Achieving cultural modernity through writing on February 22, 2018In any society, writers have a crucial responsibility on their shoulders. Their vantage point to look at what is happening in the society is different from a layman’s. They tap the fault lines of conventional wisdom and help the society understand existing gaps in mainstream societal ideas. Failure to do so results in the decay […]
Trump’s diplomacy and the war on terror on January 13, 2018Every state has its own distinct interests and goals, and in world politics, only those states which can achieve these interests survive. Whenever a state interacts with other states, both are trying to push their own agenda. As such, the nature of interaction is either zero-sum or win-win. This can be observed most clearly in […]
Time to redefine partition’s history on December 20, 2017Almost 70 years have passed since Pakistan came into existence. The generation that saw Pakistan’s birth coupled with traumas of partition is now in its final years. For the current generation, the only way to understand the context of how Pakistan came into being is a set of history books which presents history in an […]
Pakistan’s haphazard fight against extremism on November 29, 2017British author Anatol Lieven writes in his book entitled Pakistan: A Hard Country that Pakistan is a hard country to make sense of. He writes, “Trying to understand Pakistan’s internal structures and dynamics is complicated; for if there is one phrase which defines many aspects of Pakistan and is the central of this book, it […]
Challenges to feminism on November 23, 2017Feminism, as a movement, started in the beginning of 19th century with an aim to empower women as women had no right to vote. This phase of feminism is known as the first wave of feminism. Capitalising on the gains of the first wave, feminists started to extend the scope of their demands in the […]
Development at the cost of utter deprivation on November 14, 2017Whether the decision to become the US ally in war on terror was by choice or out of compulsion, there is no doubt that Pakistan has paid a huge price for this adventure. Its every nook and corner has both imploded and exploded. There was a time we all remember when the sense of insecurity […]
Magical power of words on November 1, 2017On Saturday, I got a chance to attend a lecture of a Pakistani Islamic scholar, Maulana Tariq Jameel, at Ashrafia University in Lahore. Maulana has been repeatedly maligned on social media by some of his critics through posting selected excerpts from his sermons without letting the public know about an overall theme of his sermons. […]
Let’s make the youth count on October 24, 2017Pakistan is on the verge of completing its first-ever decade of civilian government power. Hopefully, in 2018, another civilian government will take the reins of power in its hands and will make its way to strengthen a fragile democracy; fragile in the sense, the way political parties and different powerful institutions have been wrestling with […]
Kant’s unsocial sociability and the US on October 17, 2017An objective study of world history impresses upon us a perennial lesson about why we find ourselves plunged into war time and again, repeating some of the mistakes made by the early superpowers. The lesson, I think, is this: the latter failed to understand — let alone uphold — the basic features of humanity. This […]
Chasing feminism in Pakistan on October 11, 2017Back in my university life, feminism, as a discourse, used to fascinate me a lot as a student of Political Science. The reason for the fascination was twofold: One reason was objective in nature and the other was subjective. Knowing the fact the way the world had been objectively striving to make the states’ economic […]