Fahad Faruqui

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan -- If you walk intently in the bazaars of the bustling metropolis Karachi, you'll see scores of Afghan refugees trading and selling merchandise. Sporting a four-finger-long beard, often colored in henna, they integrate well in the society and speak the local language proficiently. But not all Afghan refugees...

Speaking to former Guantanamo detainee 727 was like talking to a prisoner of Azkaban, that terrible prison guarded by soul-sucking Dementors from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Perhaps the image of a Dementor sucking out happiness from one's body will help you visualize...

For some, Mansur al-Hallaj was a magician, a heretic and a lunatic, who publicly claimed to be one with the One and deserved to be executed for heresy. But to his sympathizers he was a Sufi saint, who was martyred almost...

Hurrah! Pakistan has criminalized domestic violence against women and children. Offenders will face a minimum of six months behind bars and 100,000 rupees in fines.

Every time I hear news of a man using physical force on his wife and children, I become furious to the extent that my...

Deja Vu! Saudi Arabia's top cleric, Abdul Aziz Al Shaikh, says that Twitter is a platform for "promoting lies." Two years ago, Al-Azhar's Abd Al-Hamid Al-Atrash reportedly said that Facebook "breaks up families."

Social media doesn't lure a person to flirt with someone, spread a...

A friend recently reposted a line -- "Haters = Having Anger Towards Everyone Reaching Success!" -- on Facebook that got me thinking.

Well, it's true. I see people angry at others, not because of their principles, or lack thereof, but because of what they've been able to achieve --...

"I think all this Facebook stuff should just stop!" said Hamza Yusuf, co-founder of Zaytuna College, at a recent Islamic convention. "Live your lives. Go out; take walks amongst trees."

I did a Google search on Facebook and Twitter addictions, and I got so many hits that I...

The U.S. has taken an initiative to spread the counter-extremist message across Pakistan to prevent the breeding of extremism and to deradicalize militants who were completely taken by the jihadist ideology, which is a tough battle because Pakistan is, perhaps, the only country where the state, with funding from U.S....

With New Year around the corner, most of us are preparing to rattle off a laundry list of things that we plan to change in our lives in 2012. We may want to lose weight, find a better job or get married. About a month or two into the year,...

A gigantic throng of demonstrators at Tahrir Square chanted slogans against the military rule. At the backdrop of this Friday's protest, dubbed "the Friday of regaining honor," is the violence female demonstrators have undergone last week, during clashes between the military police and the protestors.

On Saturday, Dec. 17,...

Jalaluddin Rumi is famed as much in the west as in east for the tradition of whirling and an assortment of devotional poetry. His death anniversary on Dec. 17 is known as Wedding Night, or Seb-i Arus in Turkish. Like every year, dervishes and devoted fans across the world, especially...

Since I woke up late that morning, I had to rush out without my morning coffee fix and ran toward London's Edgware Road station -- just five minutes away from the apartment where my family has enjoyed many summers. I finally reached the tube station and lined up to buy...

Arranged marriages are common throughout the Muslim world -- primarily because dating before marriage is a big "no-no" and also because "parents know best." While some, very few, fall in love after marriage, other wealth-driven traditional marriages are nothing but a recipe for disaster.

A 31-year-old Pakistani bachelor...

Author's note: As is often the case in real life, things don't pan out the way we would like it to be, which leads to a constant tug-of-war between our dreams and reality. This article is inspired by the story of a friend who recently shared her shattered dreams via...

He has no qualms about an arranged marriage. But, since he wants to be sure that she is the one that he wants to spend the rest of his life with (without a shred of doubt), he doesn't accept the decision with the nonchalant attitude of "let's see if it...

After reading the news of 60 masked men, armed with iron rods, who barged into an all-girls high school in Rawalpindi, Pakistan to enforce their vision of female modesty, I asked myself this question: what right do these "keepers-of-faith" have to rigorously impose Islamic morals on other people?...

"What do you see in your dreams, uncle?" my four-year-old niece asked, with her face resting on her hands and her eyes lit with joy in anticipation of hearing a delightful story, knowing that I take pleasure in satisfying her curiosity. She recently inquired about a souvenir of Tutankhamen's casket...

Erum al-Howaish, like many young women from conservative Saudi Arabia, expects King Abdullah's watershed decision last Sunday to allow women to vote and run in elections to be the start of a new phase of women's rights reforms.

The 21-year-old politics student in London reacted with jubilation at the king's...

We have all found ourselves to some degree comparing and judging our life experiences, appearances, relationships, professional and academic successes to those attained by others. There are two logical errors that lead to envy and covetousness which poison the soul: a) you can never know the totality of a person's...

"Ayesha is divorced!" a woman told the cousin sitting beside her, the pitch of her voice quiet yet severe.

"Really?" the cousin responded in a perturbed tone, eyes wide open and lips pursed and contorted in the shape of a frown. After a brief, contemplative silence she added, "No...