The day Pakistan changed on September 6, 2015The country had been through difficult times on many occasions since its independence: the untimely death of its founder, Jinnah, the assassination of its first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan, a long delay in framing a constitution that could provide a legal framework for administering its sovereignty, military rule and even the tumultuous period of […]
ISIS and Boko Haram: responsibility of Muslim majority states on February 23, 2015Ask people in Northern Iraq, Syria, Libya or Northern Nigeria and you will come across so many narrating harrowing tales of places of worship being torched, people being crucified and regional minorities — be they Shiites, Coptic Christians or Yazidis — being indiscriminately slaughtered. What to say of narrations or eye witness accounts, the web […]
Salam: the scientist inspired by God on November 21, 2014Yesterday, November 21, was the death anniversary of Dr Abdus Salam, the first Nobel Laureate of Pakistan and a man who lived a purposeful life to explore, theorise and predict the laws of nature. Though belonging to a select group of top scientists — a category of people for whom belief in God is not […]
Bangladesh: forgive and forget on October 30, 2014History is written by the victor. Sadly, the victor forgets his own wrongdoings while remembering the wrongs of others. The same has happened in Bangladesh with the sentencing of Motiur Rahman Nizami, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief. Bangladesh is not the first nation to have acted in this manner. The allies of the Second World War […]
The long haul on October 20, 2014The NA-149 by-election in Multan has raised more questions than it has answered. Although seeing stalwarts like Hashmi taste defeat remains a novelty, we should not really read too much between the lines. Even with the PML-N electoral machinery on Hashmi’s side, the anti-PML-N sentiment was always going to be too strong in the wake […]
ISIS and Pakistan on October 20, 2014Historically, the relationship between Pakistan and Iran has been exemplary. Iran was the first country to recognise Pakistan as a sovereign nation after it gained independence in August 1947. The Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, was the progenitor of close relations with Iran and had appointed one of his trusted lieutenants, Raja Ghazanfar Ali […]
Hamas: an Israeli experiment gone wrong on July 31, 2014The state of Palestine was the dream of all Palestinians, Muslims and Christians included. The struggle for such a state was, since Israel’s creation, spearheaded by freedom fighters who wanted the land for its entire people, not just the Muslims. Both political and military resistance to Israel’s creation and then its occupation of Arab lands […]
Target killing of doctors on June 2, 2014The people of Pakistan have been unfortunate in having to witness so many killings in acts of terror that target killing of individuals go mostly unnoticed by the common man. On a number of occasions during the last few years, these target killings have involved doctors who were serving humanity. These killings are not random […]
We and our burden of silence on April 19, 2014It is business as usual as we go on doing our daily chores. When our fellow civilians become victims of terror we watch the event in a breaking news feed and that is it. Polio workers who are contributing towards a noble cause are killed by mercenaries in the name of religion and we are […]
Rediscovering the real ideology of Pakistan on March 26, 2014More than six decades since its creation, Pakistan is still searching for its lost soul, the soul that went missing when Jinnah passed away. How many of the youth of today have had the chance to go through Jinnah’s speech to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947? A reading of this masterpiece is a […]