In a short period of time the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has shaken up India’s political landscape by offering an honest alternative to the mainstream national parties, specifically the Congress and the BJP. This article is an attempt to understand AAP’s credibility on certain crucial dimensions, namely

After the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti in 2011, Dr. Paul Bhatti accepted a political role in the government, knowing that he was not a politician. I believe he had some concern for minorities in Pakistan that is why he left Europe to continue the work which was left undone by the sad demise of his broth

A Resolution of the Goa Legislative Assembly and a Memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister last year seek special status for Goa under article 371 of the Constitution of India. This special status is sought on two grounds. As a result of large scale purchase of land by persons from outside Goa, i

In a world where people of different faiths and ideologies interact closely with each other, dialogue is a very important imperative. Islam lays great stress on dialogue. The Qur'an requires us to invite people towards the path of our Lord intelligently, and if there is a debate, it should be conduc

If you ever get a chance to spend a night in a common Christian family living in slum areas. And if you can picture the issues they face in their daily life. And the most important; is to remember the sufferings, if you ever get a chance to become in power at any level. I am particularly talking abo

Bangladesh is under threat because of dangerous internal forces that persistently try to crush religious minorities and to dismantle the secular state. Jamaat-e-Islami is a continuing cancer that threatens society directly along with sinister political forces that manipulate Islamists for personal g

Turkey under Prime Minister Erdogan, alias “The Great Leader Erdogan,” is moving the nation into the orbit of Central Asia whereby leaders dictate from high. The corruption scandal just like numerous serious issues are all being dealt with by manipulation and abusing power mechanisms in order to usu

A major purpose of what is called ‘interfaith’ or ‘inter-religious’ dialogue (or, more properly, dialogue between members of different religious communities) is for dialogue partners to understand and learn from each other. What, then, should be the scope of such dialogue? Should it focus on trying

There is much talk about inter-religious dialogue these days. Inter-religious dialogue is, of course, to be welcomed. But we need to be clear on some very basic issues. One of the most important of these is: What exactly should be the basis of this sort of dialogue?
I believe that the basis of al

With the growth of extremism in Pakistan, the minorities of Pakistan and particularly the Christians have become constant target at the hands of misconceived and uneducated extremist masses, who take it their religious duty to inflict the weaker religious communities of Pakistan.
Over the past year

Negotiators representing Pakistani Taliban insurgents said that there could be no peace until Pakistan embraces Islamic Sharia Law and US-led forces withdraw completely from the neighboring Afghanistan. Sami ul Haq, founder of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the head of the TTP’s three man talks team, said

I am Pastor Paul S. Nair. I was born in a Hindu Nair family in Kerala in India. My name was Sundaresan Nair. We had three temples for my family. I was doing poojas (form of worship by prostrating before idols and offering flowers and fruits as sacrifice) to the Hindu deities and worshipped many Go

(CHHATTISGARH SERIES: KALPNA AGREES FOR RAIPUR is the seventh short fiction in the Chhattisgarh Series by Stephen Gill. It is about love between an Indian married woman and an Indo/Canadian writer. One believes in love and another in detachment. The result forms the base of the chapters on Kalpna,

Jordan needs to reevaluate its foreign policy with America because issues related to Israel, Palestine, Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood are all problematic. The current elites in the Obama administration are intent on imposing their “colonial mindsets” by dictating to others. Therefore, Jordan shou

Iran is an anomaly because while Ayatollah Hossein-Kazamani Boroujerdi languishes in prison for holding his Shia beliefs, the theocratic leadership in this nation doesn’t mind trading with anti-Shia nation states. At the same time, the Shia community suffers enormous persecution in nations like Bahr