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More “Collateral Damage” in Quetta General Durrani
After an attack on a police training college in Quetta killed about 50 recruits, the author points to overlapping militant groups with semi-legal sponsors and mocks the military’s media machine,…
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General Mohammed Akbar Khan (and some others)
Hamid Hussain profiles Major General Muhammad Akbar Khan (1897-1993), the senior-most Muslim officer at independence, tracing his Minhas Rajput family’s fortunes under Sikh and British patronage and his career in…
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Film: Royal Indian Army Service Corps in World War 2
Hamid Hussain introduces a ten-minute wartime film on the Royal Indian Army Service Corps in France, noting its animal transport, a presentation to the King, and three people in it,…
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Musharraf’s Coup. October 1999
Hamid Hussain, in a piece first written in 2012, reviews the background to the October 1999 coup, the differences between Nawaz Sharif and General Musharraf after Kargil, and the decisions…
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Quick Review: What is Islam, by Shahab Ahmed
A quick review of Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam?, which the reviewer finds overlong and unclear in purpose: it shows the wide variety of belief and practice in Islamicate societies,…
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A Tale of Two Professors
Hamid Hussain tells the stories of two assistant professors, one killed protecting students in the January 2016 attack on Bacha Khan University in Pakistan and one in Afghanistan, as human…
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The Decline (and Attempted Rise) of the Sunnis in the Middle East
The author discusses Martin Kramer’s essay on the decline and attempted revival of Sunni power in the Middle East since the Ottomans, arguing that Islamists will recognise this story, and…
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Mangal Pandey. Truth and Fiction
Hamid Hussain checks scene by scene how far the film Mangal Pandey: The Rising follows the historical record, noting that its core facts are broadly intact but that the Afghanistan…
The Indian Subcontinent Argues with Itself
Sunday, 8 November 2026Since December 2010 · 4,170 posts · 93,919 comments
