JK Alternative Viewpoint

By Democratic Students’ Union   “The native is declared [by the coloniser to be] insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive [...]

The recent signing of a resolution after a meeting of the Muslim Spiritual Board of Dagestan on the one side, and the Salafi-backed Association of Akhlu Sunna on the other on April 29, appeared on the surface to herald a sensational victory for the Salafis and Sufi brotherhoods in the North Caucasus republic (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, May [...]

The writer is author, most recently, of The Apricot Road to Yarkand (Sang-e-Meel, 2011) and a member of the Royal Geographical Society salman.rashid@tribune.com.pk In 1914, Alfred Joyce Kilmer wrote a poem titled Trees: I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest/ Against the [...]

Smoke rises from Lauder in Yemen’s Abyan province where Al-Qaida militants are fighting with government troops on May 14, 2012. Xinhua / ZUMAPRESS.com A chorus of wailing muezzins and rattling windowpanes awoke residents of Yemen’s capital Sana’a on Friday as a sortie of government fighter jets dipped over mountains to the north and screamed across [...]

As China prepares for its leadership transition later this year, Beijing has faced an unusual number of high-profile political incidents of late, from the fall of Bo Xilai to Chen Guangcheng’s appeal for U.S. assistance. In a Q&A, Douglas Paal explains that these incidents may help shift the balance of power within China’s leadership to [...]

  ISLAMABAD – The fate of Dr Shakeel Afridi, the Pakistani physician who helped the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) track down and kill al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, hangs in the balance a year after his arrest by Pakistani security agencies on a charge of carrying out a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad to [...]

Islamic fundamentalism and postmodernism are ‘remarkably close in their critique of capitalism, although neither reject capitalism altogether or envisions socialism as a viable alternative. The only difference between them, perhaps, is that postmodernism offers no alternative to capitalism, while the fundamentalists serve up a more primitive capitalism in an Islamic wrap’ In Afghanistan where we [...]

Egypt’s post-revolutionary environment—and especially its constitutional process—has touched off debates within the country and confusion outside of it regarding the role of the Islamic sharia in the emerging legal and political order. In a Q&A, Nathan J. Brown explains what the Islamic sharia is—and is not—and how it might be interpreted in Egypt’s new political [...]

The cloud cover of sophistry that has been characteristic of India’s Iran policy in recent years lifted on Tuesday when the government admitted in parliament that it had taken a policy decision to reduce oil imports from Iran. The frank admission came on a day when an emissary from Washington, Carlos Pascual, special envoy on [...]

Prince Saud Al Faisal, left, visited Turkey’s foreign minister in Ankara in January. (Courtesy Reuters) Last month, Saudi Arabia rolled out the red carpet for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The visit was yet another example of the degree to which relations between the two countries have improved in recent years. Historically, the two [...]