Mowahid Shah

Mowahid Shah

Mowahid Hussain Shah is an attorney-at-law, author, and policy analyst. His articles are published regularly in English in both Nation (an English daily) and Nawa-i-Waqt (an Urdu daily). For over a decade, he has been the lead columnist for Pakistan Link, the most subscribed weekly throughout North America for the US Pakistani community.

For over 30 years, Mowahid Shah has studied the interplay between religion and politics. In 1979, he was one of few authors at the time who examined the repercussions of the trial and execution of Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and predicted its ensuing implications, including increasing politicization of Islam in Pakistan; that "using Islamization of law to legitimize their continued power, the army may in the long term govern with a civilian façade", and that persecution of the Bhutto family would continue with consequent enlargement of the Bhutto myth. 30 years ago, he cautioned that there would be civil rights implications for the Arab-Muslim community in the US because of escalating global tensions. His prescient article in the Christian Science Monitor correctly predicted the onset of Western-Muslim world tensions well before Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington popularized the theory of a "clash of civilizations". A few months later, he predicted that "Operation Desert Storm may become a desert trap" that "would radicalize the region for generations."