Malik’s blog entries from different web sites.
By Mustafa Malik SYLHET, Bangladesh — Aunt Salima Khatun, my mother’s sister, barged in to see me here in the Bangladeshi town of Sylhet. I spend part of my Bangladesh vacations in Sylhet, known for its tea gardens, cane furniture and the shrine of the famed Muslim saint Hazrat Shah Jalal. Behind Aunt Salima was...
By Mustafa Malik (Published in the Columbus Dispatch, October 12, 2011) Bangladesh has had a big political surprise since my last visit here a year ago. Its staunchly secular Awami League party government has amended the constitution, making Islam the “state religion”! The amendment also gave the constitution this opening statement from the Quran: “In...
(Published in the Daily Star, Lebanon, September 14, 2011; Dawn, Pakistan, September 13, 2011) By Mustafa Malik POLASHPUR, Bangladesh – Since September 11, 2001, I visited my mother four other times here in the village of Polashpur in northeastern Bangladesh. She is 92 and lives in my ancestral home, surrounded by three fish ponds and...
Book Review: Middle East Policy, Washington, D.C.; Fall 2011 By Mustafa Malik THE QUESTION once again: Is Pakistan a ‘failed state’ that’s going to bite the dust? Anatol Lieven is among the latest authors to try an answer. His book Pakistan: A Hard Country is a broad and detailed survey of the security, economic, social,...
By Mustafa Malik EVER SINCE THE U.S. NAVY SEALS killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the Obama administration is being urged by some progressives and conservatives to “declare victory and come home” from Afghanistan. The Taliban apparently have different ideas. They have ratcheted up their attacks on U.S. and NATO forces. The 30 deaths from...
THOMAS HEGGHAMMER, a Norwegian terrorism specialist, says Anders Behring Breivik is no different from Osama bin Laden, and he describes Breivik’s carnage in Oslo and Utoya Island as “an attempt to mirror Al Qaeda.” I agree. I would add that both 9/11 and the Norwegian tragedy are part of the fallout of the latest “clash...
By Mustafa Malik WHILE THE PAKISTAN ARMY reels from public outcry over it highhandedness toward the press and public, a bribery scandal involving top generals has brought the army under international scrutiny. Would this help bring the generals under civilian control and secure freedom and democracy in Pakistan, continually disrupted by military coups? Would the...
By Mustafa Malik (Published in the Daily Star, Lebanon, June 10; Islam and the West, June 10; and the Asia Times, Hong Kong, June 6, 2011) I’M SADDENED but not surprised by news of the slaying of Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shehzad. He didn’t have an American passport or other credentials that apparently had enabled...
By Mustafa Malik (Published in The San Francisco Chronicle, May 20; Islam and the West, May 22, 2011) The rebuff couldn’t have been starker. Sen. John Kerry was probably still unwinding on his return from Pakistan when the Pakistani prime minister decided to test U.S. foreign policy. He declared in Shanghai, “China is a true...
(Published in the Columbus Dispatch, April 30, 2011) By Mustafa Malik Democratization of Arab societies “would be a disaster” for the West, warns Princeton University scholar Bernard Lewis. Yet he predicts that Islamic political parties are “very likely to win … genuinely fair and free elections” in the Arab world. One of the West’s best-known...