Michael Krepon In the 1950s, when the Soviet Union and the United States were regularly conducting atmospheric nuclear tests and spreading radioactive debris, India took the lead in seeking to end testing and promote nuclear disarmament. New Delhi still talks about nuclear disarmament, but India’s influence has waned on such topics because it is caught betwixt and between: India still has the potential to command moral authority, but this is very hard to do as an outlier from global nuclear compacts.  
Contemporary advocates of nuclear abolition and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty owe a considerable debt to Jawaharlal Nehru and … Continue reading India’s got a finger on the button

Suicide Terrorism, an Islamic Phenomenon? Is this the only image of suicide terrorism? Resident “Islam expert” Robert Spencer is at it again, using his skills of obfuscation to smear Islam. In a recent post, he claims “suicide for jihad” is nothing new in Islam: Actually the idea of suicide in the cause of jihad is no innovation. It is founded upon Qur’an 9:111, which guarantees Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah. It is a phenomenon that is actually found throughout Islamic history, and is not new. In the 18th century John Paul Jones wrote about Ottoman … Continue reading Suicide Terrorism – is it really by just Muslims?

A little bit of religious bigotry is tolerable in a healthy society The new secular orthodoxy comes laden with threats to traditional religious beliefs and freedoms Henry Porter The Observer The first thing you want to ask about Gary McFarlane, the man who lost his case against unfair dismissal from Relate because he refused to counsel gay couples, is whether a fundamentalist Christian heterosexual with strongly held views about homosexuality was necessarily the best person to give advice on gay sex. The second is why it didn’t occur to McFarlane before he signed up with Relate, which advertises courses on … Continue reading Is religious bigotry is tolerable in a healthy society?

Smokers’ Corner: ‘Concerned’ journalism By Nadeem F. Paracha dawn.com What to say of an electronic media some of whose channels, for example, decided to place the cosmetic Shoaib-Sania saga at the top of their main 9:00pm news bulletins on the day the 18th Amendment was passed by the National Assembly and a terrible suicide bomb attack that ripped across a crowded area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Last week I visited one of Karachi’s sprawling (and impoverished) areas. I went there at the invitation of an old college friend who still lives there. Both of us were members of a progressive student … Continue reading Zardari and the media

Beyond beauty By Huma Yusuf dawn.com Unfortunately, Fatima Bhutto is not the first Pakistani woman who has braved the public sphere on the might of her brains, only to be judged on the basis of her beauty. Far from the firestorm in Pakistan, Fatima Bhutto is currently launching her controversial memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, in London. A recent launch event at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts was well attended by Pakistani expatriates, attired in their designer best and armed with fierce opinions about the Bhutto family. For the most part, that is. At the post-launch … Continue reading Fatima Bhutto

Not the voice of the creator By Ardeshir Cowasjee dawn.com Jinnah’s Pakistan has virtually ceased to exist, but there are still some who hope it has not yet been interred for ever. We inhabit a land where death no longer diminishes us, where those that hand it out do so with impunity, with no fear or trepidation. Day after dreary day it goes on — a professor, a woman, shot and killed in a rickshaw in Quetta, four policemen blown up in Peshawar, five ‘activists’ shot dead in Karachi, and more, much more. This land has a helmsman of little … Continue reading Idolism of the Mullah makes Pakistanis forget about Allah

Political Soldiers and the New Man – part one April 26th, 2010 by Dave Rich This is the first in a three-part series of blogs Edmund Standing wrote a while ago about a BNP member, Edith Crowther, who had posted a blog comment claiming that: I realised long ago that the BNP is the British equivalent of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whom I admire and respect and who have great courage. That is why I joined. There was some bemusement at the idea that a BNP activist could make this claim. However, these ideas are not new on the British far … Continue reading Why did Nick Griffin depose John Tyndall?

No ‘good’ Taliban thenews.com.pk Zafar Hilaly The regularity with which the military claims to be killing as many as 30-40 militants in a day may be gratifying, but the frequency with which the Taliban are bombing schools and police stations and killing friendly tribals, police, political workers and innocent civilians is alarming. As the military is spreading out the Taliban are re-infiltrating. Those who surrendered are being released by the military along with “surrender letters” allowing them to return home unmolested, which they do gladly, and then rejoin the fray. Others are released for “want of evidence,” or freed on … Continue reading Taliban Mullahs – find me the good ones?

BOOK REVIEW Reviewed by Robert E Looney In 1936 in the depths of a world-wide economic depression, John Maynard Keynes described the decline of the world’s financial markets as a result of playing at a casino: “Short-term speculation with little regard to fundamentals.” A cursory examination of the current global financial crisis suggests little has changed since Keynes’ day – the conventional financial system, despite various patches and fixes over the years, is still prone to periods of extreme instability and abuse. Unfortunately, the economics profession has provided little in the way of constructive input in re-designing a more stable … Continue reading Islamic finance – steady amid chaos