Double standards of the clergy on March 22, 2016Expressing his reservations over the Women’s Protection Bill passed by the Punjab assembly, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman of Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) declared that they would stop all attempts to make Pakistan a secular state. Ironically the same week, across the border, Maulana Arshad Madni of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind (JUH) while attacking the Modi government declared that they […]
Brace for a Trump presidency on March 14, 2016Donald Trump’s steady march towards the Republican Party’s nomination for the top job in the US has been viewed by most of us with disbelief. His rise is perplexing. Other than the fact that he is a billionaire business tycoon who converted a relatively small, inherited fortune into a large one, there are very few […]
Re-learning moderation on March 7, 2016In this space, I have continuously written about the threat that an overbearing clergy poses to a state that is attempting to relearn moderation after spending a large part of the last three decades, Musharraf years excepted, radicalising a moderate population. I was surprised at the surprise shown by some of our liberals at the […]
Cultural wars on February 22, 2016Valentine’s Day came and went. It was widely celebrated in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, despite the honourable president’s unprecedented warning that it was not part of Muslim culture. The president, under fire from the religious clergy for his comments on interest and modern banking, probably thought Valentine’s Day was a soft target for him […]
Pakistan and the GSP Plus on February 15, 2016The European Union (EU) instituted the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) Plus status to encourage countries to commit to improving the status of human rights and good governance. Under it a country with the status is expected to ratify and implement 27 international conventions. Pakistan was granted this status in late 2013. This enabled Pakistan […]
Islamisation of Pakistans legal system on February 8, 2016Justice A R Cornelius, being a liberal catholic Christian, is an unlikely champion of the Islamisation of the legal system in Pakistan. Yet facts show that it was he who first expounded the idea that in order for rule of law to take root in Pakistan, judges should freely deploy Islam to justify their legal […]
The Kingdom and the Islamic Republic on January 25, 2016Pakistan’s attempts to engage Saudi Arabia and Iran to defuse tensions at the highest level are obviously very welcome because of the imperatives that Pakistan has, given its own large Shia population. An all-out war between Iran and Saudi Arabia holds up a terrible prospect for sectarian violence in Pakistan, which we just cannot afford. […]
Was Jinnah confused? on January 18, 2016A public intellectual, who I really respect, recently forwarded the opinion that Jinnah was confused and was unclear about what he wanted for Pakistan, i.e. whether he wanted it to be a secular state or an Islamic state. After all, different parts of Jinnah’s speeches are quoted by both the secularists and Islamists to prove […]
An ancient schism on January 10, 2016The execution of Shia scholar Shaikh Al Nimr in Saudi Arabia has started a new phase of Shia-Sunni doctrinal war in the modern age. It seems that Muslims as a whole are incapable of learning from history, either their own or that of other people. Saudi Arabia, an absolutist monarchy deriving its legitimacy from dogmatic […]
We need a new constitution on December 27, 2015Pakistan’s Constitution of 1973 is both woefully inadequate and unnecessarily cumbersome for the governance of a modern democracy in the 21st century. It is too burdened by contradictory objectives, which include on the one hand the idea that Pakistan is an Islamic Republic and on the other that it is a modern democratic state based […]