Did the Ayatollah qualify for a PIO card?
From Hooman Majd’s excellent The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran:
Some secular Persian intellectuals … reserve a special hatred for Ayatollah Khomeini, not just because he founded the Islamic Republic, but because to them he wasn’t even Persian. Since his paternal grandfather was an India [...]
…is that it doesn’t accept compromises
It is one thing for the United States to attempt to recycle a strategy that worked in Iraq and consider applying it in Afghanistan. As Joshua Foust argued in the July 2008 issue of Pragati, that model is unlikely to yield comparable results in Afghanistan because of differences in socio-economic [...]
Permitting beards, regulating lengths
Other than tradition, there is no good reason for a the Indian Air Force to impose a blanket ban on beards. Sikh officers in all three armed services and the police force are allowed to wear beards and turbans. Beard-keeping is a tradition in the Indian Navy, and naval officers are allowed [...]
Religious diversity is the side effect of…increased threat of infectious disease
From the British Psychological Society’s Research Blog comes a rather startling conclusion: religion was established for the “avoidance and management of infectious disease” (linkthanks Rajeev Mantri):
Fincher and Thornhill used the World Christian Encyclopedia and the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network to compare the spread [...]
…played into the Hurriyat’s hands
Praveen Swami’s indictment is damning: “New Delhi’s well-meaning but ill-conceived dialogue process communalised Jammu and Kashmir and laid the ground for the ongoing crisis”
Experts have been telling New Delhi that the solution to this Islamist upsurge lies in negotiations which will give power—if not independence—to secessionists. Both the premise of this [...]
Indian Christians are Indians.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry, the Indian Express reports, “will summon India’s ambassador to demand ‘incisive action’ to prevent further attacks against Christians that have left 11 people dead in India so far, the government said on Thursday.” They even want the European Union to take up the matter.
Italy has no right to [...]
They didn’t do too well
No, not quite laughing matter, but amusing nevertheless. Here are some excerpts from Harry Gelber’s readable account of China’s relations with the (western) World, from 1100 BC to the present:
One Christian embassy was entrusted to the Franciscan, John de Plano Carpini, a provincial of his order at Cologne. He set out [...]
The local manifestation of a global pattern
It is hard to say, but it may well be that the Indian media prevented the Indian Mujahideen from setting off their tenth bomb. The earliest reports of the contents of their email made them appear merely dangerously confused. But as we learn more about what exactly they said [...]
The bias shows in a Chennai-based national newspaper
The Darul Uloom at Deoband is one of the most influential Islamic institutions in India. Since Deobandi militants have been responsible for much of terrorism and violence, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in India, it is natural to take notice when that institution organises an “All India Anti-Terrorism [...]
For he is the worst among men
Íñigo Balboa y Aguirre, the thirteen year old narrator of The Adventures of Captain Alatriste, is being held in the secret dungeons of Toledo by the dreaded Spanish Inquisition. As he goes through the daily routine of being interrogated (spared the rack because he is not yet fourteen) he [...]
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