unpunished till date is not just a matter of shame but absolute failure of our democracy. A truly democratic system would have envisaged ways and means to tackle such a situation in future but instead people became ‘football’ in the political games of those who have least concern about loss of human lives and sentiments. Punjab was bleeding when India got partitioned in 1947 and Sikh community felt betrayed as many of their issues remained unsettled politically. Sikh nationalism has to be merged into pan Indian Nationalism dictated and dominated by the brahmanical Hindus.

Three events in the recent past are enough to suggest that the process of saffronisation of democratic institutions has begun. Some two months ago, slogans of “Jai Shri Ram” were chanted by BJP workers who were present...

With the convincing win of the BJP in Haryana and Maharashtra earlier this week the Congress Party’s steady decline has despened. There is a clear ominous signal in Maharashtra that forebodes a UP-Bihar...

On the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, on October 2, 2019, nobody will defecate in the open anywhere in India. By then everyone of us will have a toilet to go to. This is the target of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan...

Now it is official. Extremist Buddhists and Hindus are forming a grand alliance against Muslims in South Asia. What damage they can cause Muslims is not really known, beyond a cowardly attack on Muslims...

Love jehad is like a magical trick in the hands of the Sangh: now you see it , now you don’t. This has been going on since 1920s, and it is as old as RSS...

Islam stands for a complete surrender to God’s Will. The shahadah (There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is His Prophet) is a pledge to live by this covenant. The pledge to honour God’s will includes giving up...

After five days of continuous media hype and hoopla about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States we have got a pause to catch our breath and consider what we got from the visit...

Results of the by elections for 36 seats across 10 states have exploded the myth of the BJP riding high on the promise of development and good governance by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. BJP lost 13 of the...

It has been a long open session on Muslims. For weeks together we have heard and read a concentrated demonising propaganda against Muslims. According to it, the Muslims are running a well-funded “love jihad” campaign...

The Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi has said recently on the 13th anniversary of 9/11 that if the United States had heeded Swami Vivekananda’s call for universal brotherhood, America would not have to see that day. We have...

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Please click read more to see the enclosed pdf file.

It is reassuring to know that a five-member Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India, headed by the Chief Justice R M Lodha, has ruled that states have the right to extend second official language to a language other...

Prof. Faizan Mustafa, Vice-Chancellor NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, delivered a lecture on “Judicial Independence and Appointment of Judges” on the occasion of 28th Annual Meeting of the General...

The educational backwardness of Muslims of India is too well known as on most parameters they are doing worse than other communities. If there was any doubt about their backwardness...

Of late we have been reading reports in a section of the press about al-Qaeda’s plans to enter countries of our region where Muslims are persecuted. Three such names have appeared: Myanmar, India and Kashmir. The...

The NDA has crossed the 100-day mark in office and it is rightly in for evaluation. So, let us see what we (or the government) has got to show for it. In short, nothing much...

Recent media reports about Muzaffarnagar are disturbing, to say the least. Stray information about last year’s anti-Muslim violence’s victims making distress sale of their lands have been coming in regularly...

The tiger can’t change its stripes, the leopard its spots. BJP cannot shed its anti-Muslim obsession. This is the lesson learnt at the UP BJP’s executive meet at Mathura last week...

Over the last several days I was so deeply pre-occupied with other concerns that I could not find time to write this column. Now that I am visiting this space, I have to refer to pronouncements by the President of India...

The first casualty that was hardly noticed after the new government took over in Delhi was the deletion of important documents of the home ministry. It was taken rather casually and the voices who expressed their concern...

The recent weeks have been trying for Uttar Pradesh, which has witnessed a staggering 600 “communal incidents”, since the Lok Sabha polls. “Communal incidents” is an official euphemism for low-intensity communal violence...

Within the next few hours Parliament will be debating one of the most burning issues the country faces: recurrent communal violence. Let us hope that the debate does not end up in a brawl like in recent past. Parliamentary...

One often wonders why it takes so much time for the state to notice what is common knowledge among Muslims. An example is the Sachar Committee Report, which finally, formally and officially established the fact...

I am visiting you with this column for the third time in a month, instead of the usual once-a-month periodicity. As I stated earlier, this departure from routine is because of the significance of the holy month of Ramdhan...

The august Parliament’s dignity and honour have recently been brought to a new, record low by its own members. The decline in it has been steady for years. The present Lok Sabha has members with a criminal...

The world is so cruel and callous to the sorrows of the oppressed. Remember only seven decades ago, when Hitler was exterminating Jews all over Europe in their millions, the world was acting as a hapless, clueless spectator...

The violent energies unleashed by communal politics before, during and after the elections have led to social tension that might erupt into great violence any moment. These violent energies have not yet spent themselves...

I am writing this column for the second time in a month, although usually it comes only once in a month. The departure from routine is because of the significance of the holy month of Ramadhan...

We are moving quickly towards the end of the first ashrah (ten days) of the holy month of Ramadan. See, how quickly time passes. It passes more quickly if you are busy praying and reading from the Quran...

The NDA government under Narendra Modi completed a month in office a couple of days ago. For some this was a moment to sit back and reckon what the government had been able to achieve in that small...

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DOCUMENT

Uploaded on June 18, 2014

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair richly deserves all the epithets showered on him. He has often been called, with ample justification, an inveterate liar and a poodle of George Bush Junior...

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The last few weeks have witnessed a steady rise in different kinds of violence, rape and murder of women (Dalit, Muslim, OBC), attack on and murder of Muslim youth and others suspected to be Muslims, sundry violence in...

(The following is the Preface of the 3-volume book with the above title. The Preface is written by Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, Chairman of IOS)

The contribution of Muslims to the freedom struggle is second to none. As a matter of fact, in some respects and at various places, it was brightest and highest but a particular school of historians in India is leaving no stone unturned to minimize their role in the freedom struggle. Concerted attempts are being made to identify the entire community with Muslim League of pre-partition days and to brand them as communalist and separatists. The positive role of Muslims in all major events in all regions of India where they were in majority or in minority is either being ignored or diluted.

We  are  happy  to  have  you  as  the  Prime  Minister  of  India  at  this  opportune  time  and wishing you a long life and innings...

It is a great tribute to the country’s democratic institutions that despite a charged atmosphere the Lok Sabha elections have been conducted peacefully and a peaceful transfer of power has been effected. Most Afro-Asian...

This has been the most polarising election fought around a controversial figure with a highly divisive track record. To turn two faith communities against each other no stone was left unturned. Uttar Pradesh witnessed...

Quite often an occasion arises in public life when even good leaders lose contact with public mood and do things that drive them further away from the people. At the time of partition of India, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was...

In India, anti-Muslim pogroms have become part of normal election process. The best way to ensure a BJP victory is to increase communal animosity with hate speech for a few weeks, followed by an inevitable anti-Muslim...

At this point of time it is quite clear that the great hope and promise that the Arab Spring generated across the Arab world have been frittered away recklessly...

As we have explained earlier, this monthly column is in the nature of an intimate family discussion within the Muslim community, especially with youth...

The Great Vinashpurush, Shri Narendrabhai Modi, has famously said that he has already been chosen by God to take the country to its destination. Now all that he wants from the people of India is an endorsement of...

Whatever the result of this Lok Sabha election, this much is sure that the country has finally reached a watershed where established democratic procedures are openly being rejected in favour of a business administration...

As media reaches the conclusion about the outcome of the general elections the Sangh Parivar and its excited ‘chhutbhaiyyas’ are competing each other in speak loud and threatening the opponents. One important...

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Campaign 2014 was like no other in India’s election history in its scale, intensity, deployment of technology, human resource and staggering amount of money. This is particularly true of BJP, as no other party came...

Finally, the much-awaited BJP manifesto has been released, even though elections have already begun. Manifestos come weeks before the election, not on the day people start going to the poll booth. This is a great discourtesy...

Of late the BJP has suddenly created another, more powerful hate wave. Vasundhraraje Scindia has announced menacingly that there will be a lot of “cutting people to pieces” after the election. Last week she was supposed...

The famous Narendra Modi said in Nanded on March 29 that “netas would be brought to justice” within one year of his taking charge of office of prime minister. By netas he meant tainted netas of non-BJP parties...

By now we had almost started half-believing in BJP’s new-found love for Muslims. The party had almost convinced some Muslims (including the Akbar-e-Azam of Indian journalism) that Gujarat 2002 was a fiction written by a secularist...

The shabby way in which LK Advani has been regularly treated by the BJP and its mentor RSS over the last few years is pitiable. It shows that hate, vandalism and mass murder finally come back to visit upon the perpetrator...

Write Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh, an NGO, invited me to attend the SAARC Literary Festival in Dhaka on 27-28 February, 2014. Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives were participants. The seminar / festival proposed a discussion / review “Beyond Borders, Trust and Reconciliation”.

Universal adult franchise is the cornerstone of democracy. It is not restricted or conditional “democracy” like the one where franchise is limited to only propertied classes as it was sometimes in pre-Independence India, or the sham “shoora democracy” as operative in some Muslim countries, the consultative body (shoora) being only decorative.

Clarification on the distorted reporting of the proceedings of the Supreme Court in the matter of Vishwa Lochan Madan v. Union of India filed as PIL seeking ban on Fatawa and Dar-ul-Qaza...

Mr. Yusuf Hatim Muchhala, an eminent legal mind of the country, has classified the implications of the Supreme Court judgment of February regarding adoption of children by...

At the beginning of the third millennium the international media was flush with articles comparing the global situation at the beginning of the second millennium with that at the third. US News and World Report said in its cover story...

Kerala government’s move to corner the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (Jamaat-e-Islami of India) and force it to the wall is unfortunate and misguided. Jamaat sources have said that keeping in view their electoral support...

The Aap and its chief Arvind Kejriwal continue to be an enigma wrapped in mystery. Nobody can really know what are the implications of his announcing a list of corrupt politicians. On one hand his crusade against official corruption...

A dilemma of sorts is gripping the Indian Muslims these days. Communal riots are engineered to uproot and render them homeless. Sometimes, they are also alienated politically to deny them the fruits of development. These are the issues that affect the Muslims externally and internally and are discussed to find out solution to them. Steps are also taken to address these issues, though with little success. These efforts identify the plight of Muslims today but the other side of the picture is more horrendous as the challenges that confront the community defy a probable solution. Instead, external challenges are only getting more complex. Muslims in India are sitting on the horns of a dilemma and the confusion among them is worse compounded.

Last week the national capital witnessed certain sights that it had never imagined it would ever do. For instance, who could imagine that the Delhi chief minister will leave his office at the secretariat and sit on a dharna in...

Earlier this week Maulana Arshad Madni of Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind said in Lucknow that the UP government was not responsible for the anti-Muslim riots last September. He said the local administration was responsible...

Aam Admi Party leaders, in an interaction with Muslim representatives at Patna on January 14, have asserted that their party is above the considerations of religion and caste. They fought elections and did their politics...

Aap’s coming into power in Delhi has unnerved and frustrated the BJP and Sangh’s other outfits. They are so frustrated that they have started resorting to goonda tactics...

North India is in the grip of a cold wave. Chilly winds are blowing across the vast plains of the region. At the height of the season’s bitter cold the Akhilesh Yadav government has ruthlessly dismantled refugee camps...

Recently we organised a three-day international conference on Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, an all-time great physician, surgeon and scientist of Andalusia (Arab Spain) who died in 1013, exactly a thousand years ago...

Samajwadji Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav has been contradicted by his own government. A report of the UP administration has confirmed the death of 34 children in the refugee camps of Muzaffarnagar riots victims...

The release of Lalu Prasad Yadav from prison on bail has introduced a powerful element in Bihar politics as well as national politics...

India’s withdrawal of some of the diplomatic previleges of the US embassy in India is only fair and reciprocal. So far India has been treating US officials and diplomats with honour and dignity in face of the worst provocations...

The Delhi Assembly elections results have brought total rout to Congress Party and near-victory to BJP. However, the heavy backing to Aam Aadmi Party has surprised us all, including psephologists, “scientists” of election...

We express deep sorrow and solidarity with the people of South Africa over the death of Nelson Mandela.

Like India, South Africa is emerging as a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country that Mr. Mandela proudly called a “rainbow nation”.

he BJP crossed all limits of public decency when it honoured its MLAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana at Narendra Modi’s rally in Agra on November 21. These two men have been charged with using hate speech against...

A consensus emerged on the efficacy and purposefulness of the proposed Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and...

The disclosure about intrusive surveillance of a young woman by Gujarat ATS on the orders of Narendra Modi, through his trusted deputy Amit Shah, is alarming...

There is a theory in criminology that says out of several suspects in a murder the most likely criminal is the person who benefits from the murder. From this perspective, the natural question that arises from the Patna blasts is, “who...

Muslims and Christians are not the only enemies that the Sangh and its offshoots like BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal want to destroy. The Constitution of India and the History of India are two equally valid targets for destruction...

The single specialisation of RSS since 1920s has been sowing hatred and hostility in the Hindu mind against religious minorities, particularly Muslims and, to a lesser degree, Christians...

It seems BJP cannot survive even a day without mass violence and communal riot. All the time it is itching for such a conflict...

We are told Narendrabhai Modi, who is a 4-in-One product, would be best suited for India’s prime ministership.

The first quality that he has is that he is a liar. He, and people like him, think that lying...

The three-day national executive meet of the R.S.S. at Kochi that concluded on Sunday last assumes significance in the context of Narendra Modi’s utterances at the public rallies in different parts of the country...

As the general elections draw close one comes across a substantial degree of confusion in some sections of Muslim society. Strange logic is forwarded for voting BJP. We need some clarity on that. The logic goes...

As the elections in five states draw close, the Internet has come alive with a colorful debate on the virtues and vices of Congress and BJP vis-à-vis each other...

