The recently concluded by-election in Rawalpindi’s NA-55 constituency, the interest and voter turnout it generated, was a healthy sign for the democratic process. It clearly reflected the fact that democracy is alive and kicking. Much has been said about the contest, but whereas the media’s focus remained on the main contestants — PML-N’s Shakeel Awan [...]
I was buying a pack of cigarettes at Karachi’s Boat Basin area when someone patted me on the back. I turned around, and it was a teenager with longish hair, a T-shirt and faded denims: “My name is Ayman, and I hate you.” “That’s nice to know, Ayman,” I smiled, offering him a cigarette. He [...]
There have been three major occasions when the Pakistani middle-class has broken away from its traditionally conservative disposition to come out and announce its ‘revolutionary’ political aspirations. The first incident of demonstrating political assertiveness was in the late 1960s when the bulk of the youth began to air their grievances against Pakistan’s military-industrialist nexus headed [...]
Just what exactly was Pervez Musharraf’s ‘enlightened moderation’? Though vague, it did seem to have enough bite to at least create (a malformed) narrative amongst a new generation of young middle-class urbanites. If you observe closely much of what is being emitted by this section of society, you can safely suggest that ‘enlightened moderation’ was, [...]
Like most urban middle class folks these days, a friend of mine too has a habit of using the term Inshallah (God willing) a lot. So one day I asked him why is almost every sentence uttered by my fellow Pakistanis punctuated with an Inshallah? His reply was the usual: “So? What is wrong with [...]
The Mughals and the Muslim population of the subcontinent weren’t all that bothered by the whole concept of the caliphate. As rulers they did not, or only superficially, recognised the Ottoman caliph. The Mughals, though Central Asian by decent, were deeply entrenched in the political and social traditions of the subcontinent and so was their [...]
Ever since Field Martial Ayub Khan toppled a blundering conglomerate of civil servants and politicians in a military coup in 1958, as a culture, Pakistan was moulded into a desperate group of people to whom democracy was akin to corruption and chaos. But compared to the 1950s, corruption scaled unprecedented heights during the Ayub dictatorship, [...]
RECENTLY I was fortunate enough to be a part of an excellent ten-minute news video prepared by the New York Times’ reporter, Adam Ellick. Tastefully called ‘Tuning out the Taliban,’ the video has created the right buzz amongst young middle-class Pakistanis. Adam treats his report as a way to understand why many educated, westernised and [...]
While driving to my office the other day, I almost crashed head-on into a motorcycle. The burly man riding the bike was coming in from the wrong way on a one-way street. After braking, I gestured to him as to what on earth was he up to. The motorcyclist gestured back and then shouted: ‘Are [...]
Only a few days ago, while channel surfing on a slow-moving evening, I came across a show where an ‘alim’ and his ‘scholar’ guest were discussing the Islamic edicts on the issue of wife-beating. As the ‘scholar’ insisted that the husband could use whatever degree of violence on a ‘disrespectful wife,’ the host, who usually [...]
