Asad Hashim

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Asad Hashim
News and features writer | Qatar
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By Asad Hashim in Americas on September 12th, 2011
Two towers of light shine out from the World Trade Centre site [Reuters]

Two white beams reach impossibly high into the sky, just as two black hollows mark the places where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood; testaments to both an absence and a resolve.

On Sunday, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a room full of relatives and families of the victims of the attacks that she felt “a particular satisfaction” to be part of “the team … that made sure [Osama] Bin Laden was brought to justice”. By which, of course, she meant to be part of the effort to have the former al-Qaeda leader killed.

She went on to say that the Obama administration would not rest until those deemed to be responsible for the attacks are “similarly brought to justice”.

By Asad Hashim in Americas on September 8th, 2011
Photo by Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera

Is it time to end the 'War on Terror'?

That was the motion under debate on Wednesday night in New York City, as the Intelligence Squared Debate series brought experts from inside and outside the government to try and convince the audience that it is either time to declare the open-ended war against "terrorism" over, or that doing so would cripple the US government’s ability to protect its citizens.

By Asad Hashim in Americas on September 6th, 2011

He has been called an imam on a mission.

Muhammad Shamsi Ali, an assistant imam at the Islamic Cultural Centre and a pillar of the Muslim community in New York City, is a slight man; soft-spoken, yet forceful in his convictions. Foremost among those convictions is the belief that the only way for communities of different faiths to coexist is to begin contact on a person-to-person level. In his words, he has a passion for inter-faith initiatives.

Al Jazeera sat down with him on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to talk about how he feels his work has been affected by them, and how he has striven to break down barriers between religious communities in New York (a mission that has won him as much praise as criticism, from both Muslims and non-Muslims).

By Asad Hashim in Americas on September 2nd, 2011
A traveler arriving from overseas is fingerprinted while his paperwork is checked by a US border patrol official [GALLO/GETTY]

There is a very particular smell that you get as soon as you step off the aircraft and into the United States.

It must be the brand of disinfectant they use at their airports.

For a land of immigrants, it is striking how central the issue of immigration (and border security) is to domestic US politics, and hence policies. Often described as a "wedge issue" (one which can divide members of groups that are otherwise uniform in their approval of certain politics), immigration is usually at the centre of a candidate for any major office’s policy brief – with many (regardless of party affiliation) coming down on the populist side of making immigration requirements stricter in order to limit entry into the job market of foreign employment seekers.

By Asad Hashim in Middle East on March 16th, 2011
Photo by EPA

While most of the conversation at the recently concluded sixth annual Al Jazeera Forum focused on the ongoing political changes in the Middle East, a particularly interesting session put the spotlight on how major leaks of government documents (such as the Palestine Papers or the documents leaked by Wikileaks) were changing the face of journalism (if at all).

Leaking documents is, of course a tricky business - between verifying the information contained therein and questioning the intent behind the leak, news organisations have a duty to ensure they not only provide the public with information that is accurate, but also to place said information within the correct context.

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By Asad Hashim in Middle East on March 14th, 2011
Photo by AFP

The debate at this year's Al Jazeera's Forum has been focused on recent political developments across the region - trying to place revolutions and popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and other countries in context, but also trying to understand whether or not these uprisings are leading to the formation of a fundamentally different political system.

Then again, having said that, several participants at the forum have made note of the marked disparity between the number of older academics and analysts and younger activists, who are, really, the centre of the conversation. While it may be true that at conferences and fora such as this, it is easier to simply invite those who already reside within the institutionalised structures of knowledge, it is not as if the young people who took part in these uprisings are wholly anonymous - their presence on the internet is ubiquitous.

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