It was a pleasure to have read Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian:

Last week Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch polemicist, spoke to a gathering of what The Spectator called “Britain’s biggest brains - politicians, editors, academics”. She told them that they were “actually at war, not just with Islamism, but with Islam itself”. Apparently, a good Muslim has no choice but to strive “to establish Sharia law”. Martin Amis, too, has recently informed us that moderate Muslims, if they ever existed, have lost out to radicals in Islam’s civil war. In any case, Islam is “totalist”: “There is no individual; there is only the umma - the community of believers.”

Never perhaps in history has so much nonsense been so confidently peddled about a population as large and diverse as this planet’s billion-plus Muslims. Within the past decade an Islamic movement has led Indonesia towards democracy, while market reforms in Turkey have created a new and religious middle class that now challenges the power of a secular elite.

Each one of the national realities Muslims inhabit is prodigiously complex and ceaselessly evolving, shaped as much by geopolitics - imperial conquest, the cold war, the war on terror - as by internal conflicts of class, religion and ethnicity. Closely examined, Muslim societies briskly dissolve our complacent, parochial notions about religion, democracy, secularism and capitalism. They expose, too, the notion of a monolithic Islam pressing down uniformly on all believers everywhere as a crude caricature.

Read the full article here

Prince Charles was recently in Konya, Turkey  on a state visit that coincides with Rumi’s 800th birth anniversary. Commenting on the appeal of Rumi globally, he said: “Is it perhaps the depth of yearning of the heart which we all feel and which he [Rumi]understands and describes so well.”

When asked what he thought of the shrine he added: “Fascinating, fascinating, there’s never enough time.”

He also made a speech there which is an amazing read. I am posting a few excepts here.

“God’s purpose for man is to acquire a seeing eye and an understanding heart.”

In an age of increasing ignorance, intolerance and mis-understanding it is perhaps worth reflecting on the one element that has the potential to unite us all – beyond the World-Wide Web or globalization. That element lies in the mystery of the heart. Is it not strange that at a time in history when every taboo has seemingly been broken; every sacred cow slaughtered, that the very idea of mysticism itself – the practice of the mystery of the heart – seems to have become of far less significance?

And yet have not the founders of the World’s greatest religions all spoken in one way or another of the need to enter the temple of the heart? Why? Because, surely, is it not the mystery within, when once unlocked, that is able to inspire the kind of inner understanding which can break asunder the law of cause and effect that so undermines our attempts at reconciliation?

Therefore, what better occasion and what better place than here, near the resting place of Mevlana Jalal’uddin Rumi, to re-dedicate ourselves to the purpose of re-acquiring and understanding heart…

Full text here

Advice doesn’t help lovers!
They’re not the kind of mountain stream
you can build a dam across.

An intellectual doesn’t know
what the drunk is feeling!

Don’t try to figure
what those lost inside love
will do next!

Someone in charge would give up all his power,
if he caught one whiff of the wine-musk
from the room where the lovers
are doing who-knows-what!

One of them tries to dig a hole through a mountain.
One flees from academic honors.
One laughs at famous mustaches!

Life freezes if it doesn’t get a taste
of this almond cake.
The stars come up spinning
every night, bewildered in love.
They’d grow tired
with that revolving, if they weren’t.
They’d say,
“How long do we have to do this!”

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing-pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don’t try to end it.
Be your note.
I’ll show you how it’s enough.

Go up on the roof at night
in this city of the soul.

Let everyone climb on their roofs
and sing their notes!

Sing loud!

– Rumi - version by Coleman Barks

Khaled Ahmed in a recent review writes:

 The scholar fears that his own religious validity may be destroyed through political contact. The king is usually keen to establish contact with the scholar for his legitimacy, not because he wants to correct his political behaviour

This volume on The Arabian Nights or Alf Laila wa Laila is the result of a conference held in Japan in 2002 to celebrate 300 years of the French version of the Arabic masterpiece done by Antoine Galland. Through it, the Japanese orientalists put on record their nation’s contact with Orientalism and revealed in the process some remarkable facts about the Nights hitherto unknown to most Muslim scholars. (more…)

Came across this brilliant quote from Einstein:

“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.” (more…)

Negotiating with my middle class guilt, I have been pondering over this article. I had posted on Richistans earlier - somehow the obscenity of excessive (many would disagree here) wealth continues to irk me and thankfully countless others. (more…)

Centuries ago, Guru Nanak composed these lines:

Within every body
Is the Lord hidden;
Within every body
Is His light.

(more…)

In an era when most British officials were interested only in exploiting India, a few remarkable men celebrated Hindu art and culture. William Dalrymple explores the rich legacy of their collections and commissions. See more.

 This is a good review of After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama. (more…)

I sent this poem to Fahmida Riaz a few days ago to comfort her. Little did I know that there would be another death of a close one; and I had to read it again to console myself! (more…)