Media for a Knowledge-Based Economy on April 21, 2022The Pakistani media is busy inculcating the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth through the programs it airs. This continues in Ramadan and even gets amplified as people come to grab the loot offered in competitions with the lowest common denominator appeal. The idea is customer engagement for ratings […]
Leadership versus Politics on April 14, 2022The famed public intellectual Noam Chomsky is the greatest political pundit of our times. He is peerless with his finger on the pulse when it comes to the game of politics and politicians. He said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow […]
Imran Khan on April 7, 2022Great leaders emerge but rarely in the destiny of nations. Pakistan was desperately in search of one such leader. Imran Khan’s oratory convinced the nation that he was going to single-handedly perform miracles and bring peace, progress and prosperity by ending the cancer of corruption. He endlessly talked of the ills that plague Pakistan. He […]
Motion of No-Confidence on March 31, 2022Pakistan is facing yet another political turmoil. Prime Minister Imran Khan addressed a rally in Hafizabad and said: “When I entered politics twenty-five years ago, it was not to care about the market rate of potatoes and tomatoes.” This rhetoric is part of his ongoing struggle to stay in power. He did not walk the […]
March 23 Military Parade on March 24, 2022I pen this column after having just finished watching the 23rd March parade on Shakarparian ground in Islamabad I watched the tanks rolling in, the commandos descending from the skies, the fighter jets performing extreme manoeuvres and the Cobra Helicopters flying overhead. It filled me with patriotic zeal and fervour. The parade evoked national pride […]
Understanding the Russia-Ukraine War (Part II) on March 17, 2022The western media is perhaps proving the best validation to Huntington’s thesis and that this is a war for civilisation. In a segment of the US-based NBC news, the reporter told the channel: “To put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from Ukraine. They’re Christians, they’re white.” On a UK […]
Understanding the Russia-Ukraine War on March 10, 2022Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The world had a long-standing tradition of regional empires, with their vassal states. Czarist Russia was a great empire. The Scientific Revolution (1543-), the Enlightenment (1685-), and the Industrial Revolution (1760-) led to the rise of western Europe, which resulted in other continents […]
Why Women Matter? on March 3, 2022We live in an Islamic state where the clergy views women one-dimensionally and does its best to make them invisible. They tell us that virtuous women stay at home 24/7/365 and step out only in matters of life and death and then too, they must be accompanied by a mehram male and covered head to […]
Hijab Day for Men on February 25, 2022As Aurat March looms on the political horizon, the federal minister for religion Noor-ul-Haq Qadri has requested the prime minister to ban the event of “Aurat March” and celebrate the day as “Hijab Day” instead. The minister said that Aurat March caused pain and hurt to the Muslims of Pakistan. He advised the prime minister […]
DEAR PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI on February 10, 2022I am writing to you from the city of Karachi, in the Sindh province of Pakistan. The names “Sindh” and “India” are derived from the word “Indus” which is a river that gave birth to the Mohenjodaro and Harappa cities’ Indus Valley civilization and a people, referred to as Hindus. Hindu was originally a geographical […]