Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

May 11, 2013– MYANMAR – A tropical cyclone in the Andaman Sea is headed close to an area in Myanmar where tens of thousands of victims of ethnic and religious violence are living in makeshift camps, adding urgency to fears of what the United Nations has termed a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” for displaced families. Of the more than 130,000 people forced to flee their homes in rioting between Buddhists and Muslims over the last year in western Myanmar, around half are living in low-lying camps near the sea, the United Nations says. Human rights organizations have issued repeated warnings that the displaced people are at risk of disease and hunger during the rainy season, which begins this month and continues until around September. “We’re definitely very concerned,” said Vivian Tan, a spokesperson for the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. “We are working around the clock, trying to get…

Dr Muhammad Iqbalwrote one of the major national songs of India, has been declared the national poet of Pakistan, and served as one of the intellectual influences for Iran’s  revolutionaries. However, over the last few years, there has been an ever-growing allergy towards Iqbal among the liberal sections of Pakistan

Iqbal is presently claimed by the right; in the past he was also strongly claimed by the left. Now, since there is no

By Joel Macharia