The worst threat to our wellbeing is not from the straight harm anti-Muslim groups are inflicting on us in the form of communal riots, but the confusion they are sowing among us. Confusion can be more dangerous...

Over the last few years Narendrabhai Modi has been thumping his chest about his economic growth model, creating the impression that Gujarat is the number-one state in terms of GDP per capita and level of...

All over the country Muslim youth have been languishing in jails for years without rhyme or reason. Most of them have been falsely implicated in terror cases...

Of late Narendra Modi has intensified his Muslim identity politics by making hundreds of burqa-clad Muslim women and kurta-pyjama-topi-clad Muslim men to attend his rallies...

The anti-Muslim riots in Muzaffarnagar and adjoining areas are already being compared to Gujarat 2002. As many as 50,000 people have been officially reckoned to have become internal refugees...

Please click read more to see the enclosed pdf file.

Please click read more to see the enclosed pdf file.

When small things start casting long shadows, it is time for the sun to set. Small time goondas in UP have started casting giant shadows and announcing the beginning of the end of Samajwadi rule in the next assembly...

In a way, the disclosures made in policeman DG Vanzara’s letter of resignation are no disclosures really, as all along Muslims of Gujarat and India knew that the most heinous breaches of human rights in that...

One of the favourite dialogues of LK Advani, on whose hand lies the blood of thousands of Muslims, is that December 6, 1992 was the “saddest day” of his life. He does not say why, and stops short of uttering any word of regret...

Statistics is of immense help in quantifying economic gains, but sometimes relying upon statistics alone can be misleading. One example is the latest National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data that presen...

Over the last few decades, it seems, severed heads of cows and its different body parts scattered in temples have gradually lost their riot value. In the last couple of elections in Delhi, this old tactic failed to mobilise Hindu...

Remember the Mahatmaji’s three moral monkeys, who were taught “not to see evil, not to hear evil, not to speak evil”. That, in fact, is a high standard of personal morality...

Every few days we learn about some anti-Muslim riot staged somewhere in India. The most unfortunate part is that these riots generally occur in non-BJP states, run by “secular” parties whose credentials are not generally...

Narendrabhai P. Modi has a strange sense of humour that involves cutting cruel jokes at the cost of victims of crimes against humanity...

In one of her famous pieces of writing Arundhati Roy has this interesting headline: “Democracy–Where is She When She is not At Home?” She then proceeds to answer the question in her own characteristic way...

Uncertainties abound in the wake of creation of states (provincial units). The creation of new nation states is even more seriously fraught with risks of violence and awakening of old historical animosities...

The court verdict on July 25 and sentencing of Shahzad Ahmad on July 30 in the infamous Batla House encounter case has too many gaping holes in it. As some of the crucial issues involved were overlooked by the judge...

Over the years Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen has emerged as India’s conscience keeper. Earlier this week he declared that as an Indian he would not want Narendra Modi as prime minister of the country. The...

Earlier this month the Union cabinet approved the National Food Security Ordinance. It was a bold and timely decision as proper legislation is time-consuming and hunger cannot wait...

Language, the choice of words, can be a great give away. It may bring out the innermost thoughts and prejudices without even the speaker’s intention. That is exactly what happened when Gujarat CM Narendra Modi tried to express...

On July 7 a series of low-intensity bomb explosions in the Mahabodhi Budhist temple at Bodh Gaya in Bihar killed two persons and injured several others...

Military rule is the least desirable government anywhere in the world. There is no reason why it should be different in Egypt. With the death of at least 51 Morsi supporters on July 8 in firing by security forces military rule has...

Within the next few hours the Subcontinent will enter the holy month of Ramadan. A sizeable part of the world has already entered it...

As I said in my last article the BJP has started what we can term a “full-blown love offensive” to win Muslim hearts. Recently 30 Muslims with a public profile attended a conclave organized by Citizens for Accountable Governance...

The BJP has issued a Vision Document regarding its policy on Indian Muslims. On the face of it the document looks like a radical reversal of the Sangh’s hostile policy of decades overnight. It is too good to believe. And it is...

Since June 16, the Uttrakhand cloudburst, deluge and landslides have occupied the national attention almost without a break. To emphasise its seriousness and magnitude (but not its physical nature), the...

Of late we have seen media leaders concerned over the state’s alleged bid to curb media freedom. Overt and covert attempts by the state to control media amounts to the negation of right to free speech and expression...

JDU is trying to project its split with BJP as a reassertion of its secular credentials. It is difficult to understand how a party that has cohabited with BJP for so many years can become secular overnight...

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam says the JDU-NDA split has the potential to steer the country away from the fascist path being prepared for it, if Nitish remains true to his words...

Please click read more to see the enclosed pdf file.

An editorial in The Times of India of June 13 carried a beautiful illustration. The face was shaven and bald on one side of the nose, on the other side it was bearded and with a receding hair line. Clearly, it was a composite...

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam asks countrymen and women to give a moment’s thought to where the country is headed for as corporate media tomtoms Modi as next Prime Minister...

Please read the enclosed letter.

Today widespread planned violence against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh has become a norm. As many as 35 anti-Muslim riots, mostly in eastern UP, have been recorded...

Lawyers provide an important service alongside judges. The former try to bring some clarity to the issues through argument, exhibit of relevant items and presenting witnesses in an organised manner which makes...

In this beleaguered country not a day passes without the news of gruesome murder of innocent people in the name of counter-terrorism, or the attack on security personnel by real terrorists resulting in death and destruction...

Now that the Congress-led UPA has completed nine years of uninterrupted rule at the Centre, it is the moment of introspection and stock-taking by both the government and the people...

Mohammad Khalid Mujahid, an accused in a blast case of 2007, died mysteriously on May 18 while being taken to Lucknow jail from Faizabad court. The man had no history of heart disease or any symptom related...

New Delhi, May 18: Islamic thought has the proven potential to unite and heal a fractious world creaking under pressures of racial and ethnic strife and ravaged by commercial...

Over the last few weeks South Asia has been in a flux. We have been witness to public anger in India over the assault on Sarbjeet Singh, an Indian prisoner in a Pakistani jail, with death sentence for having caused blasts in Pakistan...

True to an established pattern, the false story of Delhi Police (Special Cell) about a massive terrorist plan to trigger powerful blasts in Delhi was exposed on April 28 when the NIA (National Investigation Agency) found...

In my foreign travels as well as in my interactions with foreign dignitaries visiting IOS we have often discussed the Muslim situation all over the world. We have often agreed that Muslims have been living in difficult times...

Please read the enclosed letter.

To begin with, let us first see what we mean by secularism. The traditional definition, well-known to all of us, stipulates that under secularism, the state will have no official religion. Within this larger...

For reasons best known to them only, a sizeable section of the national media has worked itself into a frenzy discussing Narendra Modi-as-PM. Panting and frothing at the mouth with self-induced excitement, some...

Old habits of thought are difficult to shed. Narendrabhai Modi’s by now well-known habit of subverting law and dynamiting constitutional values was once again on display recently when under his leadership the Gujarat...

Recently we read the following piece of wisdom from Mr Narendra Modi in a newspaper: “’Indian Talent’ plus ‘Information Technology’ is equal to ‘India Tomorrow’.” What a pearl of wisdom! This amar vani (deathless speech) was...

Eminent development economist Dr Abusaleh Shariff, principal author of the Sachar Report and chief scholar US-India Policy Institute (Washington), made a scintillating...

Youth is the prime human resource on which any country thrives. It is mostly the youth who earn the money that goes to support pensioners. It is they who provide the manpower that drives an economy and runs the...

A happy trend that has held steady for years, including 2012, is the steady growth of Islamic banking and finance. By 2011, it had financial assets around the world worth $ 1.3 brillion, which was a 150 percent increase over five years...

One of the themes that dominated news and analysis worldwide for the whole of 2012 was the Arab Spring – uprisings, mostly successful, in the Arabic-speaking world against the corrupt and oppressive rule of despots across...

The election results in Gujarat are out now and Narendra Damodar Bhai Modi has comfortably returned to power in the state for the third consecutive times though he could not increase the number of seats held by him last...

People of dubious character are said to hide their innate evil behind tall claims of patriotism. Of late, we have seen quite a few of them brandishing their alleged patriotism by arguing vehemently and vociferously for an end...

The mammoth rally at India Gate on Sunday, December 23, was a dramatic expression of mass anger at the utter failure of the state of Delhi and the government at the Centre to protect people’s life, honour, limb and liberty. The latest...

In his analysis of the predicament of the contemporary non-religious man, Albert Einstein says: “The crux of the crisis relates to the relationship between the individual and the community. The attitude of the individual toward the group makes him blow up his individual motivations while his communal motivations — which are weaker — gradually deteriorate. People, who are prisoners of their selfishness, feel that they are living in anxiety and seclusion and that they are deprived of enjoying the social life. In fact man cannot find a meaning to his short life if he did not give from himself to the society.” When Victor Frankl built the third school for psychological treatment in Vienna, following the two previous schools set up by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, he established the school on his own theory about the primary motivation behind the human conduct. Frankl’s motivation is different from that of Freud (desire for pleasure) and of Adler (desire for power). The motivation for Frankl is to find a meaning of life. He does not believe that “pleasure” can be the motivation for the human behavior but a result of it. He does not also believe that “power” is the ultimate end for the human behavior but a means to it. He believes that the society will turn into a sick case when pleasure and power become the dominant forces.

The slow build-up to coming stae assembly elections and, beyond that, parliamentary elections, has begun with BJP’s chameleon-like fast change of colours...

All the orchestrated brouhaha over loudly proclaimed Development Saga of Gujarat often fails to have the desired effect on Muslims who, over the last one decade of Narendra Modi’s rule, have undergone relentless persecution and discrimination. Despite tall claims of the government regarding employment, the work participation of Muslims has been lagging.

Work participation is a common measure of employment. In Gujarat, it is 10 percent lower for Muslims at 61 percent compared to Hindus, who have 71 percent. Gujarat has a higher unemployment rate for Muslims compared to even West Bengal. Muslims, being traditionally artisans and skilled workers, have a relative advantage in tool handling and mechanical work. This advantage has led to their employment in substantial numbers as industrial labour and in organised industry.

Gujarat is developed substantially in terms of Net State Domestic Product (NSDP), yet remains in the same position compared to five states leading it. It only means that Gujarat had to run to stand where it has been because the five states ahead of it have been running faster.

Over the last ten years, Gujarat’s Narendra Modi government has been thumping its chest, making loud claims about the state’s spectacular development under him, even hinting that it is the most developed state in India.

December 6 is a particularly dreaded day in the life of many sensible Indians, a day of painful memories of mindless anti-Muslim violence and a point in time marked by great emotional division between members of the two...

The shoddy 2G affair has harmed the country beyond ordinary calculation. It has hurt public faith in the state and investor confidence in the economy. It has created extraordinary sense of uncertainty and frustration in the country. The...

In the fresh round of violence and counter violence in Gaza, the first blood was drawn by Israel, not Hamas. However, as usual, the rationale for savage bombing of Gaza by Israel being put forward is that this is in “self defence” against...

President Barack Obama’s second term is seen differently from different quarters. In India’s Muslim circles, there have been some who had great expectations from him – for wrong reasons...

On Sunday, 7/11/2012, Onislam.net held in the Sixth of October City an in-depth press interview with Professor Abdul-Hamid Abu Sulayman, Director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, on the following topic: "Limits to the relationship between the freedom of faith and freedom of expression from an Islamic perspective", on behalf of the Onislam.net gate, for both its versions, Arabic and English.

For years America has been in denial on global warming. Earlier this month, a Republican luminary said something to the effect that global warming was some kind of a delusion, without any basis in reality. He was only one of several...

At this point in time one has only sympathy for poor BJP. Not that it has done anything to earn it: it gets our sympathy by default. For years it has profitably sold terrorism for electoral gains and for keeping itself ahead...

The Reserve Bank Governor Mr D. Subba Rao’s recent announcement constitutes a significant advance in the field of Islamic banking and finance in India, which has been a cherished goal for all of us, and for the attainment...

Narendra Modi loves to attack two people—Sonia Gandhi and General Pervez Musharraf, his favourite term for the general being “Mian Musharraf”...

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam on a recent Supreme Court judgment cautioning police against tagging terror label on an entire community...

Former Chief Justice of India, Justice A M Ahmadi, said here today that the provision of 50/50 in the Bodoland accord of 2003 was unconstitutional...

Recently, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav talked to one of the English dailies published from the national capital. It was generally about party issues and a little about governance. Akhilesh talked at length about these things...

By now it is an established pattern of US-EU-Israeli war against Islam, ill-concealed as “war on terror.” Before every physical attack on a Muslim country, during invasion, and after the war, they keep up a constant...

As I mentioned in the first part of this series, Assam (as well as the entire northeastern region) is a boiling cauldron of ethnic suspicions and mutual hatred between over 400 tribal groups...

The amount of money spent on a single day of Parliament is so huge that it boggles the mind of an average Indian. The BJP has been holding Parliament to ransom for a better part of the session, flushing the country’s huge...

The conviction of Babu Bajrangi, who openly boasted about the Naroda Patiya murders on TV and that of Dr Maya Kodnani, a gynaecolost and minister of state in Modi government for sometime, is the highlight of the special court’s...

After a whole month of intermittent killings, curfew and purposeful, determined ethnic cleansing, the violence in Assam is yet to cease. On August 25, when I was still in Assam, meeting victims, relief workers and government...

Like always, our Independence Day comes loaded with memory and desire–the collective memory of decades of struggle since 1840s and 1850s till the D-Day, August 15, 1947, and the personal memory of life in an independent...

So far Delhi has been described by different epithets at different times: “rape capital of India,” “diabetese capital of the world” etc. Now the way children are disappearing from the city, it can also be called “child abduction...

