News & Views

Attack on Ghaza: Manmohan Singh vs Netanyahu

Attack on Ghaza: Manmohan Singh vs Netanyahu

by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN I am watching the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza today and thinking about one of the world leaders I’ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was India’s prime minister in late November 2008, when 10 Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, widely believed to be linked to Pakistan’s military intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160 people in […]

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Iran is behind the attack by Hamas

Iran is behind the attack by Hamas

by Khaled Ahmed The precise details of Iran’s direct role in authorising the attack are gradually coming to light, with officials involved in the investigation insisting that both Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah (a terrorist organization Iran controls) were involved in the planning of the Hamas terrorist operation. This is hardly surprising given the estimated $100 million a year Tehran gives […]

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Leicester fire a result of orthodox Muslim clergy of ’90s vs new communal Hindu migrants

Leicester fire a result of orthodox Muslim clergy of ’90s vs new communal Hindu migrants

by Ayesha Siddiqa The recent clash between Hindus and Muslims—or Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims—in Leicester, a town located about 140 kilometres north of London, is but one of the many faces of what future British politics will have to cater to. In fact, it has spread to other towns as well. Very simply, the racial tension that started over two cricket matches at the end of August […]

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DEATH OF THE QUEEN AND THE UNCOUTH INDIAN RESPONSE

DEATH OF THE QUEEN AND THE UNCOUTH INDIAN RESPONSE

By Bhaskar Sur The death of the Queen took none by surprise. Her reign which lasted for seven decades has been the longest in British history. Yet the world mourned as much for a kind of nostalgia for paternalistic monarchy as for her charisma. She was loved by the common people across the party lines – by the conservatives and […]

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End of Aiman al-Zawahiri

End of Aiman al-Zawahiri

Khaled Ahmed On the first of August 2022, a US drone attack killed the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Kabul in Afghanistan. US President came on TV to say that Zawahiri had “carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens. Now justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more. Zawahiri was on the […]

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Xi, Putin, and Trump: The Strongmen Follies

Xi, Putin, and Trump: The Strongmen Follies

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN The last five years have been a master class in comparative politics, because something happened that we’d never seen before at the same time: The world’s three most powerful leaders — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump — each took drastic steps to hold onto power beyond their designated terms of office. One failed. Two […]

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Biden is paving the way for a dangerous ideology

Biden is paving the way for a dangerous ideology

by Dalia Al-Aqidi Democratic members of the US House of Representatives passed legislation last week to create a special envoy to combat Islamophobia worldwide. The bill was sponsored by Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and her Jewish colleague Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois. At first glance, the creation of this position seems noble as it […]

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On Ramakrishna Booksellers

On Ramakrishna Booksellers

The Forgotten Lahore’ series –Altaf Hussain Asad acquaints readers with the history of a pre-Partition bookstore, ‘ the name of which is still embossed on the façade of a building in Anarkali, Lahore by Altaf Hussain Asad New age ushers in gigantic changes, and changes make you a bit wonderstruck as well as out of place as you try to […]

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An awkward genius

An awkward genius

by Khaled Ahmed Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar (1878-1932) led the largest political movement in India called the Khilafat Movement and today features in the Pakistani textbooks as one of the leaders of the Pakistan Movement too. Professor M. Naeem Qureshi has written a most insightful book Ottoman Turkey, Ataturk, and Muslim South Asia (OUP 2014) highlighting the role of Maulana […]

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In this photograph taken on August 28, 2017, a US Marine looks on as Afghan National Army soldiers raise the Afghan National flag on an armed vehicle during a training exercise to deal with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) at the Shorab Military Camp in Lashkar Gah in Helmand province.
Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand say Donald Trump's decision to keep boots on the ground indefinitely gives them "all the time in the world" to retake the province, once the symbol of US intervention but now a Taliban stronghold. They may need it. At the hot, dusty Camp Shorab, where many of the recently deployed Marines train their Afghan counterparts in flat, desert terrain, the Afghans admit their army still cannot fight alone.

 / AFP PHOTO / WAKIL KOHSAR        (Photo credit should read WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Getting ready for a post-US Afghanistan?

By Khaled Ahmed Prime Minister Imran Khan pronouncing a strange “fatwa” on women’s Islamic purdah and calling Osama bin Laden “shaheed” could be his way of getting ready for the new Afghanistan emerging after the exit of the Americans from there in September 2021. The world is also scared – like Prime Minister Khan – of the post-US Afghan scenario. […]

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Syed Ameer Ali: The Unknown Scholar

Syed Ameer Ali: The Unknown Scholar

An expert in Islamic law, the Bengali scholar paved the way for the political training of Muslims in India by Khaled Ahmed  One must give credit to Dr. Sikandar Hayat, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at FC University Lahore, for writing a most detailed portrait of great Islamic scholar Syed Ameer Ali—seldom discussed in Pakistan—in his book, A Leadership […]

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God has gone missing!

