BetweenTheLines

  Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook I t is now clear as daylight: having Indian Muslims at each other's throats is an aspect of the larger project against them. Much of it is done with a lot of subtlety including through hired guns for deniability. One such hired gun, claiming to be a Shia, released a book this month and in the process revealed the hand of his sponsors by making some incendiary and unpublishable comments against Islam and the Prophet amid usual open calls for violence against Muslims. He got an instant pat on the back from his patrons but in the process ended up exposing himself for a Shia is defined by her devotion to the prophet and his family. ALSO READ: Indian Muslim Invisiblisation & Curious Case Of Pakistani Shias The Prophet, for Shias, tops the group of sanctified Chahardah Masum (14 immaculate from sin, or infallible). It includes the Prophet's daughter, Fatima, son-in-law, Imam Ali, grandsons, Hasan and Hussain, and Hussain’s descendants

Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook O n one of his trips to Srinagar, the capital of the Indian side of Kashmir, veteran BBC journalist Sir Mark Tully heard an unusual, rhythmically rising and falling chanting from a white marble mosque. The chanting at sunrise from the revered mosque on the banks of the Dal Lake in Hazratbal, which houses a relic of the Prophet Muhammad, he wrote, sounded 'not unlike Hindu bhajans'. Tully was not entirely off the mark. The chanting was that of Aurad-ul-Fatiha, an anthology of Quranic verses and the Prophet’s sayings  14th-century saint Mir Syed Ali Hamdani complied for converts to Islam to chant in mosques similar to how it was done in temples. ALSO READ: Once Scorned, How Peshawaris From 'Central Asia's Piccadilly' Ruled Bollywood The faithful have been chanting the anthology in mosques since then in a major departure from the otherwise Muslim practice of silent worship. Hamdani, who popularised Islam among the masses in Ka

Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook W hen Haider Qadir, the owner of a haveli Bollywood legend Prithviraj Kapoor’s father built in 1920 in Pakistan’s Peshawar, tried to demolish it, his neighbours intervened and had him arrested in January 2016. Qadir was granted bail a day later along with three other accused after cooling his heels overnight in prison. The four faced trial under antiquity law for damaging the three-storey mansion with arched windows and protruding balconies. Pakistan's provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in 2011 declared the haveli a heritage site along with that of another Peshawar-born actor Dilip Kumar’s ancestral house in Peshawar's Dhakki locality. The move recognised the emotional connect Peshawar has with several Bollywood legends, who were either born or have roots in the city. ALSO READ: Why Sufism Needs To Return To Its Essence Of Selfless Service Peshawar has been known as a cultural powerhouse and nursery for Bollywood. Perhaps no othe

  Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook D ozens of Rohingya fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar drowned when their boat hit a rock and capsized in heavy seas off the Bangladesh coast in September 2017. Among the dead were children as young as three, who had somehow evaded murderous mobs and the Myanmar military to flee. The visuals of dead babies and their grieving parents cradling, kissing them final goodbyes before lowering them in a mass grave fuelled outrage. The tragedy was the latest in the burgeoning humanitarian crisis that prompted the US to call out Myanmar authorities' actions against the Rohingya. At a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting, it called them “a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority”. But despite an untenable situation, China continued to defend Myanmar amid mounting global pressure on Naypyidaw to end the cleansing. ALSO READ: How Assad Weathered Storm In Arab Spring Aftermath China’s Rohingya stand was the latest in its

  Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook D eposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had been on the run for two months after the fall of Tripoli when rebels found him in a stormwater pipe near Sirte on October 20, 2011. He cowered as they held him by his arms, curly hair and frog-marched him out of the stinky pipe soaked in blood. Gaddafi, 69, was tortured before he was summarily executed. The ignominious end of the dictator, who had ruled Libya since 1969 and given himself lofty titles like “King of Kings of Africa’’, came months after Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s fall encouraged pro-democracy protests (Arab Spring) in the region. The protests threatened to uproot autocrats across the region as Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to quit while Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was toppled. ALSO READ: Why Years Before Taliban Takeover, Afghan Diplomat Khalili Saw It Coming  In Syria, the challenge to  Bashir al-Assad’s rule coincided with that of Gaddafi’s when protests erupted

Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook A fghan diplomat Masood Khalili had just enrolled for PhD after finishing his master’s degree from Delhi University when communists seized power in Kabul in April 1978. His father, the iconic poet and academic Khalilullah, called him from Baghdad, where he was the Afghan ambassador, to break the news. He warned Khalili that the communists had come and Russians will follow. 'Go get your PhD from the mountains of Afghanistan,' Khalilullah told his 28-year-old son. Khalili immediately left Delhi to join Afghan rebels as a political officer in Peshawar, before entering Afghanistan. ALSO READ: West's post-1979 Afghan Misadventure Continues To Cast Long Shadow Khalilullah’s fears came true the following year when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Khalili responded by crisscrossing the country, mostly on his donkey, for the next nine years to mobilise Afghans against the occupiers. In between dodging bullets, the red army,

Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook A significant section of the Indian media have been among the most formidable allies of ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They have over the years amplified and focussed on issues that boost the BJP’s main election-winning strategy of projecting India’s Muslim minority as the threatening other and fifth columnists that only the governing party is capable of dealing with. The prime-time debates on Indian television channels mostly focus on the Hindu-Muslim binary. Issues are often twisted and distorted to keep the focus on demonising the beleaguered minority.  ALSO READ: Ignorance About It Is Biggest Crisis Islam Faces The Taliban take over in Afghanistan was just another excuse for the media to continue vilifying Indian Muslims. While the Indian media were busy doing what they do best, they were also egging on a potential resistance against the Taliban in Panjshir Valley, the only Afghan province that did not immediately