To many Muslims in Uttar Pradesh the return of Samajwadi Party to power earlier this year was like return of hope in a dismal situation. Within the span of a few months that hope has turned out to be an illusion. After a...

As I am writing this piece, I get the news through the morning papers that violence has erupted once again in Assam after a lull of a few days. Four more people have been killed, still more have been driven out of their homes...

Over the last several weeks we are once again subjected to a painful spectacle that is staged regularly, with almost predictable certainty every few months in different parts of the country. I am referring to mass violence...

“Encounter killing is plain murder”, says Justice AM Ahmadi, former Chief Justice of India. If anybody in India is capable of deciding on the legal and constitutional validity of police encounters, Justice Ahmadi is certainly one of them...

Over the last few weeks dramatic events have occurred in Egypt with rapid succession that give them the same breathless, highly excited quality in some measure evident at Tehrir Square at the height of the anti-Mubarak regime...

We are passing through interesting times. Interesting and intriguing. The best show going on is the newly found love for secularism in the NDA, announced from the rooftops by the illustrious Mr Nitish Kumar himself...

We are passing through interesting times. Interesting and intriguing. The best show going on is the newly found love for secularism in the NDA, announced from the rooftops by the illustrious Mr Nitish Kumar himself...

The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari released a three-volume book from the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) titled “The Role of Indian Muslim’s in...

UPA-II's anniversary celebrations seem to have come at an inopportune time. Caught up in a media blizzard, seemingly orchestrated to facilitate a transition in 2014, the Congress Party led UPA has few options...

US officials, from President Obama and Secretary Mrs Clinton down to ambassadors and junior diplomats, never tire of proclaiming that the United States is not at war with Islam, but “Islamic” extremism...

Violent politics: Terrorism and Guerilla War is a significant book to read for people who want to understand Naxalism and have some idea of how to address the issue. Military action is certainly not an option for coping with militancy...

The Congress-led UPA-II government at the Centre is completing three years in office next month. That is the time for review of its performance by its leadership as well as for an appraisal by the people at large...

The other day one of our prominent English dailies carried a news item that said UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had announced his government would release from jail Muslim youth falsely implicated in terror cases...

After the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, in 2008 India-Pakistan relations had frozen. The ice began to thaw with Pakistan conferring the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status on India, which means substantial increase in...

A strange situation is developing in the country following the army chief’s uncalled for remarks and unprecedented moves that one of India’s leading publications has rightly called “Gen. Singh’s war on India...

Over the last couple of weeks the country seems to have gradually slipped into a deeper and deeper political inertia. This is far more evident in the corridors of power in New Delhi than anywhere else...

It is not always easy to make sense of the Budget. This is particularly so as every interest group looks at it in the narrow perspective of its own gains and losses. A vast section of our people, including farmers and agricultural...

The country is remembering the shame and sorrow of Gujarat 2002 when hundreds of Muslims were massacred, maimed and raped in a state-sponsored orgy of violence. A colossal damage to property and ethnic cleansing...

Justice, more often than not, is a process, a work in progress, rather than a one-time, final and fixed category. To people like me, brought up in the Islamic tradition, the final and absolute, irrevocable justice will be delivered on the...

The right to education is part of the internationally recognised human rights. Universal declaration of Human Rights in 1948 first recognised this as a basic human right. As a corollary, this right has been incorporated in various international conventions and plans. A vast majority of countries has signed up to, and ratified, international conventions concerning this right, most importantly the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, despite ratification and undisputed desirability of this right, very few countries have incorporated it in their domestic legal framework or created administrative frameworks to ensure realisation of this right.

Dictators are pigheaded megalomaniacs who think with their muscles rather than with their minds. For these power-drunk guys people don’t matter. What matters is their own power...

The holy Quran asks Muslims to hold on to “God’s rope”, together. Islam’s call to Muslims is to stay united and not sow the seeds of division and mutual conflict. Over the centuries, we have violated these injunctions repeatedly...

The world belongs to youth, for it is they who are going to inherit it soon from the present generation. If the present crop of government, bureaucracy, corporate, academia and other fields have experience on their side, youth have energy and time as their precious assets.

Permanent availability of youth in adequate members in a society depends on its birth rate. Today counties like Russia, France and Japan are in the midst of a serious lack of young persons to run their economy and sustain the payment of old age pensions. It takes the earning of several young persons to sustain one ld pensioner’s expenses and upkeep.

Malaysia’s former deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim raises issues of justice, fair play, pluralism, rule of law and good governance as other eminent intellectuals analyse and grapple...

A second marriage, it is wisely said, is the victory of hope over experience. The thaw in India-Pakistan’s icy relations is like a second marriage, which is always contracted in the hope that it would be a better union than the...

Imagine for a while, that Hitler won World War II, the Vichy regime in France remained unchallenged by the Free French of de Gaulle, that Chekoslovakia remained German territory, that V2 rockets flattened London, that there was...

Karnataka State Chapter
Doddagubbi Post, via Bagalur, Bengaluru 562149

PRESS STATEMENT

Christian Council denounces Subramaniam Swamy’s effort to target minorities and to sabotage Communal Violence Prevention Bill

BENGALURU, NOVEMBER 1, 2011 The All India Christian Council [aicc], an apex Human Rights and Freedom of Faith forum, has taken strong exception to Janata Party president Advocate Subramaniam Swamy’s slander campaign against the Christian and Muslim communities in general, and against the aicc in particular, in his so called complaint to the police against the Communal Violence Prevention Bill drafted by the National Advisory Council.

The fall of old regimes in the West Asia and North Africa region, like the proverbial nine pins cannot be understood without putting everything in the colonial context...

Are the French returning to stake their claim to their former North African Empire? And, are the wily British at their old game once again? The way they have behaved in Libya is a grim reminder of their visciousness and...

In the twilight hours before Dussehra, one of our national festivals celebrated as an occasion for togetherness and goodwill as well as victory of good over evil, I shudder to think of Mr L K Advani’s proposed...

The Delhi-headquartered Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) has formed a panel of five eminent jurists to study the provisions of different Lokpal bills...

Former deputy prime minister, Union home minister and senior BJP leader L. K. Advani is a true RSS man: he never cared a hoot for law, or rule of law, and has consistently been a law-breaker...

Section 20 of the Bill sets the rules to set up and constitute a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation so as to exercise the powers and perform the functions assigned to it under...

The unearthing of over 2,156 unidentified bodies from mass graves in Jammu and Kashmir’s four districts is a confirmation of the worst fears regarding atrocities by security forces and local police...

Revolutions begin with great promise as they articulate people’s frustrations and fears and seek to address them, using people’s power. However, most of them end up in chaos, mindless violence, blood on the streets, reign...

When Anna Hazare stood up against official corruption, I was there, along with other Indians, including Muslims, supporting him and his cause...

As a person who grew up in a Muslim environment sustained by the noble Islamic tradition, I have always seen people praying: “God, give us useful knowledge.” This, in fact, is a standard prayer said, often in Arabic, from...

A thought-provoking presentation on “Towards Muslim Educational Excellence: Epistemological and Quality Dimensions” was made here by Prof. Omar Hasan Kasule...

The terror attack in Norway has blasted quite a few myths about terrorism and its perpetrators. It has also distinguished the attitude of media and world leaders to acts of terror perpetrated by different groups...

Rich in art and craft, skilled artisans, booming indigenous household industry but sadly gravitating into the pothole. Concerned by the apathy shown by the society towards the craft industries...

Justice Anand Narain Mulla famously called the UP police “goondas in uniform.” That the honourable judge’s remarks are not too much off the mark even today is borne out by facts...

In this age of falling heroes and failing institutions when one comes across ministers behind the bars (after being properly stripped of their portfolios, of course), senior bureaucrats and police officers serve Jail terms for...

In recent weeks a feeling of exclusion of Indian Muslims from the consideration of power elites has been haunting me. Our own role in most things has been that of self-abdication and self-disempowerment...

In a press release the AIMC General Secretary Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam cautioned against use of intemperate language by the Lokpal movement about senior functionaries...

Over the last several days of the Baba Ramdev drama, one got the impression that the 5-star yogi is a puppet whose strings are deftly pulled by the ventriloquist, the RSS. The baba is not an agent of his own free will, and his show...

The BJP is extremely upset about the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation) Bill. Why it is so perturbed is not very difficult to know. In fact, it is rather simple: the Bill, if enacted into law, is likely to take away...

Like the thin line between religion and superstition, an extremely fine line divides constructive national movements from fascist brinkmanship and dangerous demagogy. Baba Ramdev’s dishonest...

A three-day international conference on “Interest-Free Institutional Mechanism (Banking, Finance and Insurance)” for promoting investment organised by the...

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has published its results for 2010. A Chennai-based law graduate S Divyadharshini has topped the prestigious Civil Services Examination. A total of 920 candidates, including...

Over the last few days we have witnessed something of a storm in a tea cup over the assumed meaning of Assam and Kerala assembly election results. To some, who like...

On the occasion of the release of the book Artisans in India by the honourable Chief Minister of Delhi Madam Sheila Dikshit, the following memorandum...

Osama bin Laden’s assassination is being touted as the ultimate in the “anti-terror” campaign of the United States. However, there is more to it than meets the eye...

A two-day international conference on “Prospects for Islamic Venture Capital Funds in India” that concluded here today was of the opinion that in the fast-growing...

The way the farmers’ unrest has spread quickly from Greater Noida near Delhi to Aligarh, Mathura and Agra districts is alarming. For all this, no one but Uttar Pradesh government of the day is responsible...

We can understand the public rejoicing over Osama bin Laden across Europe and America. After all, many of the devastating terror attacks in those areas were traced backed...

I am amazed to see a quiet celebration of the Egyptian “revolution” still going on in a section of our society. This is uncalled for, as nothing substantial has changed in Egypt so...

Gujarat fares relatively better on direct income measures, but the apparent prosperity masks “higher poverty levels and much lower ranking in human...

A good grasp of language is supposed to be a core asset in the legal profession. The ability to see, discern and articulate nuances makes fine judges and lawyers who serve the purposes of justice with finesse, accuracy and laudable...

The oft-repeated cliché “Founding Fathers of the Constitution” should be changed to “Founding Fathers and Mothers of the Constitution” in the interest of...

The first few days of the new year have brought quite a few coincidences. Late last week, the venerable Time of India carried a news story saying there would be stricter security checks on airports from this year...

If one looks loosely at the pattern of events of last few years, up to the last few days of 2010, one could make a fairly reliable guess about the events and trends ahead of us. So, less us guestimate...

In the final hours of the year, when the fog deepens and the cold begins biting hard, the mood gets grim and it is easier for dark thoughts to assail the mind. In these last hours of 2010, it’s easy to get despondent about our situation...

At its 14th annual GA at Manjeri (Mallapuram, Kerala), it passes resolution asking for a Judicial Commission, 10 percent quota across the board, non-military solution to Kashmir...

Supposing one of the original litigants of the Babri Masjid dispute decides not to go to the Supreme Court in appeal, can a citizen or group of citizens...

In politics, it is not important to work, but to be seen working. Over the last five years Nitish Kumar had not only been working for the “development” of Bihar, but had been seen working all these years. He has been richly rewarded for...

I dread the sight of the morning newspaper. It makes one’s cup of tea taste like rat poison. Every morning, morning after morning, we are treated to some cheeky chicanery of our political class that disgusts and nauseates...

Of late we have been witness to a lot of protest over and explanation of the untenable, indefensible and patently rude observations of former RSS chief K Sudarshan...

We witnessed a strange euphoria in certain sections of our society over President Barack Obama’s three-day visit to this country. It was strange because the expectations underlying it were far from realistic...

For Muslims, going to the Supreme Court in appeal against the Ayodhya verdict is the only sensible option, a number of legal luminaries, politicians and intellectuals...

An in-depth discussion on the far-reaching implications of the Babri Masjid title suit was organised at the Institute of Objective Studies last evening under its permanent...

In Ayodhya, myth and history, fact and fiction, desire and memory mingle with each other in a strange, fascinating mix. That cocktail could be heady and knock out reason...

Let me begin with a confession: the Allahabad High Court decision on Babri Masjid title suit has brought a silent, deep despair into Muslim hearts. Et too, Brute?...

It has been sixty three years since our motherland broke the shackles and unfettered her from colonial presence. These sixty three years have not been easy. Every day, every year has been a story of relentless hard work and perseverance of each and every Indian trying to carve out a niche for their motherland in the international platform.

We had been, as a nation, on cloud nine for the last several years, rejoicing over our status as an emerging regional power. That is what our leaders and our media had been dinning...

In this second part of his IOS Silver Jubilee article Founder-Chairman Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam describes one of the difficult phases of Indian history, particularly from the Muslim perspective, and how the Institute responded to the challenges.

Early years:(L-R) Justice Rajinder Sachar, Prof. Tahir Mahmood and Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam at an IOS seminar in 1990

Founder-Chairman of Institute of Objective Studies, Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam, reminisces about the journey of IOS through 25 eventful years of India’s history.

Of late we have been getting worrisome news of anti-Muslim propaganda, sinister mobilisation and hostile build-up in parts of Uttar Pradesh. Groups that have benefitted from anti-Muslim hysteria in the past are behind this...

Only a few days ago I wrote an analysis on the new stratagems of RSS and allied organisations to distract public attention from the recent crimes of their men and women. The stratagems...

New Delhi: Abusaleh Shariff, member-secretary of the Rajinder Sachar Committee on the status of Muslims, is angry and upset. He thinks the United Progressive Alliance government has not done enough to push the cause of Muslims' welfare.

A sizeable number of RSS men have been caught literally with their khaki pants down, right in the middle of the act, so to say. This is an extraordinary moment for a shadowy organisation...

The chief minister of Delhi, Mrs Sheila Dixit, advised Muslims to focus on acquiring contemporary knowledge through modern education. She said these...