God has gone missing!

Amar Jalil God has gone missing for couple of days. He is my friend. We never quarreled with each other over anything. All of a sudden, He has gone missing. For a moment, I thought the people who kidnap others might have kidnapped him as well. It is impossible to return from there. He will never be back. And if […]

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Thinking of secularism in Pakistan

Thinking of secularism in Pakistan

Khaled Ahmed People stopped thinking of secularism – read pluralism and liberalism as well – long time ago; but there is a highly respected teacher in Karachi who has the intellectual honesty to think of it afresh. Dr Moonis Ahmar, Professor of International Relations at the University of Karachi, wrote his book Conflict Management and Vision for a Secular Pakistan: […]

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The end of Hafiz Saeed

The end of Hafiz Saeed

Khaled Ahmed On 19 November 2020, a pivotal development took place in the lives of Pakistanis. An anti-terrorism court sentenced chief of the banned organisation Jamaatud Dawa – erstwhile Lashkar-e-Tayba – Hafiz Saeed, to ten years in jail for “terror financing”. The conviction came as Pakistan tried to avoid blacklisting by the global dirty-money watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force […]

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Pakistani head of the Tehreek-i-Labaik Yah Rasool Allah Pakistan (TLYRAP) religious group Khadim Hussain Rizvi (C) announces the end of sit-in protest on a blocked flyover bridge during a press conference in Islamabad on November 27, 2017.
The Islamist leader whose group clashed violently with Pakistani security forces and paralysed Islamabad for weeks called off the sit-in protest November 27 after the law minister resigned, meeting its key demand. / AFP PHOTO / AAMIR QURESHI

Obituary: Allama Khadim Husain Rizvi-Scoundrel or Saint?

Khaled Ahmed Leader of Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), Allama Khadim Husain Rizvi breathed his last on 19 November 2020 in Lahore after staging a successful protest at Faizabad crossing, Rawalpindi. Born in 1966 in the Pindi Gheb area of Attock district, Punjab, Rizvi was a Hafiz-e-Quran and Sheikh-ul-Hadith – knew the Quran by heart and had command over Hadith – […]

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Moeed Yusuf interview aimed to put Pakistan back in Kashmir

Moeed Yusuf interview aimed to put Pakistan back in Kashmir

by Ayesha Siddiqa Pakistan’s establishment has much to celebrate after Moeed W. Yusuf, special advisor on national security and strategic policy planning to Pakistan’s Prime Minister, gave a successful interview to Karan Thapar. Notwithstanding the fact that the interview was a personal gain for Yusuf, it also succeeded in delivering the most important message from Pakistan: the Imran Khan government was not interested in talks with its Indian counterpart, and that Islamabad is prepared to fight […]

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A Mandir in Islamabad

A Mandir in Islamabad

Khaled Ahmed In 2018, an allotted piece of land for a Shri Krishna Mandir in Islamabad was attacked and occupied by clerical protesters saying a Hindu structure could not be built on a city named after Islam. In June this year, under the government of Imran Khan, the project was restarted with a first funding installment of $1.3 million. But […]

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The fight against discrimination should not be selective

The fight against discrimination should not be selective

 Kamran Siddiqui The public outrage in response to the brutal killing of George Floyd has exposed deep cracks in the US social justice structure. The massive protests are being observed in US and all around the world. People of different races, religions and ages stood up in solidarity with African-Americans in their struggle against racial discrimination. While expressing desire to […]

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Why is Pakistan spending so much money on defence amid COVID-19?

Why is Pakistan spending so much money on defence amid COVID-19?

 Ayesha Siddiqa The Pakistani government does not seem willing to shift its spending priorities despite the burgeoning COVID-19 challenges.  Pakistan has emerged as one of the countries with the fastest rate of coronavirus infections in recent weeks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The country reported its first coronavirus case on February 26 and is now among the top 15 […]

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Covid Economy & National Security State

Covid Economy & National Security State

Husain Haqqani Claiming that there is no pandemic in the country and that Pakistanis should be allowed to celebrate the festival of Eid ul Fitr as they have always done, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered resumption of train services, other public transport, and opening of shopping centres. This, while Covid-19 cases rose to 43,000 and led to 924 deaths by 19 May. Pakistan already has more coronavirus cases […]

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