What is Real Problem? Let’s get to the Roots

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We Pakistanis are in trouble since the creation of this country. Since its creation Pakistan has faced many challenges, which range from financial, infrastructural and political to floods, earthquakes and war on terror. Every thinking or non-thinking brain has his views in Pakistan. As the count of mouths increase conspiracy theories increase. But no one has yet identified the real problem.

Some say it is terrorism, some say it is religiously motivated radicalism, some enlist poor quality of education, lack of leadership and some blame the people of Pakistan in general. I shall try here my bit to unravel what my findings are after the complete autopsy of this country’s history from 1947 onwards. My findings are harsh and hard to swallow. To savvy this point we must first step into neutral zone even by putting off our religious pair of specs.

A Piece of Higher Poetry Which Makes My Heart Flutter!

اج سک متراں دی ودھیری اے

 ?Why is it that the yearning for the Loved One (i.e., the Holy Prophet) is especially strong today

کیوں دلڑی اداس گھنیری اے

لوں لوں وچ شوق چنگیری اے

?Why is my heart sadder today than even before
?Why does longing penetrate every tissue of mine

اج نیناں لائیاں کیوں جھڑیاں

Mosque and Mosquitoes

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Pakistan is a land of pure. Purity comes to the pure heart. Islam has given stress in purity at heart. Like other major religions of the world, Islam too has ordained institutions, which help its followers and associates to achieve purity. Mosque is one of them. Throughout Islāmic history one cannot defy the very fact that mosques were top educational institutions, which use to produce plethora of scholars not only specializing in religion but also in subjects like physics, biology, mathematics, philosophy, poetry and you may call wonderful and unique “science of narrators” (علم رجال).

The Attractive Tag of Liberalism!

Educating against Extremism

Since Pakistan stepped in war against terror, the debate of “Extremist“, “Moderate” and “Liberal” has become common. Until now extremism is being considered uni-polar i.e. religious extremism. You may find oodles of analysts local and international popping up on your T.V screens commenting about extremism, of course they mean religious extremism. By any stretch of imagination it is not tenable.

Unfortunately, now our society deems the word extremism in only religious radicalism. On the other hand, word liberalism has become almost a cliché and everyone likes to be called one. You can witness this thing on any public online discussion forum whether it is a social network, blog or newspaper website. Everyone wants to jump into the discussion and say, “hey, you Mullah, you close minded! You need to get rid of your fundamentalist beliefs”, without realizing the very fact that liberalism is also an extreme on the opposite end on fundamentalism. It’s bipolar.

Verdict of Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) on Blasphemy!

CII is a Govt. Body Which Suggests and Reviews Islamic Laws in Pakistan

Council of Islāmic Ideology (CII) was under tremendous political pressure from within and abroad.  Few examples of this pressure are

Pope Benedict XVI has called for the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman in … Asia Bibi “be given back her freedom” says Pope Benedict

“She is a helpless Christian woman. She can’t legally defend herself because she does not have resources. Implicating such helpless minorities in such cases amounts to ridiculing the constitution of Pakistan” Taseer, Governor Punjab

Setting aside all these pressures CCI has proposed following procedural changes in the blasphemy law by retaining the capital punishment

Punishment for Blasphemy in the Light of Religious Scriptures

If you say, Pakistan is the land of hot issues it would not be a false statement at all. Whether it is the religious, political, economic or social issues; Pakistan is the place you will find on top of all. Lately, the issue of blasphemy has arisen when a session court (lower court) sentence Asiya Bibi (who was Christian by faith) to death after finding her guilty her of sacrilegious comments.

The debate of repealing this law has come out of blue this time after 2-3 decades of legislation regarding. There are several opinions regarding this blasphemy act 295 (c) of the constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. There are oodles of angles to this law, whether it be religious, democratic, political or human right.

We have gathered some evidences from the Quran, Hadith, Sunnah and history (compiled by historians) for the exact punishment for blasphemy. This will also answer the most asked question “What Muhammad (S.A.W) would have done?” “How he would have responded?” and many supplementary questions like “What Quran says?”,  “Is there any evidence in Hadith?” and “What other religions say about blasphemy?”

Violence in Karachi — Who Owns Karachi??

City of Lights

Karachi is a metropolitan city. people from almost every major creed and religion live here. Karachi is the 19th largest city in the world. to my information it is also bigger than 3 countries and five times bigger than Singapore. It is known locally by many names such as “The City of Lights” (روشنیوں کا شہر) “City of Quaid” and “Bride of the Cities” (عروس البلاد). Karachi is ranked 3rd among the most populated cities after Shangahi and Mumbai. Thank heavens it hasn’t made to the top list of most dangerous cities of the world yet.

Remembering Flood Victims this Eid

This coming Eid (Eid-ul-Fitr) is being celebrated in Pakistan amidst mixed emotions as it has come at a time when the floods have displaced, and left millions of people homeless. In this time of sheer distress and catastrophe we must not forget our brothers and sisters in Pakistan.

When You Have Something Racist to Say!

I can recall my marketing class lecture when the lecturer told us an interesting thing about communicating advertisement, i.e. “Whenever you have an idiotic thing to say, just sing it –Jingle”. However, things seem to have changed lately. Now we can find several new ways of saying most idiotic things. You may have been familiar with the plethora of an oxymoron such as fully empty, clearly misunderstood, exact estimate, small crowd, act naturally, found missing, pretty ugly and only choice, etc., these oxymoron are consists of two words of contradictory meanings but you won’t find  these stupid or idiotic.

Secular or Religious; What Quaid Wanted?

“Two Nation Theory” may be buzzing in your ears since childhood. Which states that Muslims and Hindus of subcontinent are two totally separate nations from every aspect; therefore Muslims should have a separate homeland in the Muslim majority areas of British-India, where they can spend their lives according to the glorious teachings of Islam.

But, gradually I started encountering people having different opinions. For me, it was surprising at first because these notions go against my text books in elementary school. There are two major school of thoughts which say 1) Pakistan was created with the Islamic Ideology 2) Pakistan was created with Secular Ideology. Both ideologies have the backing of M A Jinnah’s sayings.

Dating the Destiny

I have seen twenty three spring seasons in my life. I have neither heard nor have I seen any successful nation which is laid back and waiting for something to happen on its own. In country like ours, where the greatest religion of all (Islam) prevails since it came into being, we are sitting idle and waiting things to happen on its own.

The major contributor to this problem is the concepts of “Fate, Destiny, Kismet, Muqaddar”. All of them have almost same meaning i.e. pre-determined course of events. When we believe in something like “pre-determined course of events” we tend rationalize things to our comfort i.e. what could I/we/they do? It was destined to happen this way.
I don’t remember the name of the book but I do remember that Wasif Ali Wasif (Rehmt. A) said

Facebook Ban: A Review of Arslan Iftikhar’s (CNN) article

This article is written in disagreement with the article written by Arslan Ifitikhar on CNN. The reasons for disagreement are many. Mr. Arslan Iftikhar has given very strange arguments; at least for me they are very weak. This article will critically review Iftikhar’s article by taking one argument at a time.

Firstly, the unfortunate the start of the article is not representative of the topic but the checkered history of Pakistan’s military regimes, which has nothing to do with the Facebook ban. This start can be considered as a deliberate attempt to sabotage Pakistan’s image.

Second, the people of Pakistan took their case to the provincial high court, and being democratic country, Pakistani authorities took actions according to the courts order to ban the 800 websites having sacrilegious content. Facebook and Youtube are two of them.