KHAR, Pakistan: One of Pakistan’s most notorious Taleban radio voices is back on the air after the army raided his stronghold last year and drove him across the border into Afghanistan. The resurgence of Maulvi Faqir Mohammed — also one of the Pakistani Taleban’s top commanders — illustrates the resilience […]
That reporting a rape is an arduous ordeal is a truth that resounds globally. When braving for police investigations, enumerating the ordeal in court and damaging stereotypical media representations become a norm then the argument for a pellucid approach becomes preemptory. In 2006, a much-heated debate on the Hudood Laws […]
BY: Laiq Ahmed Atif, President Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, Malta We live in an age of competition, threats and challenges; surviving between problems, material as well as spiritual. At different times, there were different problems; there were always hurdles to be overcome and threatening dangers to be conquered. But, the peaceful […]
WASHINGTON: The founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program claims that in the late 1990s North Korean officials paid kickbacks to senior Pakistani military figures in exchange for critical weapons technology. Abdul Qadeer Khan has given a United States-based expert documents that appear to show North Korea’s government paid more than […]
Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), or the Liberation Party, was founded in 1953 in Jerusalem. The party advocates the politics of pan-Islam by calling for the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate. Hizb ut-Tahrir is active in most Muslim countries in addition to Western Europe, North America and Australia. […]
Spinning yarn into cloth used to be a path to fortune in Pakistan, but a story of decline encapsulates how far a crippling energy crisis and rocketing inflation are suffocating the economy. Power cuts sometimes lasting more than 12 hours a day have forced factory owners in the country’s cloth […]
On the American drone attacks and possible military incursions into Pakistan, like the operation to get bin Laden, I am reminded of an incident narrated to me by a very dear elder, Sayeed Hasan Khan. He recalls it was during the freedom movement around 1946-47 when he ran into a woman […]
Anjum Naveed/Associated Press A vigil in Islamabad in June for Saleem Shahzad, who wrote scathing reports about the infiltration of militants in the army. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Obama administration officials believe that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the […]
In 1979, Nicaraguan soldiers stopped an American correspondent covering the deteriorating situation and summarily executed him. The American public was appalled, support for Anastasio Somoza flagged badly after that, and his regime soon collapsed. Similar dynamics may be underway in Pakistan. The murder in May of Asia Times Online’s Pakistani […]
BANGKOK: Irfanul Mulk may have been able to find temporary shelter in Thailand, but those who forced him out of Pakistan are now flexing their muscles to bring him back. Irfan, 27, left his village Taban in Punjab’s Sheikhupura district after he and his two brothers Furqanul Mulk, 21, and […]
As foreign reports claim that Pakistan is among the least secure countries for women, local NGO Aurat Foundation reports that violence against women decreased by 6.41% in 2010 compared to figures from 2009. The NGO’s report, titled Violence Against Women in Pakistan 2010, revealed the ‘surprising’ fact that 8,000 cases […]
Barelvi scholars have condemned both Osama bin Laden and the United States as “killers of thousands of Muslims”, while demanding the release of the “heroic” Mumtaz Hussan Qadri, the self-confessed killer of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer. Speaking at the annual degree awarding ceremony at Aiwan-i-Iqbal for 40 religious scholars on Saturday night, Idara Sirat-i-Mustaqeem head Dr […]
More than 1,100 people have been shot dead in political violence in the Pakistani city of Karachi since the start of the year, campaigners say. The Human Right Commission of Pakistan criticised city officials for failing to stop the targeted killings. Much of the violence is associated with battles between […]
// Over the last many months, there has been a sudden surfacing of mutilated corpses bearing torture marks of students, political workers, rights activists, all who had earlier gone missing. – File Photo // http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ads?correlator=1309796368221&output=json_html&callback=GA_googleSetAdContentsBySlotForSync&impl=s&prev_afc=1&pstok=YvB5WAwWanMKBRDAlbcH&client=ca-pub-8258178831251847&slotname=Dawn_ROS_Banner&page_slots=Dawn_Home_Ip_top_728x90%2CDawn_ROS_Banner&cookie=ID%3D7bc0595e8816825a%3AT%3D1303908499%3AS%3DALNI_MaWM22AkqRAF5fH1tLDjMKxcxeZPw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dawn.com%2F2011%2F07%2F04%2Freluctant-pakistanis.html&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fdawn.com%2F&lmt=1309796367&dt=1309796370517&cc=100&biw=1007&bih=458&ifi=2&adk=2388668355&u_tz=120&u_his=14&u_h=768&u_w=1024&u_ah=738&u_aw=1024&u_cd=24&u_nplug=7&u_nmime=23&flash=10.0.2&gads=v2&ga_vid=1922897649.1309796021&ga_sid=1309796021&ga_hid=1539439516&ga_fc=true // Qadeer Baloch misses a thousand heartbeats each time he lifts the sheet of a […]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani military continues to nurture a broad range of militant groups as part of a three-decade strategy of using proxies against its neighbors and American forces in Afghanistan, but now some of the fighters it trained are questioning that strategy, a prominent former militant commander says. […]
The True Concept of Islamic Jihad By: Laiq Ahmed atif Jihad is an Arabic word that means striving for a noble objective. With the study of the Holy Quran it becomes very clear that calling people for Jihad means striving for a noble cause and objective. It can be carried out in […]
A viral video of Ameer Jamat-e-Islami (JI) Munawwar Hassan defending the silence over the rape of women and condoning imprisonment of female rape victims if they fail to produce four male witnesses in accordance with the Hudood Ordinance, has deeply outraged many sane people in Pakistan. According to Hassan, if a woman cannot […]
Armed men on Friday kidnapped two Swiss in south-west Pakistan, news agencies reported. The two Swiss entered Baluchistan province from neighbouring Punjab province around 5pm local time and “had been registered by police at a check point” as tourists from Switerland, a local police official said. Their abandoned vehicle was […]
Two months after the covert US raid that killed Osama bin Laden, posters emblazoned with images of the burning World Trade Center towers appeared at the country’s largest university advertising a literary contest to glorify the slain al-Qaida chief. Times of India LAHORE: Two months after the covert US raid […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Islam’s greatest threat comes from those who claim to be serving it – extremist militants, Shehrbano Taseer, daughter of slain Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, said June 27. Shehrbano said that militants, whom she repeatedly called “hate mongers,” have misinterpreted Islam. “Islam is a peaceful religion,” she said. […]