Irfan Husain on how the intelligentsia in Pakistan�is blissfully unaware (or indifferent) to the threat from Taliban
Saurav Basu on Amir Khusro and the myth of composite culture
and Kapil Sibal on�how the ‘NDA ditched UPA after vowing to support the N-deal’�

Apparently, when it becomes a training ground for Jihad.
Chinese authorities have…closed down 41 “illegal” places of worship (in the Muslim dominated Xinjiang province).
These places of worship were used as training ground for conducting a “holy war”, Chen Zhuangwei Chen, the police chief of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province, said.� Xinjiang, which borders central Asia and Pakistan, has been the scene of a pro-independence movement by a section of the eight million Uighurs living there for a long time.� [ link ]
What about these Madarsas�though? and what about the Deobandi …

About two weeks ago,�the Royal Society of Arts in UK, together with�Tehelka, organised a Summit on India and Pakistan in London. It had a stellar line up of speakers and panelists (Jaswant Singh, Farooq Abduallh, Arun Jaitley, Mushahid Husain, Imran Khan, Asma Jehangir, Ram Jethmalani…et al) and I am sure it generated a lot of animated discussions…
I am delighted to present a guest post by my dear friend Ashutosh who attended the summit and graciously agreed to pen down his thoughts to share with everyone on this blog…Ashutosh has a …

French philosopher Bernard-Henri L�vy on the�crisis in�Darfur�quoted in�Guernica, June 2008:
…I was there (in Darfur)…just one year ago nearly to the day, smuggling myself across the border with Chad, crossing 500, 600 kilometers of a devastated Darfur. And I must say what I saw then, what I experienced there never left my mind and my heart since. I was deeply shocked in the most intense sense of the word by this experience, even if I lived many others in my life since my youth in Bangladesh, in Pakistan. What I saw …

On Bal Thackeray and his call for Hindu suicide squads/ Hindu terrorists: Nip it in the bud by Offstumped. A short excerpt:
Bal Thackeray�s remarks are reprehensible. There is no moral sanction for Terrorism by any tenet of Hindu Dharma. Those responsible for the Thane bomb blast must be brought to trial and any attempts by them to appropriate moral sanction under Hindu Dharma must be denounced unequivocally. There is no room or place for Terrorism by Hindus for Hindus with Hindu Dharma as moral cover.
Terrorism is Adharma let there be …

Came across this news-report yesterday and wondered whether there is now sufficient�evidence to�declare Pakistan a state-sponsor of terrorism?�
…Elements of Pakistan’s ISI and its paramilitaries are actively backing Taliban insurgents and if their sanctuaries in the country are not eliminated, the efforts of the US and its allies to stabilise and rebuild Afghanistan will be in jeopardy, a leading US think-tank has warned.
The study by Rand Corporation, funded by the US Department of Defence, finds that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate and Frontier Corps have failed to root out Afghan insurgent groups…in …

Yesterday, I was alerted to this news-report from earlier this week in which�Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad�was�quoted as saying:
the state of Israel will cease to exist with or without the involvement of his country.
‘This will happen whether we are involved in it or not,’ the Iranian leader told a news conference…..
He had been asked to explain his statement earlier this week in which he said the Jewish state would soon disappear from the map.
This is�not the first time�that Mr Ahmedinejad has expressed similar sentiments…But the reason this particular report caught my …

Unfortunately this is one list which does not stir any pride:�Dawood 4th ‘most wanted’ criminal on Forbes list�

Some�believe naming and shaming the criminals and the countries that harbour them will help�
Referring to the Forbes list, former CBI director U S Misra (said)…”These lists will put pressure on such countries which will have to answer their own people in due course for giving shelter to the fugitives.”
Misra, a former Interpol vice-president, said details of such fugitives…will tell the world how the country concerned was not cooperating with Interpol by …

Fellow blogger Pastorius posted this great piece over at the Infidel Blogger’s Alliance. It touches on euphemisms and “media labels” regarding Asians, something on which I have commented before.
Excerpt:
“…There is a group of people in Britain who have distinguished themselves by setting off bombs in subways, preaching hatred of Infidels in Mosques, and carrying placards in the streets calling for a “real Holocaust” against Jews.
The media calls these people “Asians”.
In other words, the media uses a racial classification to name a group of people who are
1) driven by ideology, not …

Read these extracts from an Op-Ed by Kanchan Gupta in The Pioneer, “Unlike Israelis, we lack guts” in the context of recent developments in Israel.
Excerpts:
“….On a winter forenoon we take off from this airport…for Sderot, a frontier town on Israel’s border with Gaza Strip. Sderot has been in the news for more than a year now and has earned for itself a unique distinction: It is the most bombed place in the world yet its residents remain defiant and unshaken.
…
The first Qassam rocket — a crude device crafted out of …