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Tensions Have Eased
Editorial Team
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer proudly announced recently that
India-Pakistan tensions had diminished, and President Bush and Secretary
Powell had played a big part in this great achievement. Switch to reality
in Jammu and Kashmir, and we find that there were quite a few Kashmiris
for whom tensions definitely eased that same week. That's
because they are all dead, there is no tension any longer. The four young
women who were beheaded, they don't have to be tense about expressing
their feminity by not wearing that stifling veil. The four little children
who died as their father desperately tried to protect them from the
barbarians who had barged in......More...
Where Is the Mufti Headed?
ARVIND
LAVAKARE
Mufti
Mohammad Sayeed’s “healing touch” prescription in J&K is just not working
out. On the contrary, the fidayeen attack on the Raghunath temple last
month and the splurge of recent killings in Poonch and Rajouri villages
indicate that the supposed remedy is aggravating the disease; the lay
Indian certainly thinks that way.....More... Wahi: The
Supernatural Basis of Islam
Part IV -
Cultural relativism comes to the defence of Mohammed’s wahi
Dr. Koenraad ELST
There is a
school in psychiatry, now well past its prime but quite strong in the
1960s and 70s, which rejects the whole notion that we can arrive at a
diagnosis of mental disturbance for people from other climes and
cultures. If you tell that crowd about a psychopathological diagnosis of
a 7th-century Arab, they will dismiss it as cultural
imperialism, as projection of modern notions onto radically different
pre-modern cultures. In non-specialist circles, this cultural relativism
is now probably stronger than ever before: postmodern intellectuals
refuse to be “judgmental” about characters from other cultures,
including the Prophet of Islam....More...
September 11 in International
Relations Theory
Sreeram Chaulia
An event as epochal as September 11 is bound to provoke theorists of
international relations. Over the past year or so, there has been a race
in academia to claim the first prize for the best theory to explain the
events before and after September 11. The consensus is that the dominant
discourse of realism has won, because it conceives of conflict and
destruction as natural in an anarchical world (from Thomas Hobbes'
"anarchical state of nature")......More...
The Vertex of Evil
Dr. Subodh Atal
As 2003 dawns, a statement made by US President George W. Bush almost a
year ago attains significance in a manner in which he surely didn't wish
it to. In his 2002 State of the Union speech, the President spoke about an
'axis of evil' that threatened peace and freedom around the world, and he
named Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the corners of that axis. In January
2002, none of the three nations were as much of a threat to either the
United States or the rest of the freedom-loving world as they have
become today........More...
Jammu & Kashmir:
Suicide Terror
Kanchan Lakshman
The lethality of
any terrorist group is proportionate to the effective strategies that it
unveils and the levels of violence it can inflict upon a target society.
Suicide terrorism is now widely considered a relatively cost-effective,
high-impact tactic in various theatres of conflict, including, over the
past three years, in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). 338 persons have
been killed and another 432 injured during suicide [fidayeen]
attacks between July 1999 and November 2002.....More...
Mushirul Hasan and Gujarat
Vinod Kumar
Mushirul Hasan, an erudite man, highly regarded in India's political and
intellectual arena, in a recent article (Strongman Politics, Indian
Express, and November 27, 2002) has compared Narendra Modi, Chief Minister
of Gujarat to Josef Goebbels of Nazi Germany.
Mushirul Hasan also charges Patel of suspecting the loyalty of the Muslims to
India. Well, if he did, he was not the first or the only one to do so.......More...
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