About Zia Haq
Zia Haq, as a five-year-old, refused to take Arabic lessons from a maulvi hired by his mother because the alphabet book wasn’t colourful enough. He revisited the Quran only as an adult, just after 9/11 to be precise, to find out if his faith was inherently violent. The ‘need to know’ soon grew into a ‘need to tell’ — that Islam needs to be understood not feared. Haq, assistant editor with the Hindustan Times, reports on minority affairs but likes to believe he’s destined for bigger things, like taking the phobia out of Islamophobia.
Obama, as is often said, will always be more popular than his policies. It is impossible not to pay attention to what he says; he’s still viewed as the well-meaning guy who broke some real barriers to get where he did. [Read more]

Loading ...
Posted by Zia Haq on Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Filed under World · Tagged afghanistan, Hindustan Times, James Traub, John Cassidy, Nasr, New Yorker, Obama, Pakistan, They call me Muslim, Wall Street Journal, Zia Haq
No part of Gandhi’s life has escaped scholarly attention in a corpus of a little over a century. Literature on him is abundant. [Read more]

Loading ...
Posted by Zia Haq on Sunday, May 5, 2013 at 7:50 pm
Filed under India, Religion, World · Tagged colonial nationalism, Einstein, Hindustan Times, liberal secularism, Literature, Mahatma Gandhi, Muslim nationalism, news, Pakistan, They call me Muslim, Zia Haq
The media is going yap, yap, yap and blah blah blah over Modi and Rahul. Blah …Modi… blah… Rahul …blah blah blah. [Read more]

Loading ...
An aspect of Israel that goes largely unnoticed is that the fiercest critics of its policies are Israelis themselves. Alice Miller is one such Israeli. [Read more]

Loading ...
Posted by Zia Haq on Monday, April 22, 2013 at 1:24 am
Filed under India, World · Tagged Alice Miller, Ezer Weizman, feminism, Hindustan Times, Israel, Israel Defence Forces, sexual harassment, They call me Muslim, Zia Haq
It’s about time we put growth in its place, to borrow a line from economist Amartya Sen. Much has been made of our “high growth” – 8% or 9% or whatever. Growth in itself cannot lead to development, which is why economists such as Sen have been making a case for “growth-mediated development”. [Read more]

Loading ...
Posted by Zia Haq on Sunday, April 7, 2013 at 9:55 pm
Filed under India · Tagged gross national happiness, growth, Hindustan Times, hunger reduction, Planning Commission, poverty line, Rural Development, They call me Muslim, Zia Haq