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Browsing All posts tagged under »Taliban«
Taliban, Jamaat-i-Islami and post-Islamism
By Ali Arqam The killing spree of the Taliban in Pakistan is not limited to combatants, notwithstanding the propaganda of their Pakistani apologists. It extends to non-combatant civilians, minority sects, tribal elders, journalists, educationists, members of parliament, clergy and intellectuals. Even shrines and mosques have not been spared. The Taliban feel that by stifling every […]
Resistance personified
by Farooq Sulehria The News, Saturday, July 24, 2010 Afghan leader Malalai Joya is resistance personified. She is the most vocal critic of both US occupation of Afghanistan and the ruling warlords. At the same time, she speaks dismissively of the Taliban: “Their violence is no resistance”. However, Malalai Joya hardly grabs headlines in the […]
No More…. by Chauhdry Ahmad Khan
Pakistan is reeling from the murder of 70 of its own citizens-massacred due to their faith by the self-appointed guardians of faith. Anyone with a shred of conscience left in Pakistan should declare themselves as Ahmadi – “I am an Ahmadi” should be the call of the day. Just as they should have declared themselves […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Islam, cricket and Pakistan
By Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi Published Daily Times- Sunday, February 07, 2010 Two mutually unrelated incidents last week show the growing dilemma of a large number of Pakistanis to relate themselves in a meaningful manner to the imperatives of citizenship of a nation-state. They may talk of Pakistan and its sovereignty when it is relevant to […]
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 […]
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, […]
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. […]
When Science Teaching Becomes A Subversive Activity
To the Islamic orthodoxy science is still dangerous by Pervez Hoodbhoy I cannot quite decide which is the more dangerous of the two: George Bush and his obsession with ensuring U.S. global military dominance or the exploding power of brutal fundamentalist religious forces in countries such as mine. Believing only in their own version of divinely […]
A Swati Political Activist Discusses His Homeland
Source : Courtesy Diep and Raheem A talk on the current situation in Malakand and Swat was organized by the Amn Tehreek on 23rd July, 2009 at Nehrghar. The speaker Izhar (pseudonym) is a political and social worker from Madyan, Swat. An initiative of Institute For Peace & Secular Studies After appreciating the efforts of […]
Gulf Excess and Pakistani Slaves
by Rafia Zakaria Daily Times August 01, 2009 Pakistanis themselves, mired in denial and ever-ready to engage in the pantomime of pretending to be Arab, are inured to this reality of Arab racism. Easily appeased with the promise of Gulf jobs when their own country is in shambles they consider any paltry thankless employment a […]
Crackpots, ahoy!
by Nadeem F. Paracha Nadeem F. Paracha explains what happens when the urban middle-class chooses to live in blissful ignorance. It was quite a sight watching Ali Azmat sitting with Zaid Hamid on TV, both passionately discussing ‘Hindu & Western Zionist aims to destabilize Pakistan.’ For those who might not know who Zaid Hamid is, […]
Beware of the Idols
by Umayr Hassan (It was a reply to an email at Socialist Pakistan News(SPN) mailing list that described a local event occuring after Manawan Terrorist attack and termed it as an awakening against fundamentalism.) “He narrated an incident where in a public van, the driver asked a man with beard to get off the van. […]
Islamic World and Crisis of Modernism
by Asghar Ali Engineer (Islam and Modern Age Jan. 2002) Editor’s Note: This article brings up many important issues within and faced by the Muslim world today. We at Secular Pakistan may not need to agree with all the points that the author has illustrated. The rising tide of what is called by the print […]
The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism in Pakistan – Hamza Alavi
Source Religious fundamentalism has become a powerful and dangerous force in Pakistan, due mainly to the opportunism of successive political leadership that has pandered to it. Militant sectarian religious groups and parties, led by half-educated and bigoted mullahs, many of them armed to the teeth, are holding our civil society and the state to ransom. […]
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Secular Pakistan 
October 16, 2010 by aliarqam
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