By 2010, only 350 million people will be speaking English as their first language, while around two billion – a third of the world population, will be speaking the language as their second.

Where the sun never set, whether they like it or not, the language of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens is out to destroy itself. Strangely enough, the last nail in its coffin is being driven not by the Britons, Americans and Australians, but the ever growing number of people who ...

People like me who are disappointed over some fatwas like the one issued in the Imrana case are happy that an important fatwa has been issued on a burning issue by the Deoband’s fatwa department head Mufti Habeebur Rahman saying that eating beef is “na-jayiz” (un-Islamic) if there is a ban on it. It has to be noted that all Muslims are not beef-eaters. An overwhelming majority of Muslims in states like Tamil Nadu do not take beef at all.

We whole-heartedly wel...