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Counter Currents – Generational Trauma & Toxic Families
I A sincere question stands before us: How do we live after inheriting wounds we did not choose, parents at war with themselves, with each other and with us, homes that taught fear before trust, patterns that seem to pass like blood from one generation to the next? We are told to “heal,” to “set boundaries,” to “break cycles,” and many try; yet the attempt often collapses into exhaustion. People ask, almost whispering, what if we fail again? What if what they did to us is already deciding what we will do to our children? How are we do come out of this circle of “trauma”? While we face these…
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Tolerance as Treason: How Liberal Muslims Betray Truth
I – The Burial of Truth When a civilisation buries Truth, its ‘tolerance’ is a polite nihilism. Allah declares, ‘Truth has arrived and falsehood has vanished; surely falsehood is ever bound to perish’ (17:81). The modern call for tolerance is not rooted in truth, but in exhaustion from conflict. It is not a principled virtue but a negotiated peace imposed by secular elites in a world where meaning has decayed. Yet true tolerance, in the Qur’anic and Prophetic tradition, is not born of relativism, it is born of reverence, reverence for truth, and thus for the human capacity to seek it. Without such a shared metaphysical ground, the language of…
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Problem Narrative is Problematic
I In a world increasingly obsessed with diagnosis, the proliferation of problems has become its own self-sustaining industry, a vast machinery of concern that thrives not on the resolution of ailments, but on their perpetual redefinition and reproduction. Every domain of modern discourse, from activist circles to academic departments, from NGO funding proposals to political manifestos, from mental health apps to global development goals, functions by constantly generating new categories of disorder, disadvantage, and dysfunction. We are no longer allowed to simply be; we must now be diagnosed. One must have a trauma, a disorder, an oppression, a crisis of identity to be taken seriously. Entire vocabularies, terms like microaggressions,…
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Counter Narrative | A Culture that Silences Men or Men with a Culture Silenced?
An article, appearing in Kashmir Observer, laments Kashmiri men’s silence as a cultural flaw, failing to realize that this very critique is shaped by Western therapeutic individualism. It sees emotional restraint not as a form of self-discipline (a classical virtue) but as repressive pathology. This betrays its underlying ideological commitments—secular humanism, psychologism, and gender-neutral egalitarianism—which define the human being as a bundle of expressive needs rather than a moral actor bound by higher purpose. But traditional Kashmiri culture, steeped in religion and spirituality, never denied emotional reality. It simply ordered emotions hierarchically: grief in prayer, pain in sabr, joy in shukr. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) wept, yes—but in balance, in…
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Pop Culture Mysticism
“Popular culture” is a term we use for the broad spectrum of practices, beliefs, objects, and phenomena that are prevalent in society at a given time, particularly in Western culture since the mid-20th century. It encompasses the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives, often disseminated through mass media and driven by the interests, preferences, and trends of the general population. Pop culture (modern fast paced life has to have a shorter version of “popular”) is dynamic, reflecting the changing tastes, innovations, and societal norms of the day. Pop culture is marked by its accessibility to a wide audience. It includes music, television, movies, fashion, technology, and more, offering…
Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment