The debate in the West is marred by intellectual sloth, moral blindness, cultural perversity and political arrogance. Not a few in India share these traits as they enlist themselves in the contest. As Louis Michael Seidman of Georgetown University noted: “We have plenty of free speech in this country, but not nearly enough free speech about free speech itself.”...

In the very coherently written introduction we are offered an overview of the book’s major themes and the aims and purposes of the book. In the second chapter an impressively comprehensive and well informed engagement with and a critique of relevant existing literature on religious fundamentalism in general, including the problems of terminology, is developed ranging from that with the focus on scripturalism, to social determinism, cultural and political essentialism and to a lesser degree that of psychology ( or social psychology).....

Another important and useful distinction that Marranci advocates is that between the self and identity with which he attempts to find the solution to broader anthropological questions regarding issues pertaining to reflexivity, agency and the notion of multiple identities in individual selves. Since my critique will not concern itself with the broader anthropological questions of the relationship between the self, culture and identity, I shall leave them aside for those who are more familiar and better qualified than I am to deal with....

When they are not hunting down terrorists or doing rock-drills, the SEALS are knee-deep in red tape. Mark is frustrated with a changing system that works against them and for the enemy. He grumbles at the “pages of Power-point” that it now takes to get a mission approved. About enemy tactics and its evolving nature, he observes how their foe started hiding the weapons, “knowing we couldn’t shoot them if they weren’t armed”....

No doubt the book carries its share of sadness; one can picture Joseph Anton, like Janis Joplin, thinking "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Rushdie, however, is more than Joseph Anton, more than a man once condemned to death, more than a poster boy for defenders and detractors of free speech alike. Joseph Anton: A Memoir resoundingly announces that Rushdie, man and writer, survives, thrives, and continues to surprise....

About fifteen years ago, my London neighbourhood began to change. We noticed it first among the crowds on our rough-and-tumble shopping street, Holloway Road, where there were suddenly a lot more women with covered heads: some wore a colourful hijab, others the white veil popular among East Africans, still others the heavy black chador, and occasionally by the bus shelter a pair of eyes would peer from a narrow slit in the all-concealing black sack of a Saudi-style abaya and niqab....

The partition, without a doubt, was the worst disaster to ever hit India. Community and Consensus in Islam has just been re-published with an interesting foreword by the Director-General of National Archives of India, Mushirul Hasan. But it must be said that although her study is based on solid research it does suffer from the infirmity of drawing the wrong conclusions from an array of right facts....

No culture has ever been pure, no tradition self-enclosed, no identity monolithic." This is the argument of Ranjit Hoskote and Ilija Trojanow in Confluences: Forgotten Histories from East and West. Itself the product of a collaborative effort across continents (Hoskote is Indian, Trojanow German) the book traces a history of the world in which cultures reach out to, influence and bleed into (sometimes literally) one another. This constant merging of traditions, Hoskote and Trojanow suggest, is the "lifeblood" of culture.

He has attendant angels, before him and behind him, watching over him by God's command. God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves. Whensover God desires evil for a people, there is no turning it back; apart from Him, they have no protector.

If you do not help him, yet God has helped him already, when the unbelievers drove him forth the second of two, when the two were in the Cave, when he said to his companion, 'Sorrow not; surely God is with us.' Then God sent down on him His Shechina, and confirmed him with legions you did not see; and He made the word of the unbelievers the lowest; and God's word is the uppermost; God is All-mighty, All-wise.

بسشٹ نے فرمایا کہ راجہ بھاگیر تھ نے ابتداء جوانی میں تصور کیا کہ دنیا کے سب کام مکر ر اور دوبارہ ہیں اور ہمیشہ راتدن آگے پیچھے آتے ہیں اور جو کچھ کل کیا گیا وہی آج کرنا چاہئے چاہتا ہوں اہتمام کرو ں کہ دوبارہ نہ ہو اور پھر کام کرنے کی  حاجت نہ ہو  او رکوئی مطلب ایسا نہ ہو اس لیے اس نے نرمل رکھیشر کے پاس جاکر اُس سے پوُچھا کہ عالم کے غم خصوض مرنے کا غم کس طریق سے برطرف ہوتا ہے نرمل نے جواب دیا کہ جو کچھ قابل جاننے کے ہی یعنی پرم آتما اُس کو جس نے جانا سب غمو ں سے خلاصی پائی بھاگیر تھ نے کہا میں  یہ بات جانتا ہوں مگر یہ دانستگی میرے دل میں نہیں  ٹھہرتی۔ Yoga Vashishta, Translated from Sanskrit into Persian by Prince Mohammad Dara Shikoh

What, have they not journeyed in the land and beheld how was the end of those before them? They were stronger than themselves in might, and they ploughed up the earth and cultivated it more than they themselves have cultivated it; and their Messengers came to them with the clear signs; and God would never wrong them, but themselves they wronged.

اے رام چند ایک شکاری تھا کہ ہرن کے تیر اُس نے مارا مگر تیرا ُ س کا کاری نہ لگا ہرن نے غمی ہوکر بھاگا شکاری ہر ن کی تلاش میں بہت دوڑا اتفاقاً ایک مرد مرتاض کے مکان پر پہونچا جو مصروف عبادت تھا اور اُس سے پوچھا کچھ آپ کو معلوم ہے کہ ہرن اس راہ سے گذرا اور دیش  نے جواب دیا کہ تین خصلت جو تمام کائنات رکھنی ہے میں  نہیں رکھتا جاگرت وسپن و سکھپت اور تری اوستھا کے مقام میں رہتا ہوں اور اس مقام میں ایک کے سوا نہیں  دیکھتا  اے رام چند تو بھی یہ مقام حاصل کر اور عارف لوگ اسی مقام کو ڈھونڈ ھتے ہیں۔ Yoga Vashishta, Translated from Sanskrit into Persian by Prince Mohammad Dara Shikoh

Those who devour usury shall not rise again except as he rises, whom Satan of the touch prostrates; that is because they say, 'Trafficking (trade) is like usury.' God has permitted trafficking, and forbidden usury. Whosoever receives an admonition from his Lord and gives over, he shall have his past gains, and his affair is committed to God; but whosoever reverts -- those are the inhabitants of the Fire, therein dwelling forever.

He sends down out of heaven water, and the wadis flow each in its measure, and the torrent carries a swelling scum; and out of that over which they kindle fire, being desirous of ornament or ware, out of that rises a scum the like of it. So God strikes both the true and the false. As for the scum, it vanishes as jetsam, and what profits men abides in the earth. Even so God strikes His similitudes.