It is not an exciting experience to look at Jaswant Singh, formerly and presently of the BJP, in person. It is even less interesting to see him on TV screen. His vacant eyes, listless face and a faint, almost incoherent, voice...

The announcement came at the end of long deliberations spread over two days, the first being on June 19 at the Constitution Club and the second at the Institute of Objective Studies...

We are witnessing yet another media wave, a phenomenon with which by now we are pretty familiar. This time round, quite a few of our star performers of print and electronic media have worked themselves into a self-righteous froth, baying for the blood of the carefully selected sacrifical goats to be offered on the altar of mobocracy.

Former Governor of Bihar, West Bengal and Haryana, Dr A R Kidwai received the prestigious IOS Lifetime Achievement Award at a function at Constitution Club...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is known to be a straight person, shorn of the charisma of the Nehrus. That has been his strength also, as he does not have to bother too much about his image...

Official corruption is no longer news in India. Already the country stands at the 84th position in corruption rating by Transparency International’s 2009 rating of 180 countries...

For years there were no takers of the idea of Hindutva terrorism in official India. The all-knowing intelligence agencies have been insisting that “Islamic terrorists” were behind every act of terror in the country, including attacks on mosques...

The Muzaffarnagar police are a befuddled lot these days over a case of “honour killing” that was not. On May 9, the family of 23-year old Ajit Saini cremated his dead body, who was killed by his girl friend Anshu’s brother for eloping with her...

The moment which the country had been awaiting for months is finally upon M.S. Justice has been done in the 26/11 case with the verdict against Ajmal Kasab and his fellow Pakistani...

Pakistan has lauded the brief opening at Thimpu with the rider that a trust deficit in Indo-Pak ties still remained. Trust will not come the way the two sides have been working...

If a Greek gives you a gift horse, be careful. This is an approximation of an old adage that cautions against “free” offerings by strangers who have no apparent reason to do that. Now, keep that in mind and look at the abundant data...

There is a lot of concern expressed all over India about Maoist violence. The media has done its bit to reflect that widespread concern and anger. That is quite natural and understandable...

The Supreme Court’s recent judgment legitimising live-in relationship is yet another example of judicial intervention in issues of traditional morality regarding human sexual conduct...

If one looks at our media (especially Hindi and English) one gets the impression that there are two different classes of sacrilege – one good, that needs to be defended as freedom of speech and artistic expression and the...

Dr Mohammad Manzoor AlamTill as late as 1995 the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its South Asia Human Development Report used to publish literacy figures among Indian Muslims that were, to say it mildly intriguing.

One of India’s leading spiritual gurus, Bhagwan Rajneesh, was a highly articulate person (a quality that many other gurus share with him). He said in an interview that the business of spiritual guidance was the most lucrative. “Tell...

Hope never dies in human heart. Common Indian Muslims still remember BJP’s Ayodhya campaign that killed thousands of them, rendered so many of them homeless, hurt and humiliated. Muslims have always hoped that perpetrators...

The hope for Muslim societies lies with the future generations, Islamic scholar Dr Abdul Hameed Ahmad Abu Sulayman said here today. He was...

The Women’s Reservation Bill raises issues that defy simplistic formulations as they stand at the croso-section of issues of representation, gender, class, economic empowerment...

The British used to call the Indian Civil Service “the steel frame of India” for good reason. It bound India together strongly in an administrative apparatus that was unbreakable. That cannot be said of the civil service of today any longer...

Our republic has covered a long way in its 60-year march of progress. Today, it is a strong, vibrant adolescent of 60 looking forward to a remarkable adulthood in the new decade, writes Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam...

Recently, the chief of Israel’s security agency Mossad was in New Delhi. It was a low-key visit, with few mentions in the media. A section of the press said the visit was kept low key because of Indian Muslim apprehensions about...

India is being gradually enclosed in an ever-tightening circle of US-British-Israeli interests, not as an independent player, but as a proxy of these interests. This is a matter of serious concern for the country’s integrity, the cohesion...

“Islam has a long literary tradition that includes different genres of fiction”, Prof. Shafique Ahmad Nadvi, former head of Arabic department of Jamia Millia Islamia...

The release of Prof. Iqbal A. Ansari’s Readings on Minorities (Vol. IV) turns out to be an occasion for renewal of commitment by his colleagues to the values he cherished...

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen makes an immensely sensible case for development, enabling large swaths of underdeveloped population to benefit from the expanding markets. His recipe consists of two major...

At the end of the year, in this grand season of celebrations, let us celebrate for a while something that is generally taken for granted: relative absence of anti-minorities violence. But, why celebrate something which should be a norm...

Till November 25 this year, Dubai was the Middle East’s most glitzy and glittering city, attracting the world’s high-profile investors, film and sports stars, holidayers and shoppers...

There is a certain air of pleasant, youthful bouyance and optimism in Rahul Gandhi that my generation first saw is his father Rajiv. He was the first leader to talk about the 21st century (way back in the mid-80s) and prepare...

In this concluding article of his three-part series on Liberhan Commission Report Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam discusses the future course of possible action on the Babri Masjid issue.

Think for a while what is possible in 17 years. A country can rise from the ashes, like Japan and Germany did after the World War-II. Or, backward countries can surge ahead to emerge as economic powerhouses, like the South east Asian countries did between the late 60s and mid-80s, or like China did in mid-80s and continues to do now. On an individual level, a child that has joined class 1 would be an engineer and employed, ready for marriage in those 17 long years.

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam on the professed innocence of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee in the crime of Babri Masjid demolition

Renowned expert on education Prof. Mohammad Akhtar Siddiqui delivered a thought-provoking lecture here today at IOS auditorium on Empowerment...

The Sangh has got a new, flashy weapon in its armoury: they call it, rather poetically, “love jehad”. They coined this intriguing term to justify anti-Muslim riots all over Karnataka. Without any apparent rhyme or reason the...

The goonda raj of Raj Thackeray entered Maharashtra Legislative Assembly after a couple of years of hooliganism on Mumbai’s streets. Their attacks on Biharis and UPwallahs are no longer news. Trough their terror tactics they are...

The party that thrives on creating and sustaining violent conflicts between Hindus and Muslims and Hindus and Christians is caught in a conflict of its own that refuses to be settled...

Modern warfare is based on the assumption that “everything is fair in love and war”. The first casualty of man’s brutality to man is death of the humanity of both the brutaliser and the brutalised...

Europe is steeped in Christian, Judeo-Christian and secular-liberal traditions. Newer immigrants who came in to settle in these countries...

Over five centuries also India witnessed the advent of one of the greatest men that had walked on its soil. That was Guru Nanak Deoji, known among Muslims as Nanak Peer...

The history of Nobel awards has been replete with controversy. Henry Kissinger, whose ideas and moves have very little to do with peace, got a Nobel for peace soon after the carpet bombing of Kampuchea and devastation of Vietnam...

Muslim women are faced with a number of difficult choices in a fast globalising world as they have to make their personal and public decisions in the light...

Prof. Iqbal A. Ansari, a towering figure of our times, died at Aligarh on October 13, 2009. At 6 a.m. he complained of restlessness and was rushed to hospital where...

HR minister Kapil Sibal is one of our more intelligent, clean and fair-minded politicians. However, his latest proposition that the admission cut-off mark for IIT students should be ratchetted up to 80 percent is neither very intelligent...

Stories of Chinese incursions in the media have created a lot of ripples in government as well as in the society. There is the growing national consensus that the country should prepare itself to avoid a repeat of the 1962 fiasco...

The Institute of Objective Studies (IOS), a Delhi-based social research institution affiliated with the United Nations (Social Roster), has announced a...

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi suffers from delusions of grandeur. Thanks to our imperfect justice delivery system, Modi is still walking free seven years after the state-sponsored Gujarat pogrom of 2002...

Earlier this month the Cabinet Committee on Security met at the Prime Minister’s Office to discuss the growing incidence of Chinese land and air incursion in Indian territory. There have been far more incursions in Arunachal...

UPA-2 logged its 100th day in office on August 29. Manmohan Singh and 19 ministers had taken oath of office on May 22. A hundred days do not mean much in a five-year term, but they can exemplify the saying “morning shows the day...

After former deputy prime minister and Iron Man-2, L K Advani, his cabinet colleague in the NDA government at Centre, Jaswant Singh, is the second senior BJP leader to be booted out of the party for looking at Pakistan’s founder...

The Delhi High Court’s judgment “reading down” Section 377, which in effect decriminalises homosexual acts between consenting individuals, has raised fears of an invasion of a different kind.

The “global sex industry”, with massive business hubs in Thailand, Philippines, Mexico and Brazil, is poised to extend its tentacles to India taking...

The door of ijtehad (logical reasoning in approaching issues of Islamic jurisprudence) has been opened wide, not shut, as erroneously believed by...

If the latest news reports about the North African branch of al-Qaeda issuing threats to China are true, Muslims all over the world have got more to worry about now. The French news agency AFP has reported quoting a report in a French...

The Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC), details of which are being finetuned at present, to be finally established through an Act of Parliament, epitomises...

Member of Law Commission and former Chairman of Minority Commission, Prof. Tahir Mahmood, received the 7th Shah Waliullah Award here today for...

The tone and tenor of BJP’s stock-taking after its crushing electoral defeat is amazing as well as amusing, writes Mohammed Ataur Rahman...

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a “generous” offer to his Palestinian neighbours of a “limited Palestinian state” (his words). This state will not be a state, limited or not. When Jews got their state under...

(Editor's Note: The following is a copy of the letter sent to President Barak Hussein Obama from the Secretary General of Minority Council [India]. The author's is a highly respected voice on human rights and civil liberties.)

We have seen a few disturbing trends in the recent parliamentary elections which need to be addressed before they wreak terrible damage on our society. One of these is the extensive fragmentation of Muslim leadership that surfaced in the election.

1984 was a turning point in India’s history: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Sikhs were massacred en masse (thus breaking the Hindu-Sikh understanding since 1947 to stay together), and the most divisive, violent and anti-national movement in independent India, the Babri Masjid demolition movement. The first of the destructive yatras launched by the Sangh combine in the long series of yatras, the Ekatmta Yatra, was launched in the summer of 1984.

Party politics, it is understood, has no room for morality. Politics, as understood by great gurus like Chanakya of ancient India and Machiavelli of Renaissance Italy, cannot...

The tradition of shoe protest begun by Iraqi journalist al-Zaidi has gained acceptance in India. On April 16 the BJP prime ministerial candidate LK Advani became the third Indian public figure at whom a “shoe” (in this case, a lowly...

We had begun to have some idea of how effective a shoe protest can be right at the moment journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his celebrated pair of shoes at the world’s most powerful person. The country that was devastated...

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam on the urgency to delete the obiter dictum containing the “Talibanisation” remark of Justice Katju from court proceedings.

As the country is moving towards parliamentary elections we see a concerted move by certain organisations to raise communal temperature and cash in on the polarisation of society on religious lines.

Let it be clear at the outset that we have not, will not, forget the demolition of Babri Masjid, along with 25 other mosques and mazars in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. Nor are we going to forget the cold-blood murder of every Muslim man, woman and child that was unlucky enough to be present in the town that dark day. We have also not forgotten, nor will forget, the murder of hundreds of Muslims across the country during the long-drawn demolition campaign and following the demolition.

New Delhi, March 30: The Executive Committee of All India Milli Council at its meeting here today deliberated on the political situation obtaining in the country in the run-up to Lok Sabha election.s.

Now that Varun Gandhi has been slapped with the National Security Act (NSA), for the first time we are seeing hate speech being discouraged...

The severe disagreement in the UPA is a matter of concern for all people who are committed to the rule of law and supremacy of the Constitution in the conduct of public affairs in India...

Election season has turned out to be an extremely dangerous period for cows in Delhi. Once again, slaughtered cows have begun to appear in public places. This is a familiar pattern that emerges soon before...

The obnoxious behaviour of Varun Gandhi is a reminder of the fascist hooliganism of his father, Sanjay Gandhi, writes Mohammed Ataur Rahman.

It is interesting to learn that there are only 6,000 people (approximately) who decide the fate of the humanity. This rather arbitrary figure shows that there is one individual in every million who is a...

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, in short) assumes too much. For instance, its preposterous assumption that it has the right and power to interrogate Indian Muslims and Christians, and to dictate to them what they...

The US president has ordered an increase of 17,000 troops in Afghanistan. This is about 50 percent of the number of existing NATO forces in that beleaguered country. This is more a continuation of the Bush policy...

Turkish Prime Minister Recip Teyip Erdogan’s frank talk about Israeli aggression against Gaza has not been taken kindly by powers that are running the world today. At the last World Economic Forum at Davos Erdogan...

Weapon purchases are made to strengthen national defence, not merely to satisfy a whim. The Left’s objection...

A large gathering of Muslims, variously estimated to be 40,000-50,0000 strong, at the historic Ramlila Ground here today resolved to fight terrorism...

One of the abiding shames of America’s 43rd presidency would be its terrible legacy in Iraq and neighbouring Palestine. The victims of this malicious policy, the Arabs, know that the Iraq...

Sorry to begin it with a negative: Mr. George W. Bush has never been counted among the more intelligent presidents of the United States. Even if we forget his familiar penchant for gaucherie there is not really much about him...

What is going on in Gaza Strip right now has a parallel in ancient Greek history. When the powerful Athenians invaded the less powerful Melos and began to make mince meat of them, the Melians pleaded for a truce...

The "change" referred to in the headline here has been used advisedly. It relates to the voter's inner world, his/her worldview, rather than any imminent alteration...

Eminent journalist M.J. Akbar advised India's Muslims here today to look within and introspect why some Muslim youth had taken to...

