Mehboob Qadir

Cities are alive because people live in them. Grand structures, high-rise buildings, glittering glass facades, gleaming metal fixtures, broad roads and sprawling parks do not necessarily denote life in a city. These pieces of real estate merely support any activity that a city might have to generate. A dense mob of men and women, thousands […]

The Umayyid genius for a reasonably decentralised rule unshackled the Islamic state system and Muslim society, opening them to evolution, expansion and absorption of ideas from neighbouring civilizations. Thus began the enrichment and rise of Islamic civilisation. Arts and crafts, architecture, music, sciences, medicine, literature, industry, state institutions, the art of warfare and state building […]

Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) lived for only 22 years to see his followers multiply after the divine revelations. In that short period he founded a Muslim state in Medina, defeated his fellow clansmen and conquered Mecca. Simultaneously, he set up a socio-economic revolution in the fissiparous Arab society that cut across tribal and clan affiliations with […]

This was a prayer I had said a million times saved for my only daughter who is facing one of the most excruciating crises of her life since the last seven years and has shown tremendous courage, fortitude and strength of character in standing up to the tyranny of events during her relentless ordeal. Whenever […]

Like so many unlikely phrases, one finds industrial terms like drop forged and bake painted quite intriguing because they tend to denote wider notions and not merely processes in manufacturing. When a metal wrench is claimed to have been drop forged, it tells you about its great strength and reliability. Similarly, bake painting is considered […]

A nation’s social landscape at a given time in its history is not necessarily the index of her lasting basis of going about the business of life. It would be incorrect to shortlist an incident or a small series of incidents to draw any useful conclusions about how future events might unfold, going on to […]

Seven perished during their attack on the Army Public School Peshawar; four accomplices have been hanged, and another three were wiped out the same day after a lightning retaliatory strike in the Khyber Agency. That night, one of their facilitators was also arrested from Bahawalnagar. Mullah Fazlullah, their leader, and two more sheltered in Afghanistan […]

A string of nomads with their jingling bells, bleating goats and grumbling but powerful Bactrian camels emerged from a narrow, treeless gorge in the mountains, lurching forth in search of greener pastures. They were headed into plains below with no particular destination in mind. Their footsore but ferocious sheep dogs trotted along, bored and uninterested. […]

The majestic maulana heading our Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) pulled another plug out from our already patchy family safety net. In his ‘wisdom’ and self-acquired divine authority, he declared a provision in the country’s Family Laws, under which a Muslim male was required to seek permission from his wife for a second marriage, as […]

After a swift and unexpectedly successful march on the capital city of Sanaa early last year, the Houthis emerged as the new predominant force in Yemen and created serious security concerns in neighbouring countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman. The tremors were so powerful as to force an unusual scramble by the Kingdom and […]