The fog of national security
We know that the media is too much with us. It is overwhelming. But it is difficult for us to make sense of what it is doing to us and…
Partition and the Two-Nation Theory
The Subcontinent – an infinite multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-racial and multi-class mass of plurality and a cauldron of immense contradictions – was partitioned in an extremely hasty, thoughtless, deceitful, expeditious and…
Tackling extremist ideology
The decision to put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest has been received well by the small minority of liberals and lured them into believing that this time the state really…
Overcoming regional and international isolation
Two important meetings in Islamabad are quite crucial for us to possibly get out of both regional and international isolation – if we make the right policy decisions. These are:…
A nation under siege
Yet another bloodbath, yet another day of mourning. It is the Pakistan story so regularly repeated that we have forgotten the count. From the Peshawar school massacre, to the Lahore…
International gangsterism
A mere two months after clashes between black youth and police in Baltimore following the murder of Freddie Gray while in police custody, President Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced…
Towards a national democratic narrative
In my previous column I tried to summarise the extremist religious narrative. In this column I will be presenting a counter-narrative. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has recently been repeatedly asserting…
What is the extremist narrative?
The government and the state are in a dilemma over the extremist religious narrative: if they do identify its broad features they will invite the wrath of the community of…
Disregard of international law
A VERY large section of teachers at seminaries and religious scholars refuse to see Muslims as anything other than a single organic ummah. For them, the resort to coercive methods…
Peshawar tragedy and Benazir’s assassination Wages of appeasement-I
December 27, 2014 marks the seventh death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto, who sacrificed her life courageously resisting the agenda of fanatics who are bent upon pushing Pakistan to a theocratic…
