Ahmad Ali Khalid

There is an unusual fracture stretching from the middle classes right up to the elite. The fracture is the series of pointless and divisive culture wars that have engulfed the burgeoning middle classes and affluent elite. As the nation is going through an existential crisis on many levels, it is amazing that our penchant for […]

It has now become clear that what the Iranian intellectual AbdolKarim Soroush had remarked is becoming a reality. A society which lacks religious intellectuals who can freely and unashamedly be critical in the public sphere and call to task fundamentalists and conservatives will inevitably decline into a form of tribalism with a veneer of religious […]

Events in the Arab world have dissolved easygoing stereotypical labels. As I have written previously, we should be more aware of the diversity within Islamism with some leaders like Rachid Al Ghannouchi promoting an Islamist outfit with a democratic and liberal bent. If anything, what is required is social engagement rather than shunning political actors […]

In liberal circles of religious scholarship there is a contention that ‘ijtihad’ is the tool that will solve all our grapples and puzzles of establishing a suitable religiosity for our time, which accepts human rights, democracy, freedom and economic development. Ijtihad is elevated from its formal place as a mere tool of legal reasoning restricted […]

The Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) and organisations like the Gulen movement represent the logical culmination of the democratic aspirations of the Muslim world. The combination of religious philosophy and liberal values whilst adopting secular state institutions and allowing religious voices a role in the public sphere is the most reasonable framework of democratic […]

The events in Tunisia and Egypt have done much to seriously question the type of political vocabulary we adopt in Pakistan. For too long we have associated the Right with religion, and the Left with the secular. But this understanding is symptomatic of a deep and dangerous illusion in Pakistani politics that refuses to acknowledge […]

Contemporary discourse about Islamic thought is one where the faith of over one billion people is at odds with the tenants of modern life. It seems that modern Islamic thought has failed to grapple with the challenges of modernity; these failures are reflected in the poor state of human rights, democratic governance, civic debate, economic […]