(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Pakistan is a victim and it has been one since its inception. Its politicians are victims, its people are victims, the establishment is a victim – everyone here is a victim. How do I know this? Because that’s what they say.
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Kashmir is not the jugular vein of Pakistan. And therefore, it would be much better for us to move on from Kashmir and concentrate on the issues that are bleeding the country to death, slowly but surely. Instead of dreaming about adding to our land mass, it is necessary to fix all the damaged veins within Pakistan. Let’s work on that first. We can worry about Kashmir later.
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Between Dr. Salam and Malala there were no other Nobel Laureates. In the meantime, we seem to consider our biggest scientific achievements to be the atomic bomb and the ‘water kit’ car. What is wrong with this picture? The fact that we collectively as a nation do not consider education to be the most important aspect of human life.
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
My favourite singer Jim Morrison once said, “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.” This is true anywhere in the world but the Pakistani media takes this particular cake. Let’s start with the news channels, which show inane programmes for women in the morning, replete with faux weddings, beauty tips and the like.
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
It is important for Muslims as well as the rest of the world to realize that if criticism of Islam is not allowed, we will continue to see such acts of terror. If people are forced to go through rituals they no longer believe in, Muslims will not become part of the modern world. And most importantly, the denial that this had nothing to do with Islam, and the tagline that the killers could never be Muslims, must be abandoned.
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
It is all very well to say that anyone who spouts such hate speech should be stopped, but why not also say that such expressions should be eliminated from our national psyche? And to do that we must start at the source of the problem.
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
The students from these ‘education networks’ come out with only one agenda: Islamic supremacy. Humanity seems to get lost somewhere on the way. And when that is the only thing you know, when you have not been given the chance to learn other things and to question what is being taught, the end result, more often than not, is what we see happening in the country right now.
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
It is not enough to protest against atrocities. It is time to stop thinking that our constitution is something that can never be changed. It can and it should be and we must not be afraid of asking for this. Keep religion out of the state and we would have taken the first step towards changing the hyper Islamic mind-set that is prevalent in the country.