The ensuing elections to six state assemblies, followed by general elections, will decide whether India remains the secular, democratic state of the vision of the founding fathers of the Constitution or slips into a long...

The last few weeks have been marked by momentous events in India that will have a significant bearing on the future of freedom, democracy, rule of law and the general tenor of public life...

ongratulations on your spectacular victory in the US presidential elections. Your victory ushers in a new era in America's internal evolution as a democracy and a racially integrated...

Consider for a while the irony of a massive witch-hunt unleashed against Muslim youth on the basis of accounts provided by untrustworthy policemen...

Causing a breach in the Kosi and Bhimnagar barrage on August 18 near Kushaha village in Nepal, which adjoins Bihar's Supaul district, the turbulent river jumped eastward dangerously...

It is already a month since the latest round of Hindutva terror began in Orissa. It is continuing unabated: churches being burnt, Christian villages burnt, schools attacked. The chief minister, Naveen Patnaik sits idle, the police...

It has become a distressing pattern: every few months the country is being treated to a judicial scandal more serious than the previous one, writes Mohammed Ataur Rahman...

Children are dying from malnutrition and farmers are committing suicide as prosperous people in cities live in the bliss of denial, writes Mohammed Ataur Rahman...

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam cautions Malaysian government against pushing Leader of Opposition Dr Anwar Ibrahim to the wall...

The orgy of murder, arson and loot targeting Christians in Orissa continues unabated as the state plays a dumb spectator, writes Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam...

As August brings down temperature in the sub-continent, it seems Pakistan's dog days are drawing to a close. That country, plagued by military dictatorship for more than half of its independent existence, may be allowed...

A delegation of the All India Milli Council (AIMC) has asked the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to improve the monitoring and implementation of the Sachar...

The Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) has decided to survey the 90 minority-concentrated districts of India to study how the recommendations of the Sachar...

Developments over the last few days have left the nation breathless, petrified and clueless. A series of explosions in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, several people dead, many more injured, some critically.

The quick succession in which the blasts came in the two states is stunning. More than grief and outrage, it is time for us to ensure it does not recur...

The electronic media of the country has recently reported an interesting albeit cruel case from Lucknow. A girl named Alankrit appeared at the Class XII examination. She was a brilliant child. She had topped her school in...

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam says now that some political stability has been ensured, the UPA must begin to address questions in public mind about the N-deal...

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam expresses annoyance at the way Muslims are being presented as humorous characters in the ongoing political tragi-comedy. However, he warns against rejecting UPA along with the nuclear deal.

Mohammed Ataur Rahman looks at the decline in the standards of integrity of our judiciary and wonders whether justice is going to be even more difficult to obtain...

Hindutva organisations, which have been trying desperately to raise communal temperatures over the Amarnath yatra, have achieved some success in Madhya Pradesh. Although they have not so far been able to do...

Count on BJP to create a contentious, deeply divisive issue out of thin air. People who knew General (retd.) S.K. Sinha's dismal record as governor of Assam were apprehensive...

Of late, Indian Muslims are in the news again. For the wrong reason, as usual. They are being held hostage to the natural and understandable differences between different political parties on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The Sangh, especially its political front, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been nibbling away at the roots of the Constitution over the last six decades. Fortunately, so far it has not achieved any substantial success in its efforts, writes Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam.

President of Association of Indian Muslim Social Scientists Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam has written to the US President George W. Bush...

To me the Karnataka defeat of so-called secular political formations is not a surprising turn of events. Most of us saw it coming during the preceding months of disarray in the non-NDA...

The need for dialogue among civilisations has increased in the troubled 21st century, said Mr Sadeq Jawad Sulaiman, a thinker from Oman. Mr Sulaiman, who...

Ever tried evading taxes? Never ever think of doing so if you happen to be a salaried, middle-class person. The taxman is sure to get you and make your life hell for refusing to pay a few thousand rupees in tax...

It is distressing to note that the Afro-Asian world, along with other developing nations, is getting alienated from India, writes Mohammed Ataur Rahman...

I am writing this in great anguish and sense of disappointment at the way the situation in Palestine has been forced to take an entirely unexpected and dangerous turn with President George W. Bush's latest visit to Israel...

Quite understandably, the Bharatiya Janata Party is gloating over the UPA government's failure to curb inflation. According to the latest data released on April 19, inflation grew by another 0.24 percent compared to the previous week...

The recent split verdict of the Supreme Court on a riot case shows that not only the victims of the state machinery's partial and prejudiced behaviour complain about it but at least a section of the higher judiciary is also aware of it...

Here are some eye-opening data that show food prices are not related to our over-eating.

In the first piece of this series one of the points made was that soaring prices of food were central to inflation-related concerns in India (and almost everywhere else). Of course, this does not mean that commodities as a whole, cement and steel and much else, were not getting out of reach.

Let me begin it with an open and frank admission of my own smallness. I am here before you not as an expert, but a humble student of public affairs, an ordinary citizen of this extraordinary land. I count myself lucky to have been in the company of some of the greatest activists and advocates of human rights and civil liberties, the best legal minds of our time as well as leaders of the minorities, including their religious leaders. That long association with such worthy people as well as my own close observations of the national scene have convinced me that all is not well with our society, our polity, our public life.

DR. MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM takes a look at the inflationary surge that has burnt a big hole in the middle class pocket and bodes greater ill for the weaker sections.

Over the last few years we have been witnessing a dangerous drift that seems to widen the chasm between civilisations. The process of meaningful bilateral and multilateral dialogue has virtually ceased. In the void thus created have grown mutual suspicions, hatred and hostility.

Finally, on March 24 Delhi Police's controversial ACP Rajbir Singh ran out of luck and was shot through the head by one of his proteges, with the gun he had lent the killer. The man who shot him twice in the head, Vijay Bhardwaj, owed...

Last week the media (national and international) carried a scary message supposedly released by Osama bin Laden. Mr bin Laden was reported to have threatened reprisals against some European countries for their sustained slander campaign against Islam and Muslims.

At the outset let it be clear that Islam, as understood by most Muslims worldwide, is not about reprisals. Another clarification is in order here: We don't endorse Mr bin Laden's prescription for setting things right, nor do we share his worldview.
 

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has urged the Union government to expel Ms Tasleema Nasreen for her anti-Islam vituperation...

The All India Milli Council (AIMC) has appealed to the UPA leadership, the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister to restrain police and intelligence...

The latest unequivocal, clear and unconditional denunciation of all forms of terrorism is a welcome step taken at the Darul Uloom Deoband. But that is only half of the picture, the other half is for the government and its agencies...

With the arrest of three Sangh Parivar activists at the end of January for the bombing of the RSS office in Tenkasi town of Tamil Nadu new hope has emerged about solving the mystery of bomb attacks on places like Makkah...

As was already expected worldwide the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, who form 90 percent of its population, declared independence from Serbia on February 17. We, along with the rest of the world, were expecting...

Every year finance ministers and commerce ministers of scores of countries gather under the auspices of World Economic Forum (WEF) to discuss commerce and trade issues that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. National contingents include bureaucrats, activists and endless number of national and international NGOs.

Nearly three decades ago best-selling author and futurologist Alvin Toffler predicted quite a few "future" trends that seemed too way out to be credible. One of these was: as medical science progresses and organ transplant surgical procedures get perfected gangs of doctors, mafiosi and allied miscreants would join hands to start a new industry, that of illegal organ transplants.

Finally, a high-visibility victim of Gujarat 2000, Bilkis Bano, has got a semblance of justice as a CBI court in Mumbai has awarded life-term to 11 of the accused of murdering 13 of her relatives in a gruesome...

Within a week's time we have heard the same words from the US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Iran. First Mr. Bush declared grandly that regarding Iran's nuclear ambition, "all options is on the table". And within the next few days Mr. Olmert told a high-level committee of Israeli officials the same thing in the same words.

The International Herald Tribune reported that the committee meeting was not open to the media, but one of the participants told the Tribune reporter on condition of anonymity what Mr. Olmert had communicated to them. By "all options on the table" Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert mean they would launch a military attack on Iran together or singly if it refuses to follow their orders.

A sense of insecurity in any section of society has the capability to jeopardise peace, prosperity and stability of a country. It is time to create an...

Really great men (and women) don't hanker for public adulation or state honours. The communist saint Ho Chi Minh ("Uncle Ho" to millions) was a self-effacing orphanly-looking stalwart who drove the French...

America's handling of the Middle East situation is fraught with risks for it, Israel, the Middle East and the rest of the world, observes DR M MANZOOR ALAM
 

The recent Bali conference on environment was notable at least in one sense. America, which has been pretending to be the leader of the world, was led by the world for a change. Forced by rest of the international community...

As the reality of Mr Narendra Modi's win in Gujarat begins to sink into the country's political psyche the apprehensions about another bout of countrywide anti-minority hysteria are getting pronounced...

Right from the day BJP came out victorious in the Gujarat elections a clear campaign of aggression was launched against Christian community in Gujarat. In one of the most bizarre attacks in the state a priest was badly beaten up and the fingers of his hands were chopped. Everybody knows that the Sangh and its dozens of front organisations are behind the attacks.

We all know that media (the plural from of medium)is (or, are, if you please) there for carrying message in different print, audio and audiovisual format. In the natural scheme of things it is the message that has primacy...

Mr Narendra Modi’s government in Gujarat has spent enormous sums of money on projecting the image of the chief minister and his alleged accomplishments in economic growth. According to Arjun Modhvadia...

In Gujarat Narendra Modi’s take is, “Gujarat shall win”. You don’t need a PhD from Harvard to know that here Mr Modi presents himself as the personification of Gujarat. That is, if Gujarat were to be a single...

As the day of reckoning in Gujarat draws close the nervousness of BJP and Narendra Modi’s backers is getting obvious. BJP government’s tall claims about “development” lies punctured (I will come to this topic...

On the face of it the Congress election strategy in Gujarat seems rather incongruous. After all how can you fight Sangh Hindutva with another version of Hindutva? This sounds (and looks) too suspiciously...

Siyasat (politics), we are told, is an unpredictable, treacherous, no-holds-barred game. Gujarat politics is more so, particularly because it is the “laboratory of Hindutva”, as proudly proclaimed by men...

Is Taslima treading a dangerous path in India by courting the Hindu fundamentalists? Vidya Bhushan Rawat

In an interview to the Indian Express, Delhi on November 24th, noted Bengali author Taslima Nasreen said, "Nothing happens to MF Hussain, who has done so many things, while everybody is after my life'. It is ironical that the statement comes from a person who has been 'wronged' by the Muslim clergy in Bangladesh and whose issue rocked Indian parliament as well as has exposed the hypocrisy of our society and so-called 'liberal' values.

The Gujarat BJP of 2007 is not quantitatively different from the Gujarat Congress of 2002. Back then the Congress Party was a hopelessly divided house, without any clear idea of where it was headed...

It seems the Sangh falls immediately in love with whatever annoys or hurts Muslims. The latest example is RSS chief’s magnanimous declaration that people who have been evicted from everywhere...

We are justifiably proud to call ourselves a democracy. We do hold periodic elections, however imperfect, to elect our representatives to panchayats, zila parishads, state assemblies and national Parliament...

Aghast at the deep silence that has welcomed the Tehelka expose of Gujarat 2002 DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM is forced to conclude that the Indian state does not think Muslims are human, or they bleed, like others. The society itself seems largely anaesthetised to Muslim sorrow, he avers.

All India Milli Council (AIMC) General Secretary Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam wrote to AICC President and Chairperson UPA Mrs Sonia Gandhi seeking her attention to some crucial...

Tehelka-Aaj Tak sting has not brought out anything that we did not know already. Its real worth lies in the clear confession by some of the major actors in the stagemanaged massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.

DR. MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM argues that the nuclear deal with the US is against the vital interests of India, and the people’s actual needs are not addressed by it.

The war hero and founding president of the United States, George Washington, had warned his successors not to take any country as a permanent friend or enemy. The status of a friend or enemy was a shifting category decided purely by national interest.

Delhi, India’s capital, has also earned enough notoriety as “Capital of Kidnapping Industry,” “Capital of Crime Against Women” and, of late, “Capital of Road Rage”...

The Government of India is working out a scholarship scheme for students of minority communities who have completed matriculation. It will help such students to avail of opportunities of higher education by achieving...

The Patna sessions court has sentenced former member of parliament Anand Mohan and former minister Akhlaque Ahmad to death in the case of murder of Gopalganj district magistrate, G Krishnayya. Anand...

One of the welcome trends in international affairs in 2006-2007 has been the gradual inching of Kosovo towards independence from Serbia and (in the mid-term) statehood. However, the process seemed extremely complicated, much of the complication having been created by Serbia, which though guilty of massive ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars, still tried desperately to cling to the territory.

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan filed his nomination papers on September 27 amid protests from the Opposition and a wave of arrests. Faisal Hashmi looks at the Pakistan scenario over the last several months, from mid-2006 onwards.

Through much of the year 2006 till the writing of this piece Pakistan, a significant Muslim country in terms of its high quality human resource and technological development, had been passing through a bad patch.

The unfortunate controversy over Ram Sethu and the historicity of Shri Ram has claimed its first victims. Two Tamils travelling in a bus in Karnataka close to the Tamil Nadu border were burnt to death recently. A mob of VHP activists had set the bus on fire.

Recently ten persons were lynched at Rajapakar village in Vaishali district of Bihar. Invariably, all media reports described them as "thieves". Probably those who killed them told the police that the victims...

Delhi, the capital of the country, is also turning out to be the "kidnapping capital of India." Several hundred girls are kidnapped here every year. In most cases the police show the kidnapped persons as lost. Strangely...

Of late the Ram Sethu (Adam’s Bridge) between India and Sri Lanka has come into sharp focus of our political life once again. BJP and other Sangh outfits have clung to this "issue" like the proverbial sinking...

