What is the significance of the title of your book The Satanic Verses? Has it not some historical connection? Do not the verses which refer to the three goddesses, condemned as Satanic and repudiated by Allah, the same as your reference to them in your novel? Your words are so clear that no other inference seems possible: “These verses are banished from the true recitation, al-qur’an. New verses are thundered in their place.” “Shall He have daughters and you sons?” Mahound recites. “That would be a fine division!” “These are but names you have dreamed of, you and your fathers. Allah vests no authority in them.” -- Rafiq Zakaria

“Hizb ut-Tahrir will establish the Khilafah state which will eject USA, Britain, India and their allies from Bangladesh. The Khilafah will build this country as the starting point for becoming a global super power. This is by securing the basic needs of the people and solving the long running problems faced by the people such as poverty and unemployment, industrializing the country’s economy, building the army as a strong and advanced fighting force, and unifying with the Muslim Ummah. “ -- B.RAMAN

The ‘Laal Masjid’ was built in 1965 and was named for its red walls and interiors. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-1989), the Red Mosque played a major role in recruiting and training ‘local mujahideen’ to fight along with the ‘Afghan mujahideen’. The clerics managing the Laal Masjid enjoyed patronage from influential members of the government, prime ministers, army chiefs, and presidents. Several thousand male and female students lived in adjacent seminaries. The sources of funding had been mysterious. -- Naeem Tahir

The aim here is not to predict, but to contend that the Army has always claimed to be the defenders of Pakistan's borders and the protectors of their motherland, yet its record shows that it has not been the guardian of Pakistan's constitution. If the Army establishment is interested in the future of Pakistan as an economic success story, it needs to back off and let the political process take place. The Army needs to heed from Henry Kissinger advice, that Pakistan needs to think long term and needs to find a national identity that is not based on the fear of India. -- Farah Jan

One of the major challenges for the future of Libya concerns the presence on its soil of a variety of autonomous militias of various sizes, geographical origin, ideology and organizational aims. The consequent fragmentation of the security environment is a major obstacle for Libyan efforts to achieve an effective and functional statehood. -- Dario Cristiani

What about Pakistan? Where does it picture in a conflict shaping across its borders? In a country that is more anti-American than Iran, one would have expected overwhelming public and government support for Iran. But Pakistan’s enthusiasm for Iran’s bomb has been subdued. Officially, Pakistan defends Iran’s right to nuclear technology. Further, as Iran acknowledges, Pakistan had secretly helped Iran’s nuclear weapon programme until the mid-1990s through the A Q Khan network.  -- Pervez Hoodbhoy

Essentially, those who became Sunni believed that the heir to Mohammad should be determined by the community of elder Muslim clerics. To the contrary, those who became Shias (a distinct minority), felt Mohammad’s successor should come from the Prophet's own family, namely Ali, his son-in-law -- since Mohammad had no sons who survived into adulthood. Soon after, the Sunnis got their way and chose another successor as the first caliph. Ali eventually became the fourth caliph -- but by then it was too late, the cracks had already formed. In fact, Ali's selection prompted a war leading to his own death in 661 in Kufa, present-day Iraq. The relationship between the Shia and Sunni would forever be ruptured. Moreover, it was Ali's son Hussein who perhaps became the most potent symbol to Shia Muslims. -- Palash R. Ghosh

Here is what was so striking: virtually all the women we interviewed after the voting — all of whom were veiled, some with only slits for their eyes — said that they had voted for either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists. But almost none said they had voted that way for religious reasons. Many said they voted for Islamists because they were neighbors, people they knew, while secular liberal candidates had never once visited. -- Thomas L. Friedman

No theories hold. Deobandis and Wahhabis are supposed to be extremist in their views, but the Barelvis make the country boil over with a pathology that tames even Al Qaeda fanatics. In Pakistan - a castle of Islam - all sorts of people are trying to insult the Holy Prophet PBUH. In proportion to their minuscule population, Christians are getting the evil fallout of this extremism, and they are the poorest segment of Pakistani society. Blasphemy Law is the epitaph under which the state's cadaver will finally be buried. The victory of the Islamist in the wake of the Arab Spring is nothing compared to what Pakistan has become under this law. It is emblematic of the deadening of the soul of the people who populate Pakistan. -- Khaled Ahmed

IF ISLAMIST movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bete noire, Israel. Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams. That is true in Gaza, in Beirut, in Cairo and even in Tehran. Perhaps someday a fundamentalist Israel will make peace with a fundamentalist Muslim world, under the auspices of a fundamentalist American president. -- Uri Avnery

