Pakistan

The threat within

REPORTS of an attempted coup in Bangladesh by serving and retired military officials in connivance with a banned Islamist group, Hizbut Tahrir, having been foiled by Bangladeshi authorities over the weekend is a reminder of the potentially catastrophic nexus between radical Islam and the armed forces in Pakistan too. The […]

Historic walled city under threat

LAHORE: The medieval walled city of Lahore is under threat from a construction ‘free-for-all’ ruining centuries of heritage, as an ambitious Pakistani restoration project to protect it stalls. Rapid and illegal growth is crowding out the “old city” —the section of the eastern hub fortified by a wall during the […]

Pakistan: Hydra unity

Courtesy Daily Dawn:  ……….This actually shouldn’t come as a surprise in a country where the state has for long been active in defining what or who a ‘Muslim’ is, and that too in a society brimming with various sects and sub-sects. This has left the sects judging one another, sometimes […]

Science at the grass roots

IN an article ‘Neutrinos and Angels’ he wrote for a national daily, Prof Pervez Hoodbhoy, one of Pakistan’s leading scientists, quotes the late Carl Sagan, America’s well-known astronomer, astrophysicist, and science communicator. Sagan told Bible Belt Americans: “Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during […]