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Browsing All Posts filed under »Eqbal Ahmad«
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
Law Against Justice
by Eqbal Ahmad Dawn, 4 October 1992 For decades l have regarded him as model Pakistani, a man who broke all the bars – of power, money, and ignorance – to manhood. So when I heard he was in Lahore, I went to see him. The old man lay in bed, his large, bony frame […]
The Betrayed Promise
by Eqbal Ahmad DAWN – 18 June, 1995 [Editor’s note: An Urdu translation of this article is available at Roshni] Before I recall Mr. Jinnah and the aspirations which inspired the subcontinent’s Muslims to seek separate statehood, it is relevant to underline the price nations pay when the values and expectations on which a state […]
Jinnah, in a Class of His Own
by Eqbal Ahmad Dawn, 11 June 1995 Mohammad Ali Jinnah is an enigma of modern history. His aristocratic English lifestyle, Victorian manners, and secular outlook rendered him a most unlikely leader of India’s Muslims. Yet, he led them to separate statehood, creating history and, in Saad R. Khairi’s apt phrase, ‘altering geography’. Several scholars, among […]
Roots of Religious Right
Eqbal Ahmad DAWN – 24 January, 1999 THEY belong to differing, often contrasting religious systems-Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet their ideas and behaviour patterns bear remarkable similarities. In India they have burned down churches and destroyed a historic mosque. In Palestine they describe themselves as ‘pioneers’, desecrate mosques and churches, and with state support […]
An Islamic Predicament – Eqbal Ahmad
Published-1998 Any historian of Islam would shudder at what passes in Pakistan for instruction in Islamic history. Some Years ago, I queried an M.A class in this subject at a major Pakistani university. None of the 25 odd students there had an inkling of the issues which defined the first major schism in Islamic history […]
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Secular Pakistan 
December 21, 2009 by Awais
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