I had goosebumps reading the recent news that several criminals gathered in Lahore under the banner of the Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) and aligned themselves with the Pakistan Army. Was it a conspiracy to malign the army, I wondered. Who could be behind this? I have no sympathy for characters like Hafiz Saeed who have eroded Pakistani society and have pushed it in a state of profound crisis. Our health, livelihood, the quality of our environment, our social relationships, our ideology, economy, and politics have all been affected. It is a crisis of intellectual, moral, and spiritual dimensions; a crisis of a scale and urgency unprecedented in the 65 years Pakistan has existed. -- Ibrahim Sajid Malick

What is common among Neila Chaabane of Tunisia, Wael Ghonim of Egypt, Mohammed Nabbous of Libya, Razan Ghazzawi of Syria, and Bushra al Mugtari of Yemen? These women and men are ordinary citizens who seized an extraordinary revolutionary moment and changed the history of their countries through courage, self-belief and optimism. They form a representative sample from the millions of unsung activists and nonviolent foot soldiers of the Arab Spring which reverberated as a cry for freedom across the Middle East in 2011. Can the Arab Spring be partial and still be successful or will it require total revolution across all countries in the region? -- Sreeram Chaulia

This is wrong! Alslaf=Predecessors (The Prophet saw, his companions, their followers and their students. Salafe=someone who follow the salaf. The (E) is used to indicate the act of the following. For example someone follow Ford, so we call him Ford(e). The naming is fine, but the problem is when we start making this into a group which is HARAM: And do not be like the ones who became divided and differed after the clear proofs had come to them. And those will have a great punishment. Quran 3:105.-- Comment by 77MAD77MAD77

Sheikh albaani major scholar of this century did not make a mistake mayAllah have mercy on his soul..And sheikh uthaymeen did not agree with this man .all the major scholars say they are upon the Salafi manhaj aqeedat ahlus sunnah wal jamacah and Salafis saalih doesn’t mean dead people. it means THE RIGHOUS PEOPLE FROM THE PAST.. salafiyyah= following the footsteps of the righteous. Like the companions and the taabiciin.-- Comment bysalafisista82

Tunisia was the first and thus far the most successful experiment, but the future course will be decided by what happens in Egypt. To a Western world that has seen Arabs in black and white terms as terrorists and the good guys (those with the West), it has come as something of a surprise that masses of people can face bullets, repression and torture to demand their rights as human beings and free citizens of a free country.-- S. Nihal Singh

With the fledgling democracy expanding the space for political assertion, Egypt's liberals have a chance to enhance their profile in the public domain. Their defeat, despite their stunning success at the Tahrir Square, icon of the Egyptian revolt, has raised some salient questions. Did the young revolutionaries who sacrificed so much to bring down Mr. Mubarak end up, unwittingly, as agents of political Islam? Like the leftist Tudeh party of Iran, which in the end was forced to surrender the revolution to Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamist legions, will history judge the Tahrir Square pioneers as diggers of a foundation that established Egyptian theocracy? -- Atul Aneja

The handful that have officially named themselves Islamic and even those majority Muslim countries which have not, are a disgrace for the Muslim world at large! Their dismal record on Human Rights, Justice and protection of minorities, and unbelievable disparity of poverty one hand contrasted with obscene individual wealth on the other is long way off the mark to put it mildly in terms of Quranic Islam. Let us look at the known few official Islamic States of today in the light of the above. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Mauritania, and may be one or two more, are cited as examples. Those majority Muslim countries which are not named officially as Islamic, for example the Saudis etc fare no better! The world view of these Muslim States is that they are backward, ignorant, and oppressive of the poor, women and minorities living within its borders. -- Rashid Samnakay, NewAgeIslam.com

“On the 1971 break-up of Pakistan: “Right from the time of the creation of Pakistan some enemy countries were bent upon separating East Pakistan from West Pakistan. The machinations of such countries bore fruit in 1971, and East Pakistan was separated from the other part of the country and was given the name of Bangladesh”(p.78). This is the complete and exhaustive description in three lines.” – From [CLASS VI – Urdu Medium] Mu’ashrati Ulum, Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, 1st quoted by Pakistani historian K. K. Aziz in The Murder of History: A Critique of History Textbooks Used in Pakistan.

Punjabi poet Ahmed Saleem wrote a powerful poem against military oppression, which was published by Dr Has’an in a weekly; both were awarded one-year sentences by a military court. For the last 40 years while the Bangladeshis celebrate their liberation on December 16, some ultra-nationalist Pakistanis mournfully blame the separation of East Pakistan on a conspiracy. They are still convinced that the ‘traitors’ of the Awami League hatched a conspiracy to break Pakistan in collusion with the ‘scheming Indians’. -- Babar Ayaz

