Khatm-e-Nabuwat as a slogan in 2018 on January 22, 2018Religion has always been a factor in South Asian politics no matter which country you are in. Our collective problem has been the angle of vision, which places community interests and rights over individual interests and rights. Even our historical debates have been around definitions of the collective community. In the heyday of Indian Nationalism […]
No escape from the US on January 8, 2018As a Pakistani, President Donald Trump’s New Year tweet came as a rude shock given that we have lost so much more than any other country in this war on terror. The blood of our valiant soldiers and ordinary citizens speaks volumes on this count. Therefore I am writing this article as an ordinary citizen […]
Secularism in Muslim societies on January 6, 2018This is in response to Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed’s piece on 3 January 2018. I had made up my mind not to respond to his articles but there were startling inaccuracies in his piece, which need a response. The first inaccuracy is his claim that Kemalist Turkey separated religion and state in 1924. This is historically […]
No more business as usual in 2018 please on January 1, 2018Happy 2018. May this year bring to our country the prosperity and peace that is the desire of every citizen, no matter what his or her religion or ethnicity or language. There are dark clouds and several challenges looming on the horizon and one can only hope that those who have in their hands the […]
Christmas and Jinnah Day on December 25, 2017To start with let me wish a very merry Christmas to all Christians celebrating all around the world and in particular to our Christian brethren in Pakistan who are as much Pakistani as anyone else. This being the commemoration of the birth of great Prophet Jesus, or as the Muslims refer to him Hazrat Isa […]
Jinnah and Pir of Manki Sharif on December 21, 2017In my opinion, the debate around Jinnah and secularism should have rested with my last piece but Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed continued it in his article on Sunday. I am personally not in favour of an endless back and forth through the pages of this newspaper and as far as I am concerned, this is my […]
Half-truths about Jinnah on December 18, 2017I apologise to the readers for bombarding them with articles on Jinnah in recent weeks but this is because there is another effort underway to distort whatever remains of the memory of our founding father. As long as one can write, one will attempt to counter the lies and myths being created about Jinnah. It […]
Jinnah Islam and Secularism on December 15, 2017Writing in response to my previous article ‘Jinnah and the Minorities’, Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed in his piece ‘Jinnah Muslims and Minorities’ failed to address the central point that I made which was that at no point during the 13 months that Jinnah was in power that any piece of legislation or resolution purporting to commit […]
Jinnah and the minorities on December 13, 2017This is with reference to Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed’s “Jinnah’s Prerogatives” piece in which he claims that Jinnah never returned to theme of equality that he struck in his famous 11 August speech. This claim, repeated by a number of people of an Islamist orientation, is historically inaccurate. Unfortunately Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed and others rely on […]
Islam in the modern age on December 11, 2017His Highness Aga Khan-IV, the hereditary imam of the Ismaili Aga Khani community, is on a visit to Pakistan. To my mind he represents the true spirit of Islam: progress, humanity, education, and economic progress as ethical imperatives and dictates of Islamic doctrine. As a religious leader can there be a greater contrast that what […]