Omar Sadr and Herschel Hepler discuss Afghanistan’s Liturgical Quire, the oldest Hebrew and Judeo-Persian prayer manuscript in the world. This remarkable manuscript compiles three prayer genres into a single bounded book which in Judaism is …
Between Borders: Haim Abraham, the Afghanistan Jewish Merchant
Omar Sadr and Dahlia Abraham-Klein discuss Dahlia’s grandfather, a Persian-speaking Central Asian Jewish merchant. The Stateless Central Asian Merchant: The Life of Haim Aghajan Abraham (1897-1986). *** Imagine a world where borders shifted like sand …
Governing a Contentious City: Insights while Managing Kabul (2016-2019)
The tension across Kabul was peaking as the 2014 Presidential Election dispute continued into its third month with no outcome. The city’s blunt divisions along old fault lines reminded everyone of the early nineties as …
A design-centric Perspective on the Failure of the Afghanistan Peace Process
When Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad embarked on his mission in September 2018 to end the American military engagement in Afghanistan, few people placed much hope in his efforts. Almost three years later, even fewer people could …
Persecution & Exile: Status of Afghanistan’s Academia under the Taliban
Omar Sadr discusses the status of Afghanistan’s academia under the Taliban with Haroon Mutasem and Qasim Wafayezada. Haroon Mutasem is a Philip Schwartz Initiative fellow at the Law School of Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. …
Gender Apartheid and Cultural Relativism under the Taliban and Iranian Regimes
While practices of mainstream Muslims across the world defy the limitation of fundamental rights, authoritarian and in certain cases sultanistic regimes in the Muslim