Maryam Sakeenah

We gloat over carrion; we gather like vultures to pick up the pieces. We discriminate between dead bodies under labels of ‘halak’ (merely killed) and ‘shaheed’ (martyred). As we do so, we don God’s hat, partaking of what is exclusively His right with a self-righteous audacity. Our opinions on the dead may not be worth […]

I am not very fond of conspiracy theories. There was some ire and annoyance over the insistence by the usual conspiracy-theorising lot that there was a ‘foreign hand’ behind the bloodbath of Christian citizenry in Peshawar. But I am not trading in conspiracy theories for the time being. What unsettles me is the fact that […]

The obvious conclusion from Egypt is that political Islam’s ‘concordat’ with democracy has proved a failed experiment. The few willing to undertake a deeper and more insightful analysis of the dynamics of political Islam as unfolded in Egypt are led to conclude that the problem is not democracy but the lack thereof. The right lesson […]

“Lost in the loneliness, we turn inwards — with a knife in our hands and a lump in our throats,” writes Muhammad Fadel describing the deep crisis in contemporary Muslim consciousness. The rising popularity of Salafism is a reactionary response over what is seen as the encroachment upon Muslim identity and culture by an ascendant […]