Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed

Will & Skill Author: Mowhaid Hussain Shah Publisher: Jamhoori Publications, Lahore (2012)   One can classify newspaper and magazine column writers in three primary categories. First, those who take up an explicit universal position and from that angle evaluate the behaviour of specific communities, nations and states. Second, those who take up cudgels unequivocally on […]

In modern political thought, three main theories of state are a standard reference. The first one is the Hegelian, which sees the state as the sublimation of human civilisation and the embodiment of the highest good. Secondly, there is the Marxist, which ascribes a partisan role to the state in the ongoing class struggle between […]

Recently, a number of disturbing events have brought into the limelight the tensions that exist between Muslim immigrants and host societies in the contemporary west. Two very recent cases illustrate this phenomenon. In early May, The Guardian reported nine middle-aged men, all of Pakistani-origin, except one who is an Afghan, found guilty of sexually assaulting […]

Friends and readers have been urging me for a long time to express my views on the rising star on the Pakistani political horizon — cricket legend Imran Khan. I have been his admirer ever since he began his campaign for the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital, where so many poor people in need are taken […]

Editor: Ayesha JalalPublisher: Oxford University, Karachi (2012)Pages: 584 The Oxford Companion to Pakistan History (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012) edited by eminent historian Ayesha Jalal is a milestone in information on and knowledge about Pakistan. The first attempt is always the most challenging and daunting. Fahd Raza and Salma Mahmud at OUP, Karachi were the […]

When I opened my facebook account on Sunday morning, April 15, 2012, to check what was going on in cyberspace, the message at the top was, “Rest in peace dear Cecil… what a loss.” For a moment, I held my breath, hoping that the Cecil mentioned was someone else and not Group Captain Cecil Chaudhry […]

International relations theory is premised on the fiction that the state is a rational actor. By a rational actor is meant that it makes rational calculations based on a careful examination of the pros and cons when interacting with other states. A state is supposed to be maximising its advantages vis-à-vis other states. Experience, however, […]

In Travels of Bollywood Cinema: From Bombay to LA (edited by Anjali Gera Roy and Chua Beng Huat, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), the argument I have advanced in my article, The Lahore Film Industry, is that although Bombay, Calcutta and Madras emerged as filmmaking cities earlier than Lahore, the latter enjoyed an advantage […]