Taj Hashmi

Am I an alarmist for believing elements of the Pakistani “debacle” might eventually trickle down to Bangladesh? I hope that it turns out so. But I don't think so.

THERE was yet another shocking headline in this daily (February 22): “Priest killed, devotee shot”. Some “unknown” assailants raided a

Ever since this ridiculous debate cropped up – soon after Mahfuz Anam's TV interview with Munni Saha on February 3 – on The Daily

IT'S unbelievable but true. Some people still believe Bangladesh needs “development” first, before its transition to democracy!

Men not only molest uncovered/Westernised women at home, but also molest hijab- and even burqa-clad women in various Arab countries.

While Islamist terrorists have re-emerged recently, killing bloggers, writers, foreign nationals and Shias, and attacking an Ahmadiyya mosque, with impunity, one wonders how leaders, intellectuals, and ordinary people in Bangladesh can afford to waste time and energy in partisan politics!

What the Saudi Defence Minister Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud declared on last Tuesday (December 15) about the formation of a

THE terrorist attack in Paris on November 13 has rocked the whole world. Some people have already started calling the attack the “French 9/11”.

Time flies. This November 10th was the tenth death anniversary of Enayetullah Khan ("Mintu Bhai" to his younger friends and admirers)...

What is evidently cynical and self-gratifying in the so-called apology are in defence of the West's periodic invasions of countries in the Third World since the end of World War II. Blair's blaming the so-called “faulty intelligence” for the 2003 Iraq invasion is not only a flimsy fig leaf, ominously, it is also an attempt to defend the ongoing Western involvement in Syria in the name of saving innocent lives from Assad's military.

Locating an easy scapegoat, the “businessman-politician” is no option at all. The problem of bad governance has nothing to do with some businessmen's entering the arena of politics – as MPs or ministers – but in the state of impunity and unaccountability the dysfunctional state ensures to the ruling party cronies and close associates / relatives of the ruling elite.

While attempts are being made to create disorder and insecurity in Bangladesh by killing foreign nationals – politicians are busy playing a no-holds-barred blame game against each other.

America's Muslim obsession is a post-Cold War phenomenon, further accentuated after 9/11. As sections of Americans are obsessed with Islam and Muslims, “Muslim” seems to be the new “Black” in the American psyche. “Muslim” is also the new “Red”, the equivalent of a “Communist infiltrator” during the Cold War.

Although hundreds of nameless refugees from Africa and Middle East have perished in the Mediterranean in the last one-year, the world will never forget the image of the three-year old, cute and well-dressed Aylan Kurdi in a red shirt and blue pants, whose body was lying face down in the sand of Bodrum in Turkey.

Of late, an influen-tial ruling party MP has registered his contempt for the latest rounds of extra-judicial killings by the RAB in Bangladesh.

This is in response to the honourable Turkish Ambassador Hüseyin Müftüoğlu's rejoinder (August 4, 2015) to my op-ed, “Erdogan's war and US myopia” (TDS, August 3, 2015).

The Obama Administration, which defied the hawkish opposition at home and abroad and signed the historic Nuclear Deal with Iran, seems to have condoned President Erdogan's military operation in Iraq.

Egotistical and irresponsible rich men – who are hell-bent to demonstrate their wealth and power through piety and religion – are mainly responsible for these deaths.

Visitors to Bangladesh, who enter the country for the first time through the Hazrat Shah Jalal International Airport in Dhaka, might get the wrong impression about the major languages spoken in the country.

Whether one likes it or not, Bangladesh does not enjoy good reputation in the West. The latest debate by a British Parliamentary