General Secretary All India Milli Council Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam expressed deep anguish and concern over the brutal killing of Mazhar Nayeem...

General Secretary All India Milli Council Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam expressed deep anguish and concern over the brutal killing of Mazhar Nayeem, a student...

DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM traces the roots of vigilantism to the gradual loss of faith in law and order machinery and justice delivery system.

Denial of Justice to the Weak

 …has created the monster of police lawlessness which threatens to undermine the larger society now, argues DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM

 

Over the last couple of days we have been witness to some unpleasant and unnecessary acts from supposedly responsible quarters. The most bothersome was an uncalled for observation...

On the anniversary of Malegaon blasts Muslims note with deep sorrow and a sense of colossal betrayal that they have consistently been denied justice, writes DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM

 

The declaration of Emergency in Pakistan could be an indicator of more difficult days to come. The extreme measure restored to by President Pervez Musharraf makes democracy – popular rule, functioning of independent legislature, judiciary and media – a distant prospect as all of them are in suspended animation now.

As usual the United States and its Western allies are firmly behind the person who has done this, that is, President Pervez Musharraf. The US loves to claim that it stands for democracy (that is how it justifies its occupation, and destruction, of Afghanistan and Iraq), but on the ground it does the exact opposite by backing dictators and justifying occupation.

The Government of India is prepared to consider the introduction of participatory banking, also known as Islamic banking, with "an open heart and mind...

Vice President of India Hamid Ansari said here today that "participatory banking" practices had been prevalent in the country since ancient times...

DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM explains how the quest for "economic growth with a humane face" is just the contemporary articulation of an old ideal that seeks to balance the creation and accumulation of wealth with fair-play and concern for the underprivileged. The desire for attaining such a balance goes back a couple of millennia.

As we celebrate our 60th year of independence with justifiable pride over our achievements, we also witness an overwhelming sense of insecurity among a sizeable section of our society. It is insecurity bred by a mortifying sense of denial of justice.

BAGHDAD: Reports of the poor health among high-ranking Iraqi politicians are being seen as symbolic of the popular mood here about the U.S.-backed government.
 

In late February, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was flown to neighbouring Jordan for medical treatment amid conflicting reports about his health. Sources in Amman and from Talabani's office in Baghdad told reporters that the 73-year-old had suffered a stroke, but in a televised interview his son said that Talabani was suffering from fatigue or exhaustion.

Day in and day out, we, the city dwellers, have to endure a cacophony of hollow claims: "India Shining", "India on the Move". Who is orchestrating this hype and hoopla? Of course, the tiny minority in the big cities...

During the visit of US President George W Bush in 2006, nuclear and agriculture deals were signed. The highly publicised nuke-deal has been finalised and reached the stage of implementation. A little known...

Finally, the last batch of the people found to be involved in the Mumbai blasts of 1993 have been sentenced variously (according to the degree of harm caused by them). The sentences range from death penalty to life imprisonment and relatively shorter sentences.

One must applaud the Centre’s, particularly Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s, role in promoting the cause of justice in Dr Mohammad Hanif’s case, who had been illegally detained by the Australian...

The incidence of acid attacks on girls and young women is increasing in India. Criminals committing this heinous act are emboldened because they enjoy virtual impunity...

On July 28, a replay of West Bengal’s Nandigram was staged by the Andhra Pradesh police in Khamam. Eight people, mostly Left supporters, died in police firing...

The Sangh and its offshoots like VHP have not learnt any lessons from public humiliation only a few weeks ago on the issue of Ram Sethu. The Sangh’s false claim that the natural deposit in the sea between India...

The unfortunate events of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid have revived the clamour in India for change in madrasa curricula and a comprehensive reorientation of madrasa education as a whole. Such demands are not new and many of the people and groups making such demands and suggestions are not well-wishers of Muslims. The Sangh as a whole, and BJP in particular, have been at the forefront of such campaigns. The Sangh, inspired by malevolence, has also been consistently trying to give madrasas a bad name and get them shut down for ever.

Not a single day passes without the discovery of a fake pharmaceutical products racket. Nobody knows what happens to the merchants of death manufacturing fake medicines or the medical store owners peddling...

Pakistan is among the better developed Muslim countries. Despite its extraordinary standing among Muslim countries it had a poor record on democracy and civil liberties...

The National Election Commission has done well to clarify a major point of law. It has said that no party has a right to issue a whip to its members not to vote in a presidential or other election...

Bombay High Court’s observations in the murder case involving presidential candidate Pratibha Patil’s brother are significant for the polity and governance of India. The court has done...

The Sangh is deeply obsessed with Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, revered as Qaed-e-Azam. The Sangh thinks this man was a villain who divided India, and refuses to consider its...

 The vast majority of Iraqis live by the Euphrates river, and the Tigris with its many tributaries. The two rivers join near Basra city in the south to form the Shat al-Arab river basin. Iraq is also gifted with high quality ground water resources; about a fifth of the territory is farmland.

"The water we have in Iraq is more than enough for our living needs," chief engineer Adil Mahmood of the Irrigation Authority in Baghdad told IPS. "In fact we can export water to neighbouring countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan -- who manage shortages in water resources with good planning."
 

In the face of a critical Senate debate on future U.S. strategy in Iraq, neo-conservatives and other hawks are trying to rally increasingly sceptical -- and worried -- Republicans behind continued support for President George W. Bush's five-month-old "surge" strategy, writes Jim Lobe from Washington.


They are arguing that the surge -- the deployment of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to try to pacify Baghdad to encourage political compromise among the major groups in Iraq -- has not been given sufficient time to work and that abandoning it now would amount to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

For three consecutive days the National Capital Region (NCR) has been reeling under sweltering heat. As if it was not enough, the city of Delhi and its surrounding areas have been subjected to long...

Despite sporadic attempts to bring in some transparency to the mysterious working of bureaucracy massive official corruption remains a fact of life. Such corruption is the single largest factor responsible...

It is not often that we have good news about Muslims in the mass media. If ever our young men and women come in for a mention it is likely to be for the wrong reasons and with negative undertones. However, we...

ndia and Pakistan have gone to war thrice over Kashmir, without anyone of them achieving much. There is the least likelihood of another full-blown war. Skirmishes are always possible, but not war. Both countries being...

Over the last few years the Islamic obligation of jehad has been erroneously turned into a cottage industry. Individual Muslims and the tiniest of "organisations" (often containing no more than the family members of the  "founder") have taken upon themselves the duty of waging jehad most likely against the Muslim state itself in which such persons and groups are based.

There are quite a few things to be understood here. First, mostly these are individual efforts of freelance warriors, or those of ragtag bands with nothing substantial to glue them together. They cannot stand before the sustained assault of an organised national army, navy, air force, paramilitary units and special forces. They don’t have the advantage of eye-in-the sky cameras orbiting in space and feeding military intelligence to the armed forces headquarters of a country round the clock as well as unmanned aircraft flying over rebel formations and transmitting crucial data to the command headquarters. All that makes launching and sustaining an effective attack against rebels more viable.

 

The suicide of thousands of farmers around the country tells revealing tales of our development priorities. We may be experiencing an economic boom, but since 1997 more than 25,000 farmers have killed...

Over the last few days we have been subjected to a graceless BJP show of bad conduct. Day in and day out BJP folk have been harping on alleged flaws in the UPA’s presidential candidate and her family...

At the time of writing this piece 1,200 students, teachers and assorted anti-government activists have been flushed out of Islamabad’s huge Lal Masjid by the Pakistani military. The whole world is looking at...

On July 11, almost all major English and Hindi dailies published from the national capital carried Islamabad Lal Masjid story as lead, some using prominent graphics, pictures and highlights. The display...

At the time of writing this piece 1,200 students, teachers and assorted anti-government activists have been flushed out of Islamabad’s huge Lal Masjid by the Pakistani military. The whole world is looking at all this in amazement. The Muslim world is aghast. Military operations to get all the occupants out of the mosque are on.

Reservation in Indian law is a term to describe government policy where a percentage of seats is reserved in Parliament, State Legislature, Central and state government departments and public sector units for socially and educationally backward classes.

Reservation in Indian law is a term to describe government policy where a percentage of seats is reserved in Parliament, State Legislature, Central and state government departments and public sector...

Among Sikhs there have always been holy men who have been respected and loved by people in general rather than Sikhs alone. The founder of the faith, Baba Guru Nanakji, was loved and respected by Hindus...

In a recent court judgment several Muslim "terrorists" have been awarded long sentences, including life-term, for being involved in Gujarat BJP leader Haren Pandya’s murder...

The tiger is the most endangered species, according to a report of World Wide Fund (WWF). It is the most in-demand species being bought, sold, smuggled, killed or captured for trade...

Presently a battle royal is waging in the BJP. It is, in fact, less of a battle than a buck-passing match between the top leaders ostensibly out to know what led to their well-deserved rout...

In our previous entry in this column we had discussed how the fruits of the Great Green Revolution had begun to go soar in parts of India...

This is for the third time that we are returning to Mayawati government in this column, the first two times with appreciation, but this time with some apprehension...

India is rightly proud of the Green Revolution ushered in by scientists like Dr. Norman Bolraug and his Indian associate Dr. Ms. Swaminathan. The country was constantly plagued by food shortages...

The so-called Third Front’s proposal to nominate President APJ Abdul Kalam for a second term in office is a clever move. Convinced that nobody would dare to reject President Kalam’s name because...

A few days earlier in this column we took note of a positive development in the political culture of Uttar Pradesh. Chief Minister Mayawati had created a record of sorts by allowing one of her party...

RSS believes that by creating another Shri Ram controversy it can catapult its protégéé, BJP, into power. After all, the only time BJP made real electoral progress was during the Ram temple campaign. Whatever...

Our worst fears expressed in these columns a couple of days ago have come true as the violence in Gaza Strip has claimed more lives. Hamas fighters have taken over the seaside office complex of President...

Recently a news report appeared in many newspapers that said Hollywood film star Sylvester Stallone was caught in Australia carrying banned drugs. When Australian Customs officials raided his hotel room...

Recently a major American newspaper published a full-length article on "deteriorating" Saudi-US relations. It is quite well known that the Saudi king had recently announced his determination not to become...

All of us know that we are the children of a single pair -- Adam and Eve. Later we divided into races and ethnic groups...

New Delhi, March 12: The New Delhi-based Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) has decided to confer its first lifetime achievement award on former Chief Justice of India, Justice A.M. Ahmadi. IOS governing council reached the decision after long deliberations on the proposals of a number of organisations, scholars and intellectuals. The yearly award will go to those who have served the society in their respective fields. It will comprise Rs 1,00000 and a memento.

For three consecutive days the National Capital Region (NCR) has been reeling under sweltering heat. As if it was not enough, the city of Delhi and its surrounding areas have been subjected to long and frequent power cuts.

The Sachar Committee Report is many things to many people. However, in its essence it is just an attempt to gauge the extent of Muslim economic and social backwardness for possible governmental...

In the picture on the left Union Minister for Home Mr Shivraj Patil presents the memento to Justice Ahmadi while Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam and Governor A R Kidwai...

The legendary Mr Bumble’s remark, "If the law thinks so" Sir, the law is an ass", we must admit, is one truism that will always retain some relevance, at least in India...

It is extremely difficult to figure out why we insist on calling ourselves a civilised nation. Going a step further we have convinced ourselves that we are divinely ordained spiritual...

Last week some newspapers carried an interesting picture that showed half a dozen members of Turkish parliament on each other’s throats. This was reminiscent of a similar scene in Uttar Pradesh...

Over the last few days we have been subjected to a graceless BJP show of bad conduct. Day in and day out BJP folk have been harping on alleged flaws in the UPA’s presidential candidate and her family.

At the time of writing this piece (June 2, 2007) the Indo-US negotiations on the finer points of the nuclear deal between the two countries has reached a crucial stage. As is always the case, our major...

The arrest of a BSP Member of Parliament is a refreshing change after a steady dose of stories of all manner of mafia dons lording it over the towns and villages of Uttar Pradesh being published...

Parliament in India is one of the most important pillars standing with an aim to achieve the goals of national reconstruction and nurturing the values of freedom , secularism and democracy. As a microcosm of the nation it has consistently reflected the feeling, hopes and aspiration and even weakness and frustrations of the people. It has been considered as the most vital political institution on whose working depends nation’s success. But all this is possible only if its members devote themselves whole-heartedly to meet the rising expectations of the teaming millions. A proper exercise of their duties and responsibility want certain liberties and immunities on their part so as to enable them to carry out their obligations unhindered by external force and internal pressure what we call them parliamentary privileges.

In this first part of a two-part series, Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam takes a look at the socio-political scenario of the country with forebodings of serious trouble ahead.

If Congress insists on fielding people like Pareek in assembly polls, it is bound to meet its waterloo in Sikar, wites Ashfaque Kayamkhani

Time is the original paradox. Twenty years is a substantial period in an individual human life span, but shorter than a small moment in the life of a society or nation. The two-day celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) on April 6 and 7 was marked as much by a mood of jubilation as of stock-taking. It was also a time to set new goals and establish new benchmarks.

The following views were expressed at the two-day celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Objective Studies from April 6-7, 2007.

George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet.  For this reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical values.

The sordid CD episode in Uttar Pradesh has once again shown that the BJP has only one sure and tested way of winning elections, that is, by whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria. That this works has been proved in several elections, including in the massive Ayodhya movement, with all its attendant violence and destruction, and the landslide win the BJP managed following the Gujarat pogrom. The latter was so successful that the Sangh openly boasted about having perfected an art form, that of winning elections through stage-managing massacres of Muslims.

The second day of the 20th anniversary celebrations of Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) was marked by interesting observations of the former awardees of IOS scholarships...

A paradigm shift is in order today to accommodate new socio-economic configurations and the growth of new technologies in a globalising world, Delhi...

