After the assassination of Mr Salmaan Taseer, the space for debate on the law has narrowed down exponentially. Today, no one is talking about the brutalities committed in the name of that law (dozens of extra judicial killings) anymore. I find it tragic that his mission has not been carried forth by his supporters.

The national secretary of All India Mashaikh Board, Syed Babar Ashraf has protested the destruction of the holy sites and Islamic cultural heritage in Medina and Makkah by the ‘custodian of the two mosques’ and its expansion plans on the mosque of the holy Prophet (PBUH) by destroying three mosques in Medina. He has rightly termed the Saudi government’s actions as the ‘cultural genocide of the Islamic heritage’ in Medina to promote a five star culture in the holy city. The demolition and destruction of the holy places relating to the holy Prophet, his companions, his family members and other relatives in Makkah and Medina started in the 20 century with the establishment of the Saud kingdom. As they were affiliated to a Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, they destroyed all the sacred places, mausoleums, mosques and other buildings and relics that had any kind of association with the holy Prophet (PBUH)

Through distortion most school text books in Pakistan offer an inaccurate historical view of the subcontinent to children where history starts and ends with Muslims as a dominant cultural, military and economic force in the region. Through the practice of omission and exclusion, positive contributions of minorities in the society are widely ignored and excluded from text books....

A murder is a murder. It cannot be justified on any pretext, social, moral or religious. ... So-called honour killing was in practice in pre-Islamic Arabia. It is a custom of the Jahiliya. Arabs used to bury alive their innocent unsuspecting daughters with their own hands or pushed them into wells just to save their “honour” from the humiliation of having a damaad (son-in-law) and to escape the disgrace a father of a grown up daughter had to face in the morally decadent Arab society. Though Islam prohibited the killing of daughters, there are still people in Muslim society to whom their honour is above the rulings of the Quran and Hadith....

The fact of the matter is that both Iqbal and M A. Jinnah had a vague and ambiguous concept of the Islamic state they dreamt for which later materialized in the form of Pakistan. They left the world without elaborating their ideas on the subject. Muslim League, like the traditional ulema and clergy, was also incompetent to do this job. Though, a dire need was felt by League to define this future state which was then in the making. That is why immediately after the establishment of the state of Pakistan they formed a commission to draft the constitution, led by Mohammad Asad, an Austrian new convert Muslim and a prominent scholar of Islam. But ironically many of his ideas were too opposed by the clergy and the majority of the ulema. M. Asad was said to be the first passport holder of the new born country. He was in favour of rethinking the Hijab system and general state of women in Muslim societies.   

Each Islamic group has a phalanx of scholars who readily offer religious justification for their own actions and policies. Both groups wrangle and tangle as the spiralling saga of fatwa issuing intensifies. The views of Shaikh Hassaan, although radical and dangerous and not in the mainstream even among the Salafis, still offer a spiritual and ideological grounding for those Somali militants who are waging what they consider a “legitimate jihad” against the Somali government....

The Darul Ifta does not only declare them Kafir but Murtad (apostate) and according to some Hadith, apostates are to be killed though the Quran does not prescribe death for apostates. The Sunni radical outfits use these Hadiths to justify the killings of Murtads. Can the attack on the school buses carrying Shia children be justified or conducting suicide attacks on the Shia procession in Pakistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries be justified? The answer is a firm no....

Had the two sides taken the trouble to revisit important events from the days of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan they would have realised the importance of the ulema (clerics) in Afghan peace initiatives. Clause seven of the communiqué proclaims that an agreement had been reached on convening an international ulema conference to condemn suicide attacks, project Islam as “a glorious and peaceful” religion, and reaffirm that it was a hideous travesty to equate it with terrorism….

Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, is one of four sacred months during which fighting is prohibited. In Pakistan, it is usually one of the bloodiest. Sectarian militant groups see it as the perfect opportunity to target Shiite Muslims, who mark Muharram with daily sermons and frequent processions.

It is not liberal to blame those who haven’t governed the country for Pakistan’s failure to tackle terror. It is also not liberal to exclude from the narrative, the “real puppeteers” in the US and Saudi Arabia, without whose financial support this illiterate, rag tag bunch of zealots wouldn’t have a pot to urinate in, let alone the resources required to wage a war against NATO and Pakistan for over a decade....

As I jumped from one social media to another, I was shocked at what I found circulating through my news feed. People were busy talking about new Bollywood releases. Some amazing soccer goal by Zlatan Ibrahimovich or the usual Pakistani political banter; what shocked me was how everybody on my network had completely ignored the Palestinian massacre the night before, it wasn’t something extra-ordinary for anyone to share and most of the folks have taken massacre in Palestine as norm…..

What we are witnessing today is that only one of the myriad interpretations is gaining currency within the Muslim world, an interpretation which is very close to the Wahhabi idea of Islam. This creeping Wahhabisation of Islam, and its uncritical acceptance even by the followers of Sufi mediated Islam is worrisome, to say the least. In the long run it might lead to total surrender of popular Islam to a more scripturalist, literalist and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam which will become increasingly disconnected with the local mores and customs of Indian subcontinent. We must recognize that we are not particularly enamored by certain aspects of the Shariah. For example, we do not advocate that hands should be cut of for petty thefts. Similarly we do not say that adulterers should be stoned to death. If the custodians of the dargah and their advocates are so fond of Shariah, would they also advocate its application in criminal law? If not, then why are they selective in their application of Shariah? Is it that they remember about Shariah only when the questions of women’s rights and access comes into the picture?

Without getting into the ‘dos and don’ts’ of the claim regarding the JuD being nothing else but a welfare institution, there is a concerted effort to fashion a new image of the militant outfit and make Saeed look like Santa Claus. More importantly, this narrative-change is happening in the West as well. The Pakistani deep state may have its need to fashion a new image of the JuD, but it is tougher to understand why this dressing up is being done by the West....

The rising radicalisation of Maldivians has been a cause for concern in India for several years, and it is well-known that a Maldivian was involved in the Mumbai attacks of 2008, as is the fact that the terrorist organisation Lashkar e Taiba has been operating and recruiting in the Maldives. Young disaffected Maldivians are many, and most are highly vulnerable to ideological indoctrination by individuals who propagate extremist ideologies....

Owing to the imaginary threat of secularism, Islamists shriek a false siren of "Islam in danger", whereas the fact remains that within Pakistan secular voices are only limited to online activism. Of all the accusations and tags, the lethal one is being a secularist. A good one for hurling offenses, more of a swear word. Don’t call me one; I just like to liberate myself on selective occasions....