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Browsing All Posts filed under »History«
State and Religion in the Perspective of Muslim History
By Hassan Jafar Zaidi (hjzaidi@hotmail.com) (The author delivered his lecture on the same subject in Conway Hall, London on January 7, 2007) Courtesy Danishkada.com God did not create state. Man evolved and created state in the shapes and forms suited to him according to growth of means of production and the level of organization required […]
Distorted Histories
Eqbal Ahmad Interviewed by David Barsamian Eqbal Ahmad, activist scholar, was born in India probably in 1934. He’s not quite sure. In 1947, he left with his brothers for the newly created state of Pakistan. He came to the United States to study at Princeton in the 1950s, and then went to Algeria. Ahmad worked […]
Revisiting the Pakistani Grand Narrative
By Zia Ahmad Courtesy Pak Tea House “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives.” (Jean-François Lyotard) Most of the cultures around the world have an innate tendency to view themselves at the center of the universe. As with individuals this may be owing to the inability for some to live outside […]
The Myth of Ghazwa-tul-Hind
By Ale Natiq Cross-Posted from Ale’s blog (Thanks to Pakistani intelligence agencies for their illegal Denial of Service (DOS) attacks on Ale’s blog) Religion has quite frequently been used as an excuse for military motives. Talking specifically about Islam, hadees has been used as a tool to invent excuses for political motivations and military interventions/attacks […]
Patriotism and Religiosity in Pakistan
By Umayr Hassan I can appreciate, why you don’t want this to be yet another discussion about Zaid Hamid. It is indeed difficult to reasonably discuss a commentator disinclined to cite his sources. (I will underline, though, the constant parading of the “Syed” part of his name: his supposed ancestry does not already make him […]
Profile of the Religious Right
By Eqbal Ahmad Dawn- 7 March, 2009 In two earlier essays l had argued one, that all religio-political movements are products of the shift from the agrarian/pastoral to the capitalist/industrial mode of production and the many forms of dislocations that it entails and two, that the religious tradition they invoke is more imagined than real, […]
Islam and Politics
By Eqbal Ahmad Islam, Politics, and the State, ed. Mohammad Asghar Khan (London. Zed Press, 1985 ) In writing about Islam and politics, one faces special difficulties. The field of Islamic studies, strewn with ancient potholes and modern mines, is dominated by apparently different but complementary adversaries-the “traditionalist” Ulema and the “modern” Orientalists. Their methods […]
Islam’s Arrested Development
By Pervez Hoodbhoy Guardian – 25 November 2009 The question: Can Islam be reconciled with science? Material resources are immaterial to the current sorry state of science in Islam. To do science, it is first necessary to accept the key premises underlying science – causality and the absence of divine intervention in physical processes, and […]
Censorship in Pakistani Urdu Textbooks
By Ajmal Kamal Suppression of dissent and criticism has always been an active force in Pakistani society. Journalists and creative writers have had to struggle hard to find their way around or across many laws threatening to punish any deviation from the official line on most vital issues. The authorities’ initiative to impose censorship through […]
Tablighi Jamaat Coming of Age?
By Waqar Gillani, The News Cross Posted from Pak Tea House Ex-servicemen belonging to Tablighi Jamaat meet in Raiwind ahead of its annual Ijtimah to discuss the party’s future agenda Ahead of the Tablighi Jamaat’s annual congregation in Raiwind near Lahore — one of the largest congregations of Islamic world attended by at least one […]
Rewriting the History of Pakistan
by Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy and Abdul Hameed Nayyar [Source: Islam, Politics and the State: The Pakistan Experience, Asghar Khan (ed.) Zed Books, London, 1985, pp. 164-177.] From indoctrination’s foul rope Suspend all reason, all hope Until with swollen tongue Morality herself is hung. Introduction Education in Pakistan, from schools to universities, is being fundamentally redefined. […]
The Myth of History
by Prof. Shahida Kazi DAWN- March 27, 2005 History is a discipline that has never been taken seriously by anyone in Pakistan. As a result, the subject has been distorted in such a way that many a fabricated tale has become part of our collective consciousness Does mythology have anything to do with history? Is […]
Signatures on Balochistan Statement
by A. H. Nayyar Dear friends, Balochistan is burning and needs our special and urgent attention. For the fifth time the people of Balochistan have been forced to take up arms as an expression of defiance against their continued exploitation. Each time the state of Pakistan embarked on military action to crush the resistance rather […]
‘Bring back Jinnah’s Pakistan’
By Ardeshir Cowasjee DAWN- 01 Nov, 2009 Of late, amidst the murder and mayhem accompanied by an absence of government or any signs of governance, a group of citizens has been circulating an email message exhorting whoever to ‘bring back Jinnah’s Pakistan’. Now, to bring back something that existed for a mere moment in the […]
In a Land Without Music
by Eqbal Ahmad from The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad (Editor’s Note: This first hand narrative of Afghanistan during Taliban regime should be read by those who believe in absurd notions of ‘Good Taliban’ and ‘Bad Taliban’) I have seen the future as envisioned by contemporary Islamists. It horrifies and does not work – anywhere. […]
Allama Iqbal- Is he still relevant?
by Yasser Latif Hamdani Given the current turmoil, which has made it abundantly clear that the people of Pakistan desire a truly representative democratic civilian order, the question above has become very relevant. Essentially – this begs four questions that ought to be answered to understand the relevance of Allama Iqbal to Pakistan today. 1. […]
The Clash of Ignorance
by Edward Said Published in The Nation - October 22, 2001 Samuel Huntington’s article “The Clash of Civilizations?” appeared in the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs, where it immediately attracted a surprising amount of attention and reaction. Because the article was intended to supply Americans with an original thesis about “a new phase” in […]
The Roots of Violence
by Eqbal Ahmad Making Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan’s Crises of State and Society. Edited by Zia Mian and Iftikhar Ahmad (Mashal Books, Lahore, 1997)., 1997 Contents Proliferation of violence has become the most serious soc ial problem in Pakistan today. Not a week, often not a day, goes by without so me terrible act of violence […]
Bring Back Jagannath Azad’s Pakistan Anthem
by Beena Sarwar (Taken with gratitude from Beena Sarwar’s blog) As children we learnt that Pakistan didn’t have a national anthem until the 1950s. My journalist uncle Zawwar Hasan used to tell us of a reporter friend who visited China in the early 1950s. Asked about Pakistan’s national anthem, he sang the nonsensical ‘laralapa laralapa’. […]
Dialectical interpretation of Human History
by Salman Khalid (Salman Khalid has contributed an article to Secular Pakistan. We encourage others to contribute as well. There could be differences of opinion regarding the application of Hegelian dialectic to an analysis of history and one can consult the extensive material available to form an opinion.) “We can only learn from history, but […]
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December 26, 2009 by Awais
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