There are many reasons to condemn and agonise over Pakistani Taliban’s wanton attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda on 20 January, causing twenty-one deaths and injuring more than thirty people, but two definitely stand out singularly. This private institution of higher learning was named after a great humanitarian and eminent freedom fighter, who avowedly believed in non-violence that he practised even before Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) made it into his unique creed. Khan, a towering and no less charismatic personality, began his long political career during the stormy day of the Khilafat Movement when Indian Muslims were deeply astir over events in the Ottoman caliphate. Exhortations for tolerance, non-violent resistance, modern education and an austere life endeared Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) across South Asia besides earning him a well deserved title, Bacha Khan—the King Khan. Charsadda was his birth place though the illustrious Khan willed to be buried in Jalalabad underlining his lifelong desire to solidify his ideas among fellow Pashtuns--often derisively called Pathans by the Raj and others. Not only this massacre of two teachers and nineteen students happened on Khan’s death anniversary, it callously took place in his very town as well and presumably the four perpetrators and their backers claiming responsibility for this heinous crime happened to be fellow Pashtuns for whom he had devoted his entire life.
"Terror and Consent" is an interesting book and is written in a narrative way which distinguishes it from any common essay on international affairs. It maintains clarity throughout its analysis and allows the average reader to look inside the depth of terror mechanisms.
"Al Qaeda is a political movement with a demonstrated military ability which has sought to bypass the state while co-opting its attributes and channeling its resources. It has, after concluding that the Arab state system is dying and incapable of defending the people's interests, claimed the right to defend Arab States against their external enemies and most of all the USA. Forging itself as a vanguard, it has separated two tactical fights: the domestic war against failed states, and the international war against the "far enemy".
A series of French and foreign scholars and researchers have embarked on an effort to approach a phenomenon that has increased in ìpopularityî since 9/11 in western media, academic communities and thinkñtanks; however, it still remains widely ambiguous. Analyses which focus on extremist movements in the Muslim world quite often use the term ìSalafismî along with ìJihadismî, ìWahhabismî and ìextremist Islamî. This kind of mixing of theological, militant and political terms obscures more than it reveals while confusing the reader and intensifying his or hers already troubled perception of the phenomenon under discussion. This work - the first one to approach the Salafist phenomenon under a global prism - sheds light on the course of salafism from its cradle in the Arabian Peninsula to its apparition in the Parisian suburbs, passing by the Middle Eastern world and particularly Morocco.
We are not done with war yet. World's pacifists can sit aside and think of new ways to uproot the social or political causes of conflict or wait for the next turning point in history to proclaim the end of war and be once again disappointed. In the meantime, as war remains relevant, Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew attempt to shed some light on the "something new, something old" nature of contemporary warfare that seems to puzzle many state officials and academics, even more so since a glaring example of it (Iraq) is bogging down the world's superpower.
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