Is this a country for Muslims or for Islam? This is the dilemma that Pakistan has faced from day one. For the majority of Muslim League leaders, Pakistan was to be a country for Muslims where they could live their lives without any fear of domination. The idea of Pakistan as a country for Islam took root later when the ...

In the mid 1980s when the Cold War was at its peak and things had heated up in Afghanistan, the former Soviet statesman Mikhail Gorbachev described Afghanistan as a country that had turned into a bleeding wound. Unfortunately, apart from some brief intervals, the unlucky country hasn’t seen peace in the true sense of the word throughout the last four ...

Claiming descent from the armies of Alexander the Great, the Kalash once ruled Kafiristan ‘land of the infidels’, an area which stretched across the north of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The unfortunate crash that killed the pop-musician-turned-preacher Junaid Jamshed amongst many others, seems to have created a media frenzy. While the Pakistani media landscape is preoccupied with his pop music legacy ...

The academic study of religions has evolved into a diverse, interdisciplinary field due to its recognized affiliation with many areas of the social sciences, in particular, anthropology, ethnography, politics, sociology and in light of the globalization of world views. Writing in 1999, Flood contends that ‘religions are abstracted from wider cultural narratives and a discourse about religions cannot be separated ...

Democratic transition in Pakistan after every martial law gets prolonged and complicated as duality in the power center exists even after the formal end of the military dictatorship. The deep state brazenly continues its shenanigans as weak civilian dispensation tries to find its feet. The aforementioned phenomenon has been visible after the general elections in February 2008, that have supposedly ...

The Awami National Party, ANP, led provincial government (2008- 2013) of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province came under relentless Taliban terror attacks. The Pashtun nationalist ANP lost over seven hundred workers, activists, supporters and their family members, including legislators. One of the assassinated legislators is Bashir Bilour (1943-2012). Bilour, an ANP stalwart educated as a lawyer and a resident of Peshawar, was ...

Since the launch of operation zarb-e-azab, the residents of North Waziristan were desperately waiting for a date of their return to North Waziristan. They left their homes with a hope that the displacement would no be more than a few months. Being one of them I was also living in the same state of mind. After being in that situation ...

Ursula von der Leyen’s stance was not in solidarity with the oppressed women of Saudi-Arabia but a message to the German voters. When German minister of defence Ursula von der Leyen made her visit to Saudi Arabia recently, she refused to comply with the country’s strict laws forcing women to dress up in a way declared modest by the male ...

The 110 pages damning report by Justice Qazi Faez Isa-led Inquiry Commission on Quetta terror attack of August 8 has categorically exposed the hypocrisy and double-dealings of the state institutions in their policy and action on terrorism. The report has been submitted to a three members Supreme Court bench led by the Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali on Thursday (December ...

Our writers leave no stone unturned to confuse the public opinion according to the wishes of their masters. There are many narratives and counter-narratives about the unjust and undemocratic system in the country. A section of the writers believe that it is the mindset and uniform or Jinnah cap is irrelevant. The others argue that imbalance of power sharing mechanism ...