The tide’s turning?

There is now a clear consensus developing in society at large not only against extremism, but also against whoever attempts to still explain it as a noble cause in the service of Islam and Pakistan. The eruption of anti-government riots and protest rallies in Iran recently has taken even the most astute political observers by [...]

Of cricket and other demons

Is Pakistan winning this year’s Twenty20 a symptom of the receding influence of the Tableeghi Jammat in the team, asks Nadeem F. Paracha. In 1996 when the underdog Sri Lankan cricket team created one upset after another to finally win that year’s prestigious Cricket World Cup, the then decade long Civil War on the island [...]

Smokers’ Corner: Fluxing with the enemy

Here’s an ‘enlightening’ exchange between a news TV anchor and correspondents in Swat and Lahore: … yes, Khalid, what can you tell us about the situation in Swat? Well, Sameena, the situation in Swat is pretty bad, people are dying, children are starving and women are wailing! Khalid, our viewers are well aware of the [...]

On screen, out of touch

Popular media in Pakistan is playing to the gallery of glorified irrationalism, writes Nadeem F. Paracha. On the day renowned Islamic scholar Dr Sarfraz Naeemi was brutally slaughtered by a suicide bomber of Baitullah Masud’s terrorist set-up, the Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) [1], mainstream television talk show host, Dr Shahid Masood, and former Amir of the Jamat [...]

Of our own making

In spite of the gradual infiltration of ubiquitous religious symbolism and mentality in the social spheres of everyday life, Pakistan has managed to remain afloat as a dynamically pluralistic society comprising various ethnicities, religions and Islamic sects. However, starting in the late 1970s, an anti-pluralistic process was initiated by the Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship that soon spiralled [...]

Maududi’s Children

How the intellectuality of Political Islam turned into the brutality of faithful fascism: Nadeem F. Paracha In Pakistan even the traditional Muslim practice of reasoning in matters of religion – originally introduced by the 9th century Mutazilites – is at times treated like some kind of an abomination to be feared, discouraged and repressed. It [...]

Loons of doom

In one of the chapters in Aitzaz Ahsan’s The Indus Saga — perhaps the finest book written on the history of the region we call Pakistan — he makes an interesting point about our habit of blaming foreign/ hidden forces behind whatever goes wrong with us. Ahsan marks the starting point of this custom to [...]

The Frozen Solution

According to a March, 2009 report on DawnNews, a majority of people in the troubled Bajaur area wanted the implementation of the shariah law. The same report then suggested that more than 70 per cent of the people residing in Bajaur are illiterate. Now the question is how is one to respond to a demand made [...]