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Many Muslims wanted or wished Salman Rushdie dead, and some still do. There are also Muslims who Muslims prefer he didn’t exist or just disappeared from the face of the Earth. Some other Muslims from the beginning believed that the anti-Rushdie campaigns run by various Muslim groups in the late 1980s would be counterproductive, harm […]

During an exhibition on East India Company at Mile End Arts Pavillion in early October 2010 (by Brick Lane Circle), I was giving a tour to a white man in his forties and his young son, probably around ten years old). I usually wouldn’t use the phrase ‘white man’ in this way, but the context […]

‘Lutfur Rahman’s corrupt Tower Hamlets power base finally wiped out by Labour’s election landslide‘ https://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-council/lutfur-rahman-s-corrupt-tower-hamlets-power-base-finally-wiped-3593132 – East London Advertiser (9 May 2018) The above assertion was made by Mike Brooke of the East London Advertiser in the aftermath of the 2018 Mayoral election in Tower Hamlets. There was an implied prediction that Luthfur Rahman’s era […]

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.” Arundhati Roy By M Ahmedullah Nationalism can be grounded on racial, religious, ethnic or […]

I am not commenting on the next Mayoral election in Tower Hamlets on 5 May 2022. Whoever the people of Tower Hamlets elect will be good enough as I believe in and respect people’s judgments. Even if people make mistakes one or two times, things get cancelled out in the long run, and people’s choice, […]

Economic disparities between East and West were undoubtedly factual. But according to my understanding, the growth rate between the two wings of Pakistan became nearly the same by the end of the 1960s. I want someone to explain the reasons for the economic disparities. For example, was West Pakistani ‘colonial exploitation’ of East Pakistan responsible […]

There are some similarities between the Indonesian choice of national language in 1928 as proclaimed by the Youth Pledge and that of Pakistan as articulated by Jinnah soon after the partition of India in 1947. The main logic and justification seem to be almost the same. However, when the Malay language, renamed Bahasa Indonesia, was […]

I can’t understand why it’s inappropriate and offensive to use ‘coloured people’ but not ‘people of colour’. I think they are both inaccurate descriptions of the skin colours of a range of people worldwide. There are more colours on the skin of a single so-called white person than those they call ‘people of colour’. All […]

I was inspired listening to powerful voices of women, and some men, at the ‘Stop Violence Against Women and Girls’ gathering, Altab Ali Park, 15 April 2022 Yasmin Begum was murdered at her home in Bethnal Green, East London, by her estranged husband on 24 March 2022 while her children were in school. Sabina Nessa […]

Some people claim that Sylhetis and Chittagongians are not Bengalis but are different ethnic groups or nations. I don’t know if that’s true or how to determine the validity of such a claim. Being angry and assertive, and trying to force people to think this way or that way, are unlikely to be useful ways […]