Turkey’s Secularism almost universally accepted.
I came to Turkey basically to experience this Muslim majority country’s practice of secularism, to see the compromises it has made with the Islamic law, or Shari’a, as it is…
My American Avatar: Usama Khalidi
Thousands of young backpackers streamed through the Munich youth hostel during 1970-71when I worked there as one of a handful of staff checking in young people of variousnationalities, Americans mostly,…
An Encounter with History in Aurangabad
No one could possibly have imagined that the six and last Mughal emperor,Aurangzeb, would lie close to his enemy, Abul Hasan Tana Shah in theireternal sleep at Khuldabad, which lies…
Celebration means shared happiness, not speeches!
The 150th anniversary of the foundation of my high school, Madarsa-e Aliya, in Hyderabad, was celebrated with some fanfare, but it was mostly speeches by politicians or the old, disappearing…
WHO, OR WHAT, IS A PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL?
My understanding is that Jean Paul Sartre, the rejector of Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, pretty much invented a public role for unaffiliated individuals devoting their intellect in service…
Iqbal’s Masjid-e Qurtaba is a flawed classic
Muhammed Iqbal, the Indian Subcontinent’s much loved Urdu poet, wrote a stirring poem titled Masjid-e Qurtaba after his visit to Cordova, Spain, in 1933. In the minds of the Urdu-speaking…
“Islamization of Knowledge” and How Muqtedar Khan demolished the idea.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran set off seismic changes across the globe, most intensely among Arab Muslim intellectuals living in America and its environment of nearly total freedom of…
Dr. Omar Khalidi, a great scholar and the man
Omar Khalidi was a Muslim scholar, a staff member of MIT in the US, and an author. Dr. Omar Khalidi, a great scholar and the man, who articulated the voice…
My American Avatar: Usama Khalidi
Thousands of young backpackers streamed through the Munich youth hostel during 1970-71 when I worked there as one of a handful of hostel staff checking in young people of various…
Hindutva turn against Indian syncretism
Why did Savarkar / Hindutva turn against Indian syncretism, and India’s march toward modernity? Damodar Vinayak Savarkar’s seminal book “The Essentials of Hindutva” was published in 1923. That was the…
