Zeeba T Hashmi  

When flags are burnt, sentiments run high. Though it is justified to state that desecration of a national flag is in fact an insult to the people belonging to a nation, double standards often surface when a rival country’s flag is humiliated in public. On Monday this week, a prominent writer of Pakistani origin was […]

For history to be recorded, related and taught, a language needs to be given its due recognition. For it to have its due share in society, the transformations a language undergoes through the ages must be studied for the changing social trends influencing it. According to a UNESCO survey report in 2011, there are about […]

And so it has happened again. After the passing of a year and a month, another gruesome attack took place in an educational institution. This time, the target of the terrorists was Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, which is about 50 km from Peshawar. From media reports, we learnt that four terrorists had entered the […]

The common notion is that religion binds people together and forms a certain kind of unity in society. This may be true in the case of homogenous societies where there are no economic and political complexities. The social reformation in the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) did not have such rigidity in religion, nor was […]

A campaign that strategically ignites the collective sentiment of hate is not dangerous because it puts another individual or group under direct threat, but because it is something that cannot be undone, even if the authorities have finally woken up to its uncontrolled menace. Such a case is true for the recent tirade of Ahmedi […]

This week, religious parties affiliated with the Tuhaffuz Nazria Pakistan Council (TNPC) have announced conferences on December 15 in Lahore and December 16 in Islamabad to dissuade any idea that has been posed by the government to liberalise Pakistan. In the backlash from the religious parties over Nawaz Sharif using the term “liberal”, which sent […]

Care for the elderly in Pakistan has been given a low priority status by policymakers engaged in geriatric affairs. In the changing population demographics, the problem of the survival of the elderly remains a challenge for the state when it comes to assisting them with the resources required for their well-being. With an increased poverty […]

The rightist and nationalist ideologies have been entrenched so effectively in public discourse that any voice countering or opposing them, no matter how rational the dialogue may seem, gets easily intimidated by threats and humiliation. It is, in fact, easier to be termed a traitor than be considered one having common sense and empathy. In […]

In the aftermath of the Army Public School (APS) attack in December last year, which killed scores of children, a 20-point National Action Plan (NAP) was incepted haphazardly to counter terrorism. Immediately after the attack, Maulana Abdul Aziz, the cleric of Lal Masjid, defended the attack on APS, which prompted protests from civil society demanding […]

With a general lack of recognition of religious identities, the minorities here suffer unchecked verbal and violent onslaught by the puritanical clergy. Such is the story of the Jews in Pakistan, a majority of whom had to go into exile or change their names to Muslim nomenclatures so as to protect themselves from widespread anti-Semitic […]