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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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: […]

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 […]

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 – […]

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 […]

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 […]

 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 […]

 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 […]

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 […]

A lot of Pakistan’s defense budget may get redirected in the post-Covid era, but the army isn’t going to let go. It now eyes revocation of a constitutional amendment. Ayesha Siddiqa Like every crisis, Covid-19 will bring its set of challenges and opportunities. For starters, the  guns-versus-butter debate may be back on the table. With the overall size of the world economy […]

Omar Sheikh was let go because someone in Pakistan wanted him freed, like mentor Masood Azhar Ayesha Siddiqa Coronavirus pandemic, world distracted by Afghan peace deal and weak case in the murder of Daniel Pearl opened a window to acquit Omar Sheikh. But the US noticed. On 14 October 2009, American ambassador to Pakistan Ann Patterson cabled Washington that Omar Saeed […]