Muslims and Liberals

Myriad East-West interactions renewing religious and secular values

Syria ‘extremists’ scare off U.S.?

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

 The Obama administration knows by now that Russia will not let any action against the murderous Syrian dictatorship get the green light from the U.N. Security Council.  In response, the administration is taking baby steps to help the Syrian uprising, dedicated to overthrowing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. These steps include sharing intelligence with...

Pakistan out of U.S. shadow

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” These were the words of a young antiwar activist named John Kerry, testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Forty-one years later Kerry, now chairman of the same Senate committee, was defending the Afghan war, in which the last man has probably yet to die.

Modern Islam Egypt Islamists’ goal

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

“The revolution goes on,” said Mohammed Mursi, on being declared president of Egypt in its first-ever democratic election.  He ran for president as the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party.  The transnational Brotherhood has been the world’s oldest Islamist movement. The president-elect has called for national unity. Mursi wouldn’t,...

Bangladesh’s Islamic modernity

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

By Mustafa Malik POLASHPUR, Bangladesh – A casualty of your trip to Bangladesh (and many other Muslim countries) could be the belief, or illusion, that Islam and modernity are conflicting value systems.   A college classmate’s visit to my ancestral home here in Polashpur village reminded me of this illusion, which is I see widely shared...

Democracy fluid in Bangladesh

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

By Mustafa Malik SYLHET, Bangladesh – Paralyzing general strikes, known here as hartal, remain a common and effective tool of democratic politics in Bangladesh. A local opposition politician has been kidnapped from a highway, which the opposition says was arranged by the ruling Awami League party. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), to which the abducted...

Bibi Obama’s moral test

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

By Mustafa Malik The other day Robert Malley said at a Capitol Hill seminar that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was “more likely” now than ever before. Malley is a widely respected Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group, and he gave two reasons for his concern. One, he said Benjamin Netanyahu...

U.S.-India relations hit plateau

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

By Mustafa Malik What was my take on “our growing relations with America?” asked Birendra Nath Basu. I met him on a passenger car to Karimganj town in the northeast Indian state of Assam.   Basu had a master’s degree in business administration and was returning from a job interview in Guwahati, the state capital. I...

Taliban fight for freedom, justice

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

By Mustafa Malik SYLHET,  Bangladesh — Aunt Salima Khatun, my mother’s sister, barged in to see me here in the Bangladeshi town of Sylhet.  I spend part of my Bangladesh vacations in Sylhet, known for its tea gardens, cane furniture and the shrine of the famed Muslim saint Hazrat Shah Jalal. Behind Aunt Salima was...

Secularism loses ground in Indian subcontinent

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

By Mustafa Malik (Published in the Columbus Dispatch, October 12, 2011) Bangladesh has had a big political surprise since my last visit here a year ago.  Its staunchly secular Awami League party government has amended the constitution, making Islam the “state religion”!  The amendment also gave the constitution this opening statement from the Quran:  “In...