Credibility Deficit In The Western Media
The story could not have been summed up more succinctly: the photograph shows David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy in Tripoli holding aloft the hand of a Libyan leader they would like to promote. Below, the headline across three columns – “Islamists Rise in New Libya”. This was refreshingly honest.
Win in Libya and lose the Arab Spring
In the decade since 9/11, has the West’s rift with the Muslim world widened? There was a window of opportunity to compose the rift when the Arab Spring ushered in a secular mass mobilization in Tunis and more decisively in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.
Secular Muslim youth, Coptic Christians, a toned down Muslim Brotherhood, were all there, More >
Deniability a Must for Infidelity: The US-Pak Affair
Speculations will continue till doomsday on the level of coordination between the US and Pakistan in tracking down Osama. Four helicopters in a garrison town and the host (invaded) country knew nothing about the prize resident?
Arab Regimes Tottering Variously
Changes have taken place in Tunisia, Egypt and run into artillery fire in Bahrain, but Bush era analysts like Prof. Fouad Ajami have their fixations. Ajami places Saddam Hussain, Hafez Assad, Muammar Qaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Ali side by side.
He would have us believe that Saddam and Mubarak are on the same side of the Arab street. They are not.
Faiz, The Exile From Islamabad to Beirut
Is Faiz the greatest poet of the modern era? In the popularity stakes, he will win by several lengths. But scholars will toss up some other names – Josh Malihabadi, Yaas Yagana Changezi, Firaq Gorakhpuri among others.
Josh’s mastery of diction is like a river in torrent; lightening thunder, a pageantry of words to the accompaniment of a full 100 piece orchestra. But he is not just a wordsmith. He remains unmatched in the range of thought in his “Rubayat”, or quatrains in a specific meter. Faiz doesn’t even claim to be a poet of rubayi.