Milli Council General Secretary Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam has demanded the derecognition of BJP in the following letter written to the Chief Election...

The Condition of Scavenger community in India is a matter of grave concern for all the right thinking persons world over. It is regrettably noted that the official attitude of the government has not changed towards these communities. The surroundings of the community compel them think in a ghettoized fashion which is considered as if the community does not want to change. In an environment where parents do not know where would the second day meal be achieved, it would be ridiculous to think that the community would be able to rise at its own. Is it not the duty of all of us who believe in human rights, dignity and human values to come forward and help the community to delink from its traditional occupation?

On 23rd March 1931 the British government hanged three Indian revolutionaries namely Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. All of them embraced death in an entirely heroic way and therefore became legend for the common Indian masses. None of the youth leaders of India's independence movement inspired a whole lot of generation as Bhagat Singh. Unfortunately, the ruling elite of the country reduced Bhagat Singh into a 'terrorist'. The result was that these revolutionaries who were non violent in their thought and process and wanted to change India remain outside the purview of college students, many of them liked Bhagat Singh for being 'violent' and Gandhi for being 'non violent'. However, in the absence of idealism and understanding of Indian situation, revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh are grossly under evaluated and misrepresented.

The Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art strives to foster the development of an international community of researchers and scholars in Islamic art and...

DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM shares his anguish over the Nandigram events and asks for a political and

social consensus on the contentious issue of SEZs.

The Qur’anic injunction of repelling evil with the good is the essence of Islamic ethics", observed Prof. Ibrahim E.I. Moosa of the Duke University, Durham...

"Zaytoun" is the name of a plant in Arabic. In English it is known as olive. Its significance can be imagined from the fact that it has been mentioned in the Holy Quran. Allah Ta’la in a verse swears by it and calls Makkah "Baladil Amin" (City of Peace). That’s why the branch of Zaytoun has become a symbol of peace. Interestingly, this olive branch seems to be common to both Fatah and Hamas. Fatah leader and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat had in his historic speech at the United Nations General Assembly delivered on November 13, 1974 said: "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun.

 Who is a woman and what is her role as a mother to her children?

Very often the topic claims priority. Though it is a rather hackneyed subject, it requires a fresh look at a time when women from the gentry are embracing Islam in the West.

When Allah the Almighty describes humans and human soul in the Qur’an, He does not make any difference on the basis of gender.

 

The New Delhi-based Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) has decided to confer its first lifetime achievement award on former Chief Justice...

Indian democracy is showing signs of maturity where the common man is becoming realistic in terms of taking note of the quality of governance. It is not merely personality-based approach, but the quantum of work and delivery of the party and government that would matter with the electorate. The bad showing is primarily due to failure of Congress leadership to read the facts correctly. Faulty selection of candidates, gap between the governing elite and electorate and infighting are the main causes of poor performance.

The Congress Party has finally started looking into the causes of its electoral defeat in Punjab and Uttrakhand. This has not come a day too soon, keeping in view the next round of elections, beginning with the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh next month.

How do you look at the Union Budget 2007-2008?

Before I attempt an answer to your question, let me re-phrase it in a more general way. How do we look at any budget? A budget, in the ultimate analysis, is a statement of income and expenditure. In short, how to generate income and where to spend it. A budget may belong to a family, to a firm, to an institution or to a government. Our immediate point of reference is the Union budget, that is, the statement of income and expenditure of the Government of India. A government raises its income from taxes and spends it on certain items of social welfare and development. Hence, the annual budget of the government gives the programme of the government for the next fiscal year. That is the significance of the Union budget in any given year.

Honestly, figuring out the budget is not everybody’s cup of tea. Different people look at the same budget differently. Alternatively, the same people look at it in different ways at different occasions.
 

Naturally, the budget is primarily looked at from class angle. That is, everyone first thinks of how it is going to affect his or her class of people, those in the same income bracket, business, profession, even caste and community.

WASHINGTON - February 1 - Today European, international and United States legal and human rights groups issued an open letter warning of the illegality of any offensive military action by the United States against Iran. Signatories include the American Association of Jurists, Center for Constitutional Rights (U.S.), Droite Solidarite (France), European Association of Lawyers for Human Rights and Democracy, Italian Association of Democratic Lawyers, Haldane Society (United Kingdom), International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Indian Association of Lawyers, (India), Japanese Association of Lawyers for International Solidarity, (Japan), Lawyers Against War (Canada), National Lawyers Guild (U.S.), Progress Lawyers Network (Belgium).

Open Letter to All Members of Congress, the Bush Administration And the U.S. Armed Forces From Legal and Human Rights Groups

Rivers are crucial for human life. Their water is used in irrigation and for drinking, and they maintain the moisture of the earth. Rivers have been contributing a lot to transportation as well. Even till mid-19th century, people would take a ship or boat if they were to go to Kolkata from Kanpur, Banaras or Patna. Perhaps this is one of the reasons big cities are situated on the banks of rivers.

Please click read more to see the enclosed pdf file.

A Uniform Civil Code, once it is legislated, cannot be imposed on sections of society or communities which don’t agree to it, Justice...

 FAISAL HASHMI discusses a subtle change in Islamic theological stance that has the potential to unite the Muslim world by minimising sectarian squabbles.

One academic writing for another academic is quite common, but an academic writing for lay readership is a rare phenomenon. Still rarer is the two-in-one type that writes for fellow academics...

As we prepare to observe the 150th anniversary of 1857 events we are once again apt to ask ourselves the same old, unanswered questions: Was it a mutiny, first war of independence...

DR MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM agonises over growing division between Muslims, and pleads for unity in the larger interests of the Ummah

Even a week after communal tension gripped Gorakhpur, the situation is yet to be normal, notwithstanding claims made by officials. Sporadic...

Publication of Today's Zaman was launched in a glorious ceremony. The event was attended by a select group of invitees, including Turkish...

His Highness King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Riyadh, KSA

Your Highness,

Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah!

Hope this finds you well and in good Islamic spirits.

This is to share our deep concern with you over the growing impression in Arab and Muslim world that Islam’s internal differences are more important than its problems with the aggressors occupying Arab land from Iraq to Golan in Syria, Sheba Farms in Lebanon and West Bank-Ghaza in Palestine.

 

January 15, 2007

 Dr Manmohan Singh

The Prime Minister of India

NEW DELHI

Sir,

 This is to communicate some of our concerns to you as our beloved leader. Over the last few years we have been seeing a concerted Anglo-Saxon military and diplomatic campaign against the Muslim world, which forms a sizeable chunk of the Afro-Asian, post-colonial world.

January 15, 2007

President George W. Bush

White House

Washington, DC

The United States of America

 

Sir,

Hope this finds you well.

 
This is to share our misgivings with you on the continuing US policy of targetting the Muslim world for attacks without justification.

 

January 15, 2007

His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The President of Iran

TEHRAN

Your Excellency,

Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah!

Hope this finds you well and in good Islamic spirits.

 
This is about the slowly, but steadily growing divide between Muslims on sectarian lines. This is a divide, as we know (and you know better) that is ominous for the future of Islam.

Dr Abusaleh Shariff, member-secretary of the PM’s high level committee on Muslim backwardness, said the Justice Rajindar Sachar Committee Report...

Well known Gandhian and Member of Parliament Nirmala Deshpande has demanded the government to institute an enquiry into the December 13, 2001 Attack on...

Dr Azmi Ozcan, professor of History at Turkey’s Sakarya University, delivered a lecture on contemporary Turkey at the headquarters of the Institute of Objective Studies...

It is truly a rare privilege and honour for me to be welcoming all of you to the inaugural session of this 2-day conference that has brought dignitaries and delegates from the Arab...

The largest ever Indo-Arab conference convened on private initiative ended here this week after two days of brainstorming on how to boost mutual business...

The Finance Minister of India, Mr P. Chidambram, said here today that there was tremendous potential for economic interaction between India and Arab world...

New Delhi, Nov. 11: Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, Chairman of the Institute of Objective Studies has expressed deep shock and grief on the death of Dr Ahmad Shah bin Mohammad Noor...
 

The rise of Asia beginning in the late 20th century has become a fact of life today, recognised worldwide as an irreversible trend. What began with Mahathir Mohammad’s call...

A two-day Indo-Arab conference beginning on November 13 is being billed as the starting point of substantially expanded interaction between the...

North Korea’s nuclear weapon is horribly immoral, India-Pakistan’s are barely acceptable, Israel’s are very very reasonable, France’s, UK’s, Russia’s and China’s are harmless, and US weapons are holy, beyond reproach. “This is terrible duplicity”, argues MOHAMMED ATAUR RAHMAN

ON OCTOBER 6 the Danish state TV showed video clips of fresh cartoons of the holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The cartoons were drawn by members of the youth wing of Danish People’s Party that tried (foolishly enough) to "humiliate" the prophet.

Since September 11 attacks, Muslims living in America and Western countries have become the subject of constant discussion and a cause of worry for others. They have been living in fear, which has been compounded by massive bomb blasts in Madrid and London.

All India Milli Council (AIMC) has regretted the unfortunate remarks of Pope Benedict XVI regarding Islam. In a statement AIMC general secretary Dr Mohammad...

The unfortunate controversy raised by Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks in Germany last week has brought to fore the long and intricate relationship between Islam and Christianity. Muslims worldwide heaved a sigh of relief when the dust of the storm kicked by the remark began to settle down with the official declaration of regret by the Vatican on September 16, and a personal apology a day later from the pope himself.

Lebanon war revives Arab nationalist feelings, not of a socialist-secular Nasserite vintage, but of a universal Islamic kind.

Some observers see the post-war surge in Arab national pride as rebirth of Arab nationalism that had begun to fade after the 1967 Arab-Israel war. By the time Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser died (September 28, 1970), the idea of Arab nationalism had receded considerably.

TODAY, GEORGE W. BUSH said, "Islamo-facists are trying to use any means to kill us because they hate the freedom we all love."

Yes, Islamic terrorists are trying to kill us. But why? Islamic terrorists are trying to kill us because our government has been funding and arming Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine for decades now.

AT a time when Islamic financial products are gaining wide acceptance, an advocate of interest-free banking has come up with a new Islamic banking model.

"Economists have only made recommendations about interest-free banking, but no one has come up with a working model," claims Abdul Wadood Khan, who has been campaigning for Islamic banking based on the Time Multiple Counter Loan (TMCL) concept conceived by Professor Mahmud Ahmed, a renowned Pakistani economist.

I have convened the diplomatic corps in Lebanon today to launch an urgent appeal to the international community for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and assistance to my war ravaged country.  You are all aware that seven continuous days of an escalating Israeli onslaught on Lebanon have resulted in immeasurable loss: the toll in terms of human life has reached tragic proportions: over 1000 injured and 300 killed so far; over half a million people have been displaced; in some areas, the hospitals have been crippled and are unable to cope with the casualties; there are shortages of food and medical supplies; homes, factories and warehouses have been completely destroyed; UN facilities in Maroun El Ras and Naqoura have just been shelled, so have been army barracks and posts of Joint Security Forces; a civil defense unit has been wiped out and foreigners are being evacuated.. As I speak, the trauma, the esperation, the grief and the daily massacres and destruction go on and on. The country has been torn to shreds.

Israel, which had never really left occupied Palestinian territory, is back in Gaza. A just solution is

still very far from sight, writes DR. MOHAMMAD MANZOOR ALAM

The Palestinian-Israeli situation is typical of all occupations. The occupier creates the impression that it is doing a great service to the people under occupation and that the freedom fighters are a set of rascals who have to be put in their place.

I am amazed at Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori of the US Episcopal’s Church’s remark that "homosexualism is no sin". A recent Reuters report from Washington said she had observed that "homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender".

 Harish Salve

WHEN WE SPEAK of International Bills of Rights, it has to be in a context.  These bills of rights are a solemn expression of hope by a group of wise people. These bills were born in were signed in 1948; the timing is significant. The United Nations itself is a product of a battle-weary, tired and wizened Europe. Bloodshed that began in the Ottoman Empire with the use of first generation weaponry ended with a nuclear bomb exploded by our friendly United States. It was that bomb that made men sit up, stop fighting and take stock of what we have been doing with each other in the last 50 years. That led to the formulation of the first, the parent, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but this declaration had a host of signatories and had different significance in different countries. 

This is to congratulate you on your party’s impressive performance in both Kerala and West Bengal. This indicates that your party’s concern for the welfare of the masses has...

PROF. FAIZAN MUSTAFA

What are minority’s rights? What is the origin of these rights? What is the jurisprudence of the philosophy of minority’s rights? What deliberations took place in the Constituent Assembly?  What constitutional provisions have been appearing on minority rights in India? Why special rights are needed in spite of right to equality under the Indian Constitution? How has judiciary over the years interpreted minority’s rights?

At the turn of the century, we are living in a moment of “virtual reality” an interface between reality and its image. They are so close and so much alike outwardly (yet so unlike in their innate nature) that any moment the image can become the substance. In fact, elbow the substance out. The image has already done so: it has become the substance. The media has become the message.

Multiculturalism, as a distinctive model for the management of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, emerged in the West in the wake of the great migrations of the post-War period. Canada and Sweden were the first nations to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy in the 1970s. Subsequently, many European countries followed suit. The process of globalization brought about a good deal of exposure to ethnic and religious diversities as well as inter-cultural sensitivity, thanks to large-scale international migrations, modern information and communication technologies, and the intermingling of people from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds.

The resounding victory of Palestinian freedom fighters’ group, Hamas, in parliamentary elections marks a turning point in Middle East history. As usual it has raised eyebrows from Tel Aviv to London, Rome to Washington.

Once again the West is over-reacting to a rather understandable phenomenon. Before reacting in their set, habitual ways, they should take into account the fact that Hamas has been voted by a people under occupation, a people who despite the severity of their situation, have preponderantly favoured peace.

