I apologize and will make the correction above now 🙂

Thanks Anil.

Quick correction – the website is http://www.zulfiqarrashid.com

(No u after the q, it unusual).

Hi Anil,

Thanks very much for allowing me to converse here with your wonderful audience.

While my book is a fictional account, it is very much based on dark, painful things that happen in this world, today. Some of these I have personally experienced.

I think about the exploitation of children as a global problem, which is manifested in different ways in different countries. I have focused on beggary and the exploitation of children in South-Asia because I have experienced it personally, especially how religion is subverted by some corrupt people. The same things happens in different forms in the US or Europe in the form of child trafficking. It is the darkness in human nature.

I would ask everyone to lend their voice and support in any way they can to bring awareness to this issue. That would be the light that shines on the darkness. With enough light, officials in these countries will have no choice but to take active steps to protect their future and the future of the world, the children.

There are certain shrines in the interior parts of South-Asian countries. The ‘religious’ leaders of these shrines exploit the lack of education of the rural population distort religion for their own purposes. They could not be further away from religion.