Feature – News Updates

West Bank – Sitting in my Tokyo apartment two years ago and planning a worldwide trip, I only considered travelling through Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as a means to get from Turkey to Egypt. The thought of travelling through the Middle East both terrified and intrigued me. The majority of the news I heard from Tel Aviv, Damascus or Beirut …

Jinnah, Nehru or Hindu extremism? Muslims punished for the sin of partition. Senior Indian politician Jaswant Singh who was minister for external affairs, finance and defence, was sacked by the Bharathiya Janatha Party, a political front of Hindu extremists Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,RSS, which demands  that Indian Muslims  either give up their religion, Islam,and embrace Hinduism or leave the country. Jaswant …

The Lockerbie case is not yet over. Last week’s release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan secret agent convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, has once again brought the case into the limelight, giving rise to much debate. Yet, the rightwing Western media have not seen the wood for the trees. Probably at the whipping command of the anti-Arab …

It is not just the ‘loony’ ‘vernacular’ media, as many are given to believe, but even the ‘respectable’, ‘mainstream’, ‘national’ English-language press in India that have sedulously cultivated the notion of ‘Islamic terrorism,’ so much so that the image of Muslims in general being either terrorists or their sympathizers enjoys wide currency today. While it is true that some of …

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was an intelligence agent. Since he worked for the Libyan government, he probably did some bad things. But he probably did not do the specific bad thing for which he was sentenced to 27 years in prison in Scotland. He only served eight years. He was released on compassionate grounds last Thursday by the Scottish Justice Secretary, …