Sakshi Mathur

“Muslims of British India had opted for a separate homeland in 1947, destroying the possibility of a secular India in which Hindus and Muslims would coexist, because they believed that they would be physically safe, and their religion secure, in a new nation called Pakistan. Instead, within six decades, Pakistan had become one of the most violent nations on earth, not because Hindus were killing Muslims but because Muslims were killing Muslims.”
― M.J. Akbar, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan – An Essential History of Muslim-Hindu Cultures and the Taliban Context in South Asia

“Looking back at that trip, I see now the broad outlines of the same dilemmas that would lead America into the era of Trump: seething anger; open hostility to strangers and those with views opposing one’s own; a contempt for news delivered by allegedly reputable sources; an embrace of reactionary moral posturing; civic and governmental corruption that no longer needed hiding; and married to all this, the ever-hastening redistribution of wealth to those who had it at the continued expense of those who didn’t.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

“Cheery pessimism. Or weary idealism. Take your pick.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

“For now, let me try to stay alive and just say these three things: as Muslims, (1) we are more affected by the example of the Prophet than we realize; (2) we are shaped by the stories we tell about him in ways that elude our daily understanding; and (3) there will be no meaningful philosophical shift in the sociopolitical substratum of the Muslim world until the example of the Prophet and the text of the Quran are exposed to a more robust interrogation of their claims to historical truth.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies