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Browsing All posts tagged under »Religion«
Faisal Shahzad’s anti-Americanism
by Pervez Hoodbhoy DAWN – May 8, 2010 The man who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square was a Pakistani. Why is this unsurprising? Because when you hold a burning match to a gasoline tank, the laws of chemistry demand combustion. As anti-US lava spews from the fiery volcanoes of Pakistan’s […]
Cold War, Holy Warrior
By Robert Dreyfuss Published: Mother Jones – January /February 2006 Issue Ike was president. Washington was desperate for Arab allies. Enter an Islamist ideologue with an invitation to the White House and a plan for global jihad. In the fall of 1953, the Oval Office was the stage for a peculiar encounter between President Dwight […]
‘Burka’ and Intellectual Terrorism
By Awais Masood In an article published in the January 2009 edition of Newsline, prominent Pakistani academic, scientist and social activist Pervez Hoodbhoy outlined the root causes of religious extremism in Pakistan and while doing so pointed out towards deliberate attempts of imposing an Arab culture upon the pluralistic South Asian traditions upheld by the […]
Glory, Piety and Politics
By Nadeem F. Paracha DAWN – Sunday, 14 Mar, 2010 Many young Pakistanis, who in their reactionary worldview cannot relate to the conventional make-up of the long-bearded and mullah-looking hawkers of intransigent ideas, have found their man in the dashing (Che Guevara-meets-Saladin) shape of Zaid Hamid. But this phenomenon does not begin or end with […]
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy: “Islam and Science Have Parted Ways”
Middle East Quarterly Winter 2010, pp. 69-74 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (b. 1950) is one of South Asia’s leading nuclear physicists and perhaps Pakistan’s preeminent intellectual. Bearer of a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he is chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad where, as a high-energy physicist, he […]
Morality isn’t the monopoly of any faith
February 17, 2010 by alexpressed
By Irfan Hussain Consider this demographic projection for the UK, and ponder its implications for a moment: within five years, the majority of babies will be born t o unmarried parents. However, before you put this down to yet another example of Western immorality, just remember that all these babies will have the same legal […]
Paradise Lost
By Nusrat Pasha Europe drew wisdom from pragmatism, and eventually separated the Church from the State. Ataturk had to struggle ardently to emancipate Turkey from its theocratic past and lead it to a secular and secure future. Secularism, as some people misleadingly propose, does not at all imply being anti-God, anti-Religion or atheistic or even agnostic; it only […]
Jinnah’s Will to the Nation He Founded
By Nusrat Pasha This nation still has hope if it succeeds in reverting to Jinnah’s Will : 1 : “….Religion should not be allowed to come into Politics….Religion is merely a matter between man and God”. [Jinnah, Address to the Central Legislative Assembly, 7 February 1935] 2 : “….in the name of Humanity, I care more […]
Role of Youth in the Current Situation
From Institute of Peace and Secular Studies The Institute for Peace and Secular Studies (IPSS) organized a day long youth convention with the theme of Terrorism and Peace under the title “The Role of Youth in the Current Situation” (on December 12, 2009). The convention was attended by over 200 youth including university students from […]
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 […]
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 […]
Suicide Bomber was My Cousin
By Sahar Saba Sahar Saba is the spokesperson for Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) For rest of the world, victims of Afghan war remain nameless and faceless. Not for us in Afghanistan. I myself have mourned number of such victims including my real uncle (father’s brother). Three weeks back, there was yet […]
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. […]
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Secular Pakistan 
May 10, 2010 by Awais
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