Posts by parvez

Strange times, my friends...strange times

In the NWFP (North West Frontier Province) of Pakistan, a male suicide bomber dressed in a Burqa has killed 15 people.

On the Internet, Australian Lebanese designer Ahiida is selling Dynamic Sportwear and Swimwear for Today's Muslim Female. (TMF as I shall always call them forevermore). The Burqinis (TM) says Ahiida are chlorine resistant and water repellant.

I hope this new sartorial choice for the TMF's- repels much more than water-and has a special feature to repel those poor misogynistic Muslim men we hear so much about.

For all my god fearing Muslim sisters 'JIHADA's'- Ahiida has a SALE right now-she is giving us discounts so that we may swim freely on our rocky beaches in Gaza, and not have to worry about the bombs and bombshells from the Israeli 'Defence Forces'.

Its not been too long since the Jamia Hafsa brigade sheathed in Burqa's and armed with their weapons and Quran's tried to dictate morality to the Islamabadi elite.

Everyone knows how the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) fiasco ended for my namesake-President Musharraf. As an Indian
Muslim I am often in a Pakistan state of mind. Events in my neighbours' country, which is a mirror in so many ways of my own (and yet not) are always paramount in my mind.

The Home of the Brave?

Not quite, as we who engage find out, on a daily basis.

From a rather expected and mainstream news source comes this-

Secret US endorsement of severe interrogations

'Democracy' is hard work and for billions around the world the definitions vary.

In India, my home country and indeed the 'world's largest democracy'- governments have been voted in and out for generations since independence in 1947. The elected have always chosen to impose their
will and the expeditious re-naming as in the case of Iran has been frequent. Hence Bombay, became Mumbai when the Hindu 'extremists' of the Shiv Sena deemed it more culturally appropriate. And now we have Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkata and so many more. The pretext is often the idea of re-claiming national identity and in some of these cases, obliterating the painful memories of a colonial past.

I reproduce below, the text of my recent feature on The Huffington
Post. I do this because today, as I blog on Why Democracy?-I need to
state my opinion on Islam and homosexuality-the heart of my film called
'A Jihad for Love' and an issue that found an unlikely spokesperson in
the form of the Iranian President last week. I also need to move beyond
that issue, so hopefully this post gets some of us thinking about the
ideas expressed within. For more visit my blog home.