Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, & the Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Ahmed Rashid)
Behind all wars, Ahmed Rashid contends, are power brokers who remain hidden in shadows. Afghanistan and all that has happened to it is no exception. Bringing his immense and intimate knowledge of the geo-political and spiritual layout of the country to bear, Ahmad Rashid takes us into the brutal and quasi-tragic world of the Taliban. [...]
Weblog updates
There are some changes to my weblog that might or might not be that noticable. First off, I have removed the Categories feature because it served no practical purpose. I know that’s the case because I see virtually no referrals from the del.icio.us site that runs the categories.
More useful are the ‘tags’ attached to the [...]
Detox the orthodox
Men have always differed and because religion through the vehicle of revelation has largely been an interpretative enterprise, lots of problems can arise. Early in the history of Islam, caliph Uthman (the third leader after Prophet Muhammad) appointed a commission whose sole task was to compile the Koran into a book. Before this, the main [...]
Usama bin Laden’s bedtime story
"The unluckiest man in the world is he who rides the lion or rules Yemen" – from an ancient Yemeni poem In the so-called war on terrorism, propaganda is as critical as military might. Propaganda bolsters personal morale and conviction, and is liberally employed by both sides of any conflict. President Bush’s invocation of God in [...]
Who are the Taliban?
The Wahhabi Myth (TWM)- a website created two years after 9-11 to discredit links between Usama bin Laden and Salafism- states quite categorically that “…the Taliban are Deobandi Sufis.”
The Deobandi are Muslims of South Asia and Afghanistan who follow the fiqh (tradition of jurisprudence) of Imam Abu Hanifa. The name comes from Deoband, India, where [...]
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