On a visit to Karachi in 2011, I witnessed a surprising spectacle. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s legendry cricketer, was in town. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was holding a rally in the shadow of Quaid-e-Azam Mazar, the mausoleum that houses the tomb of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the nation.
Et Cetera
On the top deck of the Number 32 bus, a group of Muslim teenagers took the seats in front of me. There were six of them, all in black hijabs, and very rowdy. They were simultaneously trying to balance their school bags and books in one hand, while holding onto mobile phones in the other; texting or surfing the web, giggling and getting worked up, all at the same time.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, delivered courtesy of Western civilisation, Muslims can now fulfill their religious duties with relative ease. There are all sorts of brilliant gadgets out there, designed to ease the burden of the pious and ensure they face the right direction, perform their ablutions properly, read the right duas (prayers) when entering or leaving the toilet, pronounce the Arabic words correctly, and fulfill their numerous rituals according to prescribed tradition. So here is our selection of ten pieces of kit no self-respecting Muslim should be without.
Irshad Manji is a hard woman to ignore. Rising to global prominence at a time when all aspects of international Islam were called into question in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Manji personifies that breed of commentator looked to particularly by a non-Muslim media keen for an authoritative ‘inside perspective’, whose number also includes Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and Ed Husain among others.
Years after his death in the autumn of 2003, Edward Said, who had attained the rank of ‘University Professor’ at Columbia University, continues to elicit an equal measure of adulation and vitriolic criticism.
It is a truth universally observed that women drivers exist to be scorned, belittled, demeaned and abused. I know—I used to be a woman driver!
Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian cabinet member in the People’s Party led government in Pakistan, was brutally assassinated in Islamabad on 2 March 2011. But what was his crime?
A spectre is haunting Muslims—the spectre of fatwas. All the powers of old Islam have entered into a holy alliance: to issue more and more fatwas, each as ridiculous as the other, and thus drown the Islamic earth in a pestiferous flood of fatwas.