Razi Azmi

The military coup of 1974 that overthrew the famine-stricken Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie unfolded slowly, just as famines do, after army officers bundled His Majesty out of the royal palace in the back seat of an old two-door VW Beatle and imprisoned him. To these officers with guns, it did not matter that he was […]

Africa beckoned me — sub-Saharan Africa to be precise — or what is known more commonly and historically as ‘black’ Africa. Although I have lived in Morocco and have also travelled to Egypt, neither country feels or looks African. Both countries are geographically in Africa and yet they are not ‘African’ in the sense that […]

Recently, Israel launched air strikes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in which scores of innocent civilian casualties including women and children have been reported. After about a week of Israeli bombing with drones and warplanes, a ceasefire has been secured with the active engagement of the UN, Egypt and the international community. As […]

Argentina, which shares a long border with Chile and is one of the two ‘superpowers’ of South America along with Brazil, has had its share of dictatorship and tyranny. In the ‘Dirty War’ against the mainly leftist dissidents that lasted for about seven years (1976-83), many Argentines were tortured in secret detention centres. Some were […]

Moving from Africa to Asia and South America in our survey of non-Muslim autocrats, dictators and tyrants, let us start with Burma, which has been in the news recently. General Ne Win ruled Burma for nearly 20 years after he seized power through a coup in 1962. Resigning as president in 1981, he continued to […]

Listening to Imran Khan and his legions of fans, admirers, supporters and followers, one would think that the cricket World Cup Pakistan won under his captaincy in 1992 is the world’s first (and last) or perhaps, the world itself. The ‘Great’ Khan’s name cannot be mentioned without, in the same breath, mentioning ‘his victory’ in […]

As Australia joins the war against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Australian media is becoming saturated with reports about the ISIS threat, police in Sydney have termed “a hoax” text messages making the rounds claiming that members of ISIS are knocking on people’s doors and marking Christian houses. A […]

The first thing that strikes one about language is the uncritical and excessive love and admiration people have for their mother tongue. Then, there is the ease with which native-speakers are able to communicate in their language, while foreigners struggle. Finally, it is the sheer number of languages and dialects in use. Native speakers see […]

Our train’s next stop in Siberia was Ekaterinberg, named after Catherine the Great (renamed Sverdlovsk during Soviet times). The fourth largest city in Russia, it is located just east of where Asia meets Europe. If one is alert and quick enough, as I was, one can see from the train window the marker on the […]

I never thought that one day I would write to defend the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas but such has been the turn of events lately that I am constrained to do so. I long ago shed the ideological straitjacket that I always found rather suffocating even as I proclaimed the glorious truth of my chosen […]