He served as Kashmir Bureau Chief for Times Now, India's 24-hour English news channel, and before that as a staff writer for The Indian Express. As a 2011 Persephone Miel fellow, he will report from Kashmir on how the Sufi tradition of Islam, for seven centuries a force for moderation and spiritual co-existence in the region, is now being challenged by a much more doctrinaire and militant strain of Islam imported from Saudi Arabia. Mir is a graduate of the University of Kashmir and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.