IT’S been a few months now, and Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool is settling into his new job as South Africa’s representative in the US. It’s a far cry from Cape Town and the raging southeaster. In windless Washington the trees are turning gold in the soft autumn sunlight. Apart from having[…]

IPSA SPRING SEMINAR 2010 I am glad that Dr Auwais Rafudien, our Spring Seminar co-ordinator, has given me – admittedly a non-academic – some room for manoeuvre in his briefing. This evocative title, “South African media coverage of Muslims since 1994: villains, heroes, or zeroes?” is an ambitious one. To[…]

WHILST I can’t say that I’m exempt from its symptoms of ignorance, the chronic lack of honesty and ‘ilm reflected by those parading as arbiters of Islam today is absolutely mind-boggling. Their from-the-holster readiness to declare religious opinion – usually negative and frequently misinformed – is a stark contrast to[…]

The Hajj, the performance of the Islamic pilgrimage in the precincts of Mecca, coincides with the festival of ‘Eid ul-Adha. This is a festival that is celebrated globally by all Muslims who are not on the Hajj. So for 1, 5 billion Muslims worldwide, there is a simultaneous convergence of[…]

MY Malaysian publishers, Fajr Symphony, hand over 1,000 ringet (R2,000) for the Al-Imdaad Foundation in Kuala Lumpur recently. From left: Dr Yunus Yasin, Mohamad Sidek Ahmad and myself. During my tour promoting the South East Asian production of “Notebooks from Makkah and Madinah” I gave a slide-show, including my latest[…]

WHEN on travel one can encounter interesting noticeboards.
This one was at the Islamabad Club. No jeans either.

AFTER thousands of kilometres and thirteen flights, it’s good to be back home. But not so good to hear Malema reducing political debate to its lowest common denominator. Zille might be many things , but a cockroach? For the ANC’s yapping little poodle this is a new low. Almost thought[…]

FLYING near Peshawar towards Islamabad 35,000 feet above the ground, the morning sun begins to rise over the dusty, wrinkled terrain below me. Striking foothills lead to jagged mountains. Somewhere in the haze to my west are the Khyber Pass, and the road to Afghanistan. It’s then that I see[…]

      Photos copyright Shafiq Morton. Reproduction with permission only.