Yasser Latif Hamdani

Last week Pakistan took the extraordinary step of releasing the transcript of Donald Trump’s fantastic phone conversation with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It was extraordinary because, as a general rule, a press release contains the salient points of what one’s own side said and only a summary of the main points of what the other […]

Politics is a cynical enterprise. You want to appoint a certain general as the Chief of Army Staff. First get someone from your party to say that he is an Ahmadi. Fascinating! It is Machiavellian to the core but brilliant politics nevertheless. Let us hope this little stunt does not come to bite us later. […]

The Spanish term La Covivencia means the coexistence and refers to the period of Muslim rule in Spain when it is postulated that Jews, Christians and Muslims lived peacefully and borrowed from each other’s traditions liberally, thus laying the foundations for religious tolerance. As a historical idea, it is not without criticisms. Some critics argue […]

In my article “Brace for Trump Presidency” (Daily Times) back in March I predicted that Donald Trump would easily win the White House. A number of readers wrote to me telling me I was wrong. One reader even wrote a scathing letter predicting that instead the US would join the ranks of an increasing number […]

Ambassador Dr Akbar S Ahmad asked me to speak to his class at the American University in Washington D.C. along with Ambassador Arsalan Suleiman, who is White House’s special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) about Islam and some of the challenges that Muslims face in the 21st century as a global community. […]

Extremists of every hue and cry are baying for Aasia bibi’s blood. What they do not understand is that with Aasia bibi’s life, hangs in balance Pakistan’s own future as a responsible member of comity of nations. Pakistan has never actually executed anyone under its blasphemy laws. This is because doing so would mean definite […]

It is that time when Pakistanis must be reminded of the fact that the man they call the father of the nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, in his role as a lawyer and a politician stood unwaveringly for the freedom of press. Speaking against the deportation of Benjamin Guy Horniman, the British editor of Bombay Chronicle, […]

Let me start with a simple statement. So long as you allow religious clergy to influence law making, there can be no progress on issues such as women’s rights. This is as true of a constitutionally secular state like India as it is of a constitutionally Islamic republic like ours. In secular India, the All […]

In my view, no real patriot of Pakistan or India can want a war between these two nations. It will all but end Pakistan and India forever, to a point where our collective civilisation will be reduced to the kind of ruins we find in Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Both Pakistan and India have a lot […]

One of the biggest problems that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), as the Internet regulator in Pakistan, has been facing for a number of years is the complex interplay of Pakistan’s stringent blasphemy laws and the content online. This has once again come to the forefront of yet another case being lodged against a Christian because […]