Articles

Owen writes for the London Review of Books and has a column in Pakistan’s leading newspaper Dawn. You can find links to a selection of his articles, radio documentaries and TV films below.

Deobandis

September 8, 2016

Largely because 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism is often cited as the fountainhead of violent jihadism, but that is to make too much of its significance compared to o…

The Deobandis in Pakistan

June 13, 2016

Owen Bennett Jones investigates the beliefs of an influential, global Islamic movement that was founded in a small Indian town.

The Deobandis in India

June 6, 2016

The story of India’s Deobandi school of Islam, which has inspired both a peaceful global missionary movement and the Taliban.

Deobandi Variations

April 21, 2016

Here’s a tale of two madressahs: one Deoband north of Delhi, the other in Akora Khattak, Pakistan.

The Deobandis in the UK

April 5, 2016

The Deobandis are the largest Islamic group in the UK, running over 40% of mosques and a network of seminaries. Owen Bennett Jones investigates who they are and what they believe.

Deobandis in UK

March 10, 2016

“BRING me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” For many decades, when immigrants to the US arrived by ship, that inscription on the Statue of Liberty welcomed them to their new home. And as soon as the newcomer…

MEK

The MEK and Iran

June 7, 2012

The story of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin e Khalq (MEK), is all about the way image management can enable a diehard enemy to become a cherished ally. The MEK is currently campaigning to be…

The Strange World of the People’s Mujahedin

April 9, 2012

The People’s Mujahedin of Iran – terrorists, victims or Iranian government-in-waiting?

MQM

MQM and UK

September 9, 2016

LONDON: A senior Whitehall official has denied that the British government is trying to protect the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) from legal charges. “There is no pressure from any part of the British state to go soft o…

MQM Money laundering

April 27, 2016

LONDON: The Metropolitan Police’s National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit has submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) containing evidence of suspected money laundering activities of the Muttahida…

MQM

February 8, 2016

Altaf Hussain can look forward to 2017 with a smile on his face — in spite of major splits in the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and notwithstanding his ill-judged August 2016 speech. As the long-running police investiga…

The MQM and Indian Funding

June 25, 2015

The BBC has learnt that senior officials of one of Pakistan’s biggest political parties, the MQM, told UK authorities in formal recorded interviews that the party was receiving funding from the Indian government.

The MQM in London

April 24, 2015

BBC REPORT ON ALTAF HUSSAIN & MQM

The MQM

July 29, 2013

Altaf Hussain lives in London but leads Pakistan’s powerful, controversial MQM party, which has millions of supporters. He has also been acccused of inciting murder and violence in his home country.

The MQM

April 7, 2012

The People’s Mujahedin of Iran – terrorists, victims or Iranian government-in-waiting?

Other

The future of the BBC

December 20, 2018

Depending on how one defines the BBC’s purpose, its licence fee income of £3.8 billion is either too much or not enough. In a world dominated by Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google, it’s ever harder for the BBC t…

Gerry Adams

November 16, 2017

Historians of Northern Ireland have plenty of material to work with. A book called Lost Lives (2001) records the lives and deaths of each of the 3720 people who were killed during the Troubles. Fighters, activists, offic…

North Waziristan

March 8, 2017

For over a decade the inaccessible and mountainous tribal area of North Waziristan was home to a swirling array of violent jihadists. The Pakistan and Afghan Taliban movements, al-Qaeda and less well-known militant outfi…

Silk letter plot

December 8, 2016

A CENTURY ago, in British-ruled Multan, the Punjab authorities detained a messenger by the name of Abdul Haq. He had travelled from Kabul with three yellow silk letters sewn into the lining of his coat.

Military and the clerics

March 3, 2016

On 4 October 1954 Pakistan’s army chief General Ayub Khan passed the hours of a sleepless night at the Dorchester Hotel in London writing ‘A Short Appreciation of Present and Future Problems of Pakistan’. It ran to 2500…

The man who negotiated peace in Northern Ireland

January 22, 2015

There is a sentence in Jonathan Powell’s Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts that raises intriguing questions about how the Northern Ireland peace process got underway.＊ ‘Martin McGuinness,’ Powell writes,…

The efficacy of violence

December 19, 2013

As they fled Afghanistan after 9/11 some of bin Laden’s followers wondered whether the attacks on the US had been a mistake. Among them was one of al-Qaida’s most acerbic writers, Abu Musab al-Suri. In public he backed b…

The murder of Benazir Bhutto

December 6, 2012

In her posthumously published book, Reconciliation, Benazir Bhutto named a man who she believed had tried to procure bombs for an unsuccessful attempt on her life in Karachi in October 2007.

Blasphemy and the Governor of Punjab

November 11, 2012

A documentary-drama set in Pakistan about the assassination of the Governor of Punjab over his stance on the blasphemy laws.