The sense of mountain or hill is derived from the sense of mounting, rising and growing. Indian music has a word for the rising note: ‘arohi’. The literal meaning of ‘aroha’ is ‘to mount’. Hindi also adds the word for horse (‘asva’) to mean ‘rider’. Thus, ‘arohi’ becomes ‘asvaroha’, meaning someone mounted on a horse. In Persian, we have the word ‘savar’ for ‘horse-rider’, also written ‘asvar’ to point to ‘asva’ the horse in it. Music notes ascend (arohi) and descend (avarohi)....

Sheikh Saadi narrates a story in Gulistan of a self-respecting person severely wounded while battling the Mongols being told that a miserly and ill-tempered person of a nearby village had medicine that may cure him. He replied that the miser probably would not part with it and even if he does, no certainty that it would cure him, so it is better to die with dignity. The self-respecting Baloch are not waiting for the medicine from the misers and courageously putting up a fight for their rights....

The debate about how Pakistanis should react to the violence has pitted liberals against conservatives in a way that says far more about Pakistani society and the appalling state of national discourse than it does about the plight of the Rohingya. In this polarised and politically expedient context, how can national conversations about the persecution of Muslim communities abroad be had more productively...

Hundreds of Rohingyas — a destitute, marginalised Muslim community disowned by the state — have been killed and maimed and tens of thousands made to flee their homes following organised attacks on villages by local Arakanese Buddhists. Inaction would only help radicals and jihadists, who might use the ‘Muslim genocide’ in Myanmar as a rallying call....

Arguing against what has become orthodoxy is difficult because most of the people who hold to its tenets are not malicious, just indolent and a little frightened. They have a genuine fear of racism, however ill thought through, and that speaks to their credit. Argument must be joined, however, because supporters of identity politics bundle the objects of their concern into racial and religious boxes, and label them "handle with care"....

“The breed of Qadianis will never change. They may multiply up to 99 generations; still the 100th one will continue to be a dualist-infidel and apostate. The reason is that their crime is a never-ending one. The offence will never cease to exist in their progeny. Let it be clear to every Muslim that the crime of apostasy runs throughout the lineage of a Qadiani….

As has become a pattern amongst the chauvinist Rakhine writers their narrative about the ‘other’ people – the Rohingyas of Arakan – all start with the British colonization of the territory in 1826 after the first Anglo-Burma War of 1824-26, as if they had no past connection to the soil of Arakan. Theirs is a flawed theory that is so childish that one can only pity their proponents and promoters on their level of ignorance....

“Burmese helicopter set fire to three boats carrying nearly 50 Muslim Rohingyas fleeing sectarian violence in western Burma in an attack that is believed to have killed everyone on board,”... Why would anyone take such fatal risks? Refugees are attempting to escape imminent death, torture or arrest at the hands of the Ethnic Buddhist Rakhine majority,...

What hurts is that the Saudis address the white expats of Europe and America as ‘rafiq’ (friend). What of the concept of ‘ummah’, he asks, which means that all Muslims are one nation? He discovers that ‘ummah’ applies only to Saudis, Iraqis, Egyptians, Yemenis, Kuwaitis Bahrainis, Emiratis, etc., but not to others. Arabs only, it seems, qualify. The Saudis abolished slavery only recently in 1974. Then why are we ‘Miskeen’? Is it really abolished though? ...

There are those who champion religious minorities and raise their voices against oppression. There are those who believe that Pakistanis have ‘bigger things to worry about’. And then there are those who actively pedal an anti-minority, pro-religious violence stance. So secure are Qadri’s family in their piety they said that although Mumtaz is their youngest brother, his actions mean they all “look up to him”. “His trial is not just about him. The whole ummah is on trial.”...

WE have made this Islamic Republic such a heaven on earth that we struggle to find words, often fight over these, to describe what its proud sons are capable of. Butchery, slaughter, carnage, mass murder and of course genocide have been variously used to describe such bloodlust as is being evidenced in the Balochistan capital. Your vocabulary is as good as mine. And what do we do? We prioritise. In Balochistan, our first priority is to tackle those who are ‘threatening the integrity of the state at the behest of their foreign masters’....

 The film, based on actual news reports, is a multi-generational account of a blood feud between two Muslim families―one Pathan and the other Qureshi (butcher)―and how it is used by a powerful Hindu Bhumihar for political gains… The Khan and the Qureshi communities live on different streets of the village. Although both are Muslim and pray at the same mosque, there is no love lost between them. The Qureshis are dominant, and all other Muslims are afraid of them. The dichotomy has little to do with religion, sect, ideology or beliefs. It’s rooted in local history and is all the more real for it, surviving colonial rule, Independence, Emergency, the transfer of mining rights from the British to local contractors and back to the government, even the death of illegal mining as a lucrative business. Governments, politics and economics change, but the social fracture remains....

'We expect that till the end of August, this anarchy would continue, when finally, Insha Allah, Supreme Court and army would then be forced to step in decisively to bring in a caretaker government which would start to stabilize the country. Insha Allah, there will be no elections. Also, Insha Allah, the PPP regime and the PML (N) will not form the caretakers as they plan to do. This duty will also be done by the SC and army, Insha Allah'. ...

The incessant bombing of churches and Christian populated areas in the Northern part of Nigeria by members of the Boko Haram sect is causing concern in some quarters, with examples of countries like the former Soviet Union being cited as countries that started the same way and ended as history. In this piece, “The attacks on Christian worshippers in Kaduna and Zaria last Sunday, claimed by the terrorist group, Boko Haram, and the consequent reprisals on innocent Muslims, represents a dangerous descent into anomie, ....

The perpetrators of the Bengali genocide never learnt anything from history. This time the playing field is Balochistan and the targets are Baloch intellectuals. There has always been a cleansing by occupiers and dictators of the intelligentsia who stand out from the masses. The occupiers have reasons to do this as intellectuals and artists, based on their popularity and position in society, are the kind of people who would be most able to influence the masses....