There is a marked increase in the opposition to the Iraq war from US Congress, American citizens and sensible persons from across the world, but President George Bush is still adamant to “stay the course”. Instead of bringing coalition forces back from Iraq, President Bush has recently announced to send more troops there. This is why people are calling him a “dictator” – one who does not care for public opinion.

There is a clear evidence of an emerging norm of discrimination in compensation given to the next of kin of innocent Muslims killed in organised violence...

In the first week of November 2006 the science journal Nature published a special issue on science in the Muslim world. It was a collection of several reports by specialists that took stock of scientific and technological education in the Muslim world as well as research laboratories and other intellectual and artistic activity.

Over the last few months we have seen too much of ill-will over Iran’s perfectly legitimate bid to develop an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle technology for peaceful purposes.

This, as I have asserted already, is a perfectly legitimate activity that is in consonance with the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory. This fact was also presented before the UN General Assembly last month by the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinijad at the Millennium Development Goals summit.

The recent three-day world summit at the UN could barely agree on “modest reforms”, but major issues of poverty, development and security remained largely unaddressed, writes Mohd. Zeyaul Haque

At the largest-ever gathering of world leaders (more than 150) at the UN last week that coincided with the 60th anniversary of the world body a 35-page document was endorsed that left crucial issues of poverty and security largely unaddressed. However, the leaders agreed on a peace commission to help countries emerge from war and facilitate transition to peace and reconstruction.

Before the Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana the world did not know that such pockets of poverty and hopelessness as Louisiana existed in a flashy, post-modern America. The world was also not aware of the Bush Administration’s monumental capacity for callousness.

Five days after the hurricane hit Louisiana, IPS correspondent Jim Lobe reported the survivors had not got food or water, and the federal government had yet to intervene meaningfully. For the first time the world also realised that the massive civil rights movement (led by Martin Luther King) of the 60s had not really improved the quality of life of American Blacks beyond a point.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in his typical self-glorifying manner, proclaimed at the outset of this month that newspapers and other media had burgeoned in Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein. It, according to him, proved that democracy was flourishing there.

Within the next few hours the world will be observing the anniversary of September 11, 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre (WTC) and the US Defence Department headquarters, Pentagon, in Washington. Newspapers and magazines worldwide would be featuring analyses of the event and discussing what possibly could be done to ensure that it did not happen again. As usual, most of it would be wrong, either by design or because of a genuine mistake of diagnosis.

The question “Why was Sheehan killed?” is getting too tough for President George W. Bush to answer. Even though Mr Bush was never very good at academics, he should have been able to answer this simple question. So far he has avoided a straight answer.

Casey Sheehan was a young US army officer who was killed in the totally unjustified campaign against the supporters of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Casey Sheehan’s mother, the 48-year-old redoubtable activist Cindy Sheehan has since been asking President Bush and his administration as to why was her son killed in a war which has nothing to do with justice, or with America’s interests.

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, who stayed in Saudi Arabia for a decade after finishing his education, pays tribute to King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz...

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam expresses concern over anti-Muslim elements trying to drum up mass hysteria under cover of the recent judicial scrapping of the Illegal Migrants [Detection by Tribunals] Act.

Things rarely happen in isolation. Every headline-grabbing event is part of a long sequence of similar events spread across decades and centuries and diverse territories across continents. The roots of the blasts in London may lie in Abu Gharib in Iraq, Guantnamo Bay in Cuba, Jenin in Palestine or somewhere on Pak-Afghan border. Likewise, the sequence of events, as rightly pointed out by Arundhati Roy in an earlier article, could lie in the racial memories of sustained Western high-handedness.

Muslim World After 9/11 is the second major work on the subject coming from the prestigious US think-tank, the Rand Corporation. This is nearly three times bigger than the earlier report by Cheryl Benard...

This research paper seeks to analyse and understand feminism as against women’s liberation movements. Dr Almessiri delves deep into the epistemology and teleology of feminism...

President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is a living oxymoron of sorts: he is a hardened Islam-baiter. This former communist ruler of Afghanistan is known to have resisted even normal, peaceful expressions of Islam, like growing a beard, or regularly visiting a mosque.

Karimov’s antics have often drawn flak from human rights groups. The world showed great outrage when his troops shot dead 700 protestors in the eastern Uzbekistan town of Andijan on May 13. A large gathering of civilians was protesting against the arbitrary arrest of 23 local businessmen. Earlier a mob had broken the local jail and freed the 23 businessmen, besides 1200 other inmates.

The latest meeting between Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and the Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf took place on April 22 in Jakarta at a dinner hosted by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia in the honour of visiting Afro-Asian leaders on the occasion of a summit.

The ever-courteous Dr Singh is reported to have walked, along with his wife Ms Grusharan Kaur, up to Gen. Musharraf and his wife Sheba. Earlier Dr Singh had said that establishing good relations with Pakistan was the uppermost in his mind, a desire that was reciprocated by Gen. Musharraf.

When the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected the successor of Pope John Paul II on April 19, he inherited the goodwill of a large number of people. Many of those people are not Roman Catholic, some not even Christian. That is a plus point for the church that John Paul II had led for close to three decades with great distinction.

That could also be the problem of the 77-old new pontiff, who has assumed the papal name Benedict-XVI. His predecessor was one of those giants of history before whom even great men are likely to look small, a risk that Pope Benedict XVI will inevitably run. His predecessor had other, quite obvious advantages. To begin with, he was a highly athletic, fit person when he became the pope, and a full two decades younger than his successor was at the time of ascension.

The Muslim world heaved a sigh of relief when Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement last week in Makkah to form a national unity government. The agreement signed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Chief Khalid Mashaal sent home signals to the fighters of the two sides to stop killing each other.

The second term of George W. Bush has potentials of immense harm to America, the world, as well as the Muslim world. It could also be a time of undoing most of the harm inflicted in the first term, writes DR MANZOOR Alam.

Now that President George W. Bush is firmly settled in his office in the second term as president of the United States, it is time for both the US and the rest of the world to take stock and figure out where we (the whole world) is headed.

A historic vote in Israel's parliament to withdraw from Gaza has  been overshadowed by serious concern over the health of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

Just days after the Israeli press unanimously described the  highly contested vote in parliament in favour of a withdrawal from Gaza as ''historic'', the event has been eclipsed by a sharp deterioration in Arafat's health.

So wrote Rudyard Kipling, the great champion of colonialism, nearly a century ago (The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling, McClure's Magazine 12, Feb. 1899).

Routinely reviled as 'dens of terror', India's madrasas, numbering over 35,000, have probably never enjoyed such a bad press before. The demonisation of the madrasas is a project in which much of the mass...

One, and perhaps the only, message that the illegal American invasion and occupation of Iraq has sent to the people across the globe is that you must be strong or must have a genuine deterrence in order to survive in this maddening world. This is specially true if you happen to be richly endowed with natural resources or your geographical location is one of strategic importance. Being weak or deprived of deterring weapons is an open invitation to invasion and subsequent disaster. The bleeding Iraq is an eye-opening example.

The dramatic Federal Court  decision to free jailed ex-Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim after six years of  incarceration will have far-reaching implications for Malaysia.

 There is more than one winner arising from the decision. Apart from giving Anwar a new lease of life, the court ruling will also provide a boost for the reformist credentials of Malaysia's new Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

At best we can expect certain changes in the nuances of US foreign policy under John Kerry, but even those nuances can be vital for America's, and the world's, wellbeing , writes Dr. Manzoor Alam

The US presidential election of 1961 was a historic event in many ways. Democrat John F. Kennedy won the election trouncing his rival Republican Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy did not seem to be the public choice in the early phases. His chronic illness, his elitist background and, above all, his being a Roman Catholic were great problems holding him back. In a Protestant America his opposition made it a point that he would be taking orders from Vatican instead of keeping his own counsel. (A Roman Catholic US president was virtually  unthinkable then.)

The Israeli government has thought of a novel way to compensate for Palestinian deprivation. For over two millennia, the Jews have been gathering at the last remaining wall of Solomon’s (PBUH) Temple to cling to it and wail over the destruction wrought by Romans. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (or war criminal Sharon, as his victims would describe him) has magnanimously decided that the Palestinians too must have their Wailing Wall, much before they are allowed to have a “state” of their own.

Since the beginning of the 20th century Assam has been in a demographic flux, a flux that has tended to enrich it in terms of economic productivity and cultural diversity. However, as the century moved on, a certain...

There are nearly 200 Muslim communities in India which, in many ways, are not yet wholly integrated into the "mainstream" Muslim society. Converted from the tribal or Hindu stock, they retain many features of their earlier life...

That Hindutva fundamentally aims at the preservation of the Brahminical system, based as it is on the systematic exploitation of the Dalit-Bahujan majority, has been pointed out by numerous scholars, based on a close...

Hindi newspapers, taken together, have a multi-million readership in India today.  Yet, their role in shaping public opinion is often overlooked. While some Hindi papers are known for their balanced reporting, the vast majority...

Finally, we are face to face with the reality that we have dreaded the most. It is official now. Media experts at the latest World Social Forum meet in Mumbai conceded that the access to media for underprivileged classes and groups has become even more difficult now than, say, 20 years ago.

It is an illuminating study of the matrix of human sexuality, power and the “gods” within the pagan format. That the three are related in many interesting ways is widely known, but what Prof. Jalalul Haq seeks...

Last week’s summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Islamabad showed once again that relations between the two regional powers -- India and Pakistan -- was crucial to the grouping's survival and growth. The gradual thaw in Indo-Pak ties thus bodes well for the region’s peace and prosperity.

Pakistan had set the ball rolling in December by suggesting that it was prepared to jettison the long-standing demand for a plebiscite in Indian Kashmir to determine whether the people in this Muslim-majority valley would like to stay with India or go to Pakistan.

This is an interesting discourse on how despite remarkable constitutional safeguards, legal guarantees and broadly tolerant Hindu traditions, India’s Muslims, Dalits and Christians continue to suffer...

After Saddam Hussein’s Capture
 

After President Saddam Hussein’s capture two questions are being asked frequently: What will be the future course of resistance to American occupation, and what will be the future of Mr Hussein.

June began with some hope for the long-suffering Palestinian people as the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas began to engage with Israel, the US and other Mid-Eastern regimes to stabilise the Palestinian Authority and move towards the ultimate goal of creating a Palestinian state. 

Although people like Abbas are looked at with some suspicion as the quintessential quislings — like the present leadership in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia — hopes for some improvement in the Palestinian situation had begun to grow

The closing decades of the 20th century witnessed the dawn of the multicultural era, characterised by the salience of cultural diversity and plurality, the coexistence of multiple ethnic and religious groups in most nation-states, and the universal acceptance of the principles of tolerance, peaceful coexistence in a democratic framework, and respect for human rights, including group rights.  Multiculturalism has been closely intertwined with the process of globalisation.  The great migrations of the post-War period, especially from Asia, Africa and Latin America to Europe and North America, brought about a significant alteration in the demographic and social composition of many Western countries.

MALAYSIA AFTER MAHATHIR

After 22 years of stewardship of UMNO (United Malays National Organisation) as its president and that of Malaysia as its prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad steps down to enter history as one of the tallest Muslim leaders of the world and the builder of a new Malaysia.

 

The chorus of condemnation targetting Dr Mahathir Mohammad’s alleged racial slur in his address at last month’s OIC meet at Putrajaya against Jews still continues. Among several other things, he had remarked that Jews make others fight proxy wars on their behalf. Quite a few people are feigning injured innocence. The US Department of State took no time to denounce Mahathir, as did the Italian foreign minister by condemning the speech in his capacity as foreign minister of Italy as well as by raising the issue at a European Union ministerial. The largely Jewish-controlled US media raised a storm over Mahathir’s remarks that is yet to die down.

In mid-June a young Indian student of University of Massachussets Dartmouth was severely beaten up by four white racists. The attackers were shouting, “Go back to Iraq.”

The victim, Saurabh Bhalerao, pleaded he was not a Muslim from Iraq but a Hindu from India. His pleas fell on deaf ears. Bhalerao was hospitalised for days after the attack.

The World Social Forum meet in Mumbai changes the emphasis of international political discourse from terrorism to human freedom and welfare...

By now it is quite clear that things are not going smoothly for the US and allies in Iraq. Nearly 250 occupation soldiers have been killed by Iraqi resistance fighters since President George W. Bush declared the war over on May 1. According to western estimates, 10,000-15,000 Iraqis have died in the unjust, uncalled for, and absolutely unjustifiable war...

This study has attempted to present an outline of stock market on the basis of Islamic standards in the following five sections. The paper has confined specially to equity market. 

An article published in Washington Times, a right-wing conservative daily founded and supported by a christian religious group, informed its readers about islamic banking in Turkey. The article is written by its correspondent Nicholas Birch.

Full content of the article is as follows:
‘Turkey is missing out on an opportunity to profit from Arab oil wealth as tensions between its secular government and religious authorities prevent it from issuing interest-free Islamic bonds that have become popular throughout the Muslim world.

Islamic Finance has come of age. Presently hundreds of Islamic financial institutions are working around the globe. Presence of a Shari’ah Board within each Islamic financial institution is required to establish a credible presence. However, is a Shariah board required in every institution? Does it add to the efficiency of Islamic financial institution? Has it helped to achieve the objectives of the institution? What is the role of these Shariah boards in achieving the objectives of Islamic economic system. Noted scholars of Islamic finance Prof. M. Nehatullah Siddiqi has raised these and similar issues in this paper which is being published on this web site to encourage thinking and discussion on this issue. However, The Institute of Objective Studies does not necessarily subscribe to all the views of the author expressed in this paper. In order to stimulate discussion, the readers are invited to send their views to ios@vsnl.com