When a country of more than 180 million people is moved more by a naked Veena, than a burning Raja Khan outside the parliament, you know something is seriously wrong somewhere. For me though, I’ve had enough of nudity for the last few weeks. First there was Alia Mahdi, the Egyptian girl who posted a nude picture of herself, ‘self shot’ wearing nothing but red ballet pumps, stockings, one foot resting on a stool and a red rosette in her hair. In a normal setting, this would have easily passed for paedophiliac erotica, but when you add some well articulated rhetoric about women rights, freedom of expression, liberty, liberalism, countering the threat of a regressive Islamist mindset, what could have easily passed for vintage erotica magically transforms into something revolutionary. The fact that a nude Veena has managed to move a nation sickens me. The attention being giving to Veena was denied to Raja Khan, a man who stood for real change, a man who burnt himself outside the parliament because he could no longer afford to feed his children, a man who died in vain. It took a single man burning himself alive in Tunisia to topple a government and bring a tsunami of change in the region. For us, however, a naked Veena is more important, because she is ‘in her own way challenging the limits of the dominant religio-cultural discourse in Pakistan, which seeks to conflate superfluous notions of honour with the female self.’ -- Ali Rizvi

In any case, the emerging picture appears to be one of a new Sunni bloc led by Qatar and Turkey, currently including Hamas as a member. It is evident that this bloc is in opposition to the Iranian-led "resistance" axis that includes Syria and Hezbollah. More of a gray area is how this bloc will relate to Saudi Arabia, which has since Gaddafi's fall followed a "hands-off" policy towards Libya and is, as we have seen, more reserved in its approach towards Syria. -- Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

“They are not my forces. They are the forces belonging to the government. I don't own them, I'm President.” This, of course, is denial of the highest order. Syria is a police state in which Mr. Assad and his Ba'ath party cronies call all the shots — literally. According to the United Nations, Syrian security forces have killed more than 4,000 since protests against the regime broke out in March. (“Some mistakes committed by some officials,” shrugged Mr. Assad.) So it would be a mistake to write off the ruthless Syrian President, no matter how deluded he might seem on television. His regime has been remarkably resilient, despite having endured U.S.-imposed sanctions for the past seven years. The youth of Syria — brave, unarmed, idealistic — are being cut down by Mr. Assad's troops and yet the grim reality is that there is little the West can do to help them: we cannot control events in Syria or bring about a speedy end to the crisis. If the popular uprising against the Ba'athists is to succeed, Syrians — of all parties, sects and ethnicities — will have to make it happen on their own. The sad truth is, it is not our job to topple Mr. Assad. -- Mehdi Hasan 

The award has been named after Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, a key figure of the Indian freedom movement, a leader of the Khilafat movement and one of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia, a prestigious central university in Delhi. The award is given on his birth anniversary every year. Though the reasons for honouring these people were not mentioned in the Milli Gazette report, the Academy’s general secretary explained that every year, the academy honours individuals in recognition of their extra-ordinary contribution in the field of journalism, politics, and social service and so on. -- Mahtab Alam  

In Egypt, the ultra-conservative Salafis, who believe that Sharia should be imposed on every aspect of Egyptian life, won about 25 percent of the vote in the initial parliamentary election last month. The Muslim Brotherhood, which only believes that Sharia should govern some aspects of everyday life and influence some aspects of government policy, won 40 percent of the vote with its Freedom and Justice Party. The Muslim Brotherhood will have to strike deals with either the more extreme Salafis or with the minority secular parties if the prevailing de facto military rule is to be replaced with a working alternative. It seems highly unlikely that the Brotherhood would ever ally itself with secular parties, since it has already campaigned with the Salafis in some conservative areas and has refused to contest seats in districts where the Islamic vote might be split and allow a secular candidate to win. This is bad news for the United States, with our vital interest in maintaining peace between Egypt and Israel. It is bad news for Israel. It is bad news for Egyptian women. It is, above all, bad news for the significant minority of Egyptians who hoped that the peaceful uprising symbolized by Tahrir Square would lead to the establishment of a democracy in which secular, not religious, law prevailed and human rights were respected. -- Susan Jacoby

From Tunisia to Egypt, Islamists are gaining the popular vote. Far from threatening stability, this makes it a real possibility. Ennahda, the Islamic party in Tunisia, won 41 per cent of the seats of the Tunisian constitutional assembly last month, causing consternation in the West. But Ennahda will not be an exception on the Arab scene. Last Friday the Islamic Justice and Development Party took the biggest share of the vote in Morocco and will lead the new coalition government for the first time in history. And yesterday Egypt's elections began, with the Muslim Brotherhood predicted to become the largest party. There may be more to come. Should free and fair elections be held in Yemen, once the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh falls, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, also Islamic, will win by a significant majority? This pattern will repeat itself whenever the democratic process takes its course. It is this interplay between Islamists and others that will both guarantee the maturation of the Arab democratic transition and lead to an Arab political consensus and stability that has been missing for decades. -- Wadah Khanfar