Handsome lockdown on July 7, 2020Imagine: a thief breaks into your house and steals your belongings. To file a complaint, you visit the police station. The officer on duty, instead of reassuring you, argues that no one can set foot in your property if it is locked. Puzzled, you respond that the house is kept bolted all the time. The […]
Babaji-based morality on June 15, 2020Late AshfaqAhmed, the former host of television program Zaavia, introduced Baba ji (old man) as a living character in his books and talk shows. The author of Tali Thallay promoted Baba ji as a person full of wisdom, a man who could answer most difficult moral questions with relative ease and simplicity.Whether that person existed […]
Sufi-Journalist combo on May 6, 2020Many leading journalists who ‘promoted’ Imran Khan as a savior of Pakistan have recently apologized. Maybe they were kept out of the decision-making process after he was sworn in that has left a sour taste. Or maybe they actually acknowledge misdeed, we don’t know and with the slippery world of ever-changing human emotions, they may […]
Leadership crisis on April 25, 2020Now more than ever Pakistan needs a strong, resilient and wise leadership – a politician with true popular support, a leader who can unify all the ethnic minorities, who has a track record of reviving the economy, who understands the mindset of civil bureaucracy, who can keep the establishment at bay, and who can rise […]
Charity to Pakistan? on April 10, 2020Expatriates will soon face a dilemma. With the economic turmoil ensuing, people around them would need financial assistance. Should they then help the communities they currently live in or send their donations back home? They have got a difficult choice to make. In a unique way, the coronavirus pandemic has hit both rich and poor […]
Impeachment for political vendetta on January 30, 2020Presided by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts in the Senate, the world watched the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Democratslaid down their case against the president first, who was charged by the House of Representatives on two accounts: abuse of power and obstruction of the Congress. They were rebutted by the defence […]
Unleashed violence on January 14, 2020Few months ago, when the federal minster for Science and Technology, Chaudhry Fawad Hussein slapped a renowned journalist in public, I thought the two were settling old scores and it was mainly a private matter since both of them did not enjoy a reputation of holding their tongues back when it came to criticizing their […]
Democracy in Medicine on October 8, 2019Being both, a physician and a Pakistani, nothing hurts me more thanrealizing that suddenly the medical training of our country has been denied accreditation, years ofour hard work have gone wasted, our career trajectoryjeopardized. Not too long ago though, this is exactly what happened to a group of Pakistani doctors working in Saudi Arabia. The […]
Corruption or incompetence on October 5, 2019Let me first clarify that the PTI was not the first party to start a political campaign against corruption. Before Imran Khan, Mian Nawaz Sharif won the 1997 general elections working on the same agenda. Sharif was the one who started the accountability process, which in the ‘wrong hands’ of Saif-ur-Rehman looked more like a […]
The root cause of Political Instability on September 24, 2019Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s long-march poses some threat to Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) in Islamabad, but whether it would mature, cannot be accurately predicted. Why? Maulana, although truly hurt by the election outcomes, is difficult to read and even more difficult to interpret. Personally, I don’t foresee a political storm brewing at the moment. Had […]