Arguably, love is the highest sentiment the human spirit is capable of. In essence, it is selfless, generous, liberating, sublime. It purges one of all that holds one down to the mundane and earthy. Kahlil Gibran famously writes: “Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it […]
The jarring reports on human rights abuse in Kashmir- notably, of rape used as a weapon against an occupied people- have failed to elicit a response from the United Nations. When pressed for comments over a report on the presence of thousands of unmarked graves, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon apologized that he had ‘no […]
Much has been written about the Theatre of the Absurd in Islamabad on the Ides of January. I wouldn’t dignify it with comment on the agenda, the proceedings, the success or the lack of it. But I am interested in examining how it could have happened, with the support of the many thousands who braved […]
I was watching the movie Batman Begins a few days ago, and one of the things in it that really perked my interest was the state-of-affairs of Gotham City. It was a city shown in shambles; a place where corruption had infiltrated the very infrastructure of the city. A city overrun by criminals, and no […]
We all seem to have an image. An image of what a God-fearing and religious person looks like. That image may be founded on our experience with those whom we consider to be “religious” or at times based on what we imagine a pious person to be, created upon our reading from a particular […]
In South Africa there are two million whites against almost thirteen million native people, and it has never occurred to a single black to consider himself superior to a member of the white minority.– Frantz Fanon The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have […]
THE only thing that surprised me when I heard that the Algerian kidnappers had called for the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui was that it hadn’t happened sooner. Don’t get me wrong, as a former hostage myself, there is no way I condone the actions of what has unfolded in a remote corner of the […]
I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement. —Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le Colonialisme The independence movements in colonies and protectorates came into being, not through a return to indigenous values on the part of those concerned, but through the absorption of occidental […]
The bullet proof, bomb-proof, container-led revolution of Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri has concluded, thankfully without any loss of human life, but needs some reflection on its course, its aims and results. Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri claimed to bring an overnight revolution because people are sick of current corrupt system. The idea seemed fascinating but the problem remained that the […]
Don’t know how to start … Qazi Hussain Ahmad, former Ameerr of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) left us in deep sorrow and grief and I don’t even have words to express it. He is still living in our hearts and minds. Like many others, my adulthood was spent in chanting slogans ‘hum baitey kis k __Qazi k’ […]
