The Spell of Silence: Cancellation of Event at LUMS and the Aftermath

The forced can­cel­la­tion of an aca­d­e­m­ic talk titled ‘Unsi­lenc­ing Balochis­tan’ at the Lahore Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment Sciences(LUMS) last Thurs­day has attract­ed much atten­tion in the news and social media. As a reac­tion to the can­cel­la­tion, stu­dents of LUMS have begun protest­ing state cen­sor­ship and clam­our­ing on the issue of aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom both on cam­pus and […]

Need for Issue Based TV Programming in Pakistan

In Pak­istan, issue based TV pro­gram­ming ought to be used for pro­mot­ing peace, advo­cat­ing tol­er­ance, resolv­ing con­flicts and encour­ag­ing gen­der and sex­u­al diver­si­ty. Through­out his­to­ry the­ater and arts have played an impor­tant role in chang­ing peo­ple’s lives. First, by help­ing them see their lives and prob­lems clear­ly, then by serv­ing as a tool for under­stand­ing […]

The Irony of 23rd March

Pri­or to March 1956, Pak­istan nev­er cel­e­brat­ed March 23 and there nev­er was a gazetted hol­i­day on this day. On Feb­ru­ary 29, 1956, Pakistan’s con­stituent assem­bly adopt­ed the first con­sti­tu­tion and on March 2, 1956, a res­o­lu­tion was passed by the same assem­bly to com­mem­o­rate March 23 as repub­lic day. The chief guest at the […]

The Serene Beauty of Wazir Khan Mosque

Wazir Khan Mosque is sit­u­at­ed in Old city near Dehli Gate. It was built by Wazir Khan, Gov­er­nor of Lahore, in the peri­od of Mughal Emper­or Shah Jahan. Wazir Khan’s actu­al name was Hakim Shaikh Ilmud­din Ansari, but he was famous by for­mer name. He was com­mon­ly known as Wazir Khan (wazir means min­is­ter in […]

Women Empowerment Should be on Political Agenda

Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day 2015 Theme: MAKE IT HAPPEN LAHORE: Gov­ern­ment cel­e­brates women’s day by reviv­ing their promise to empow­er women. Pak­istan has laws regard­ing women empow­er­ment and is also sig­na­to­ry to Con­ven­tion on the Elim­i­na­tion of Dis­crim­i­na­tion against Women (CEDAW). Every year gov­ern­ment makes some announce­ments and a few polit­i­cal state­ments for women devel­op­ment but […]

YouTube and Islam in Pakistan

Late­ly, I watched a video on YouTube, which I have watched hun­dred times since then, about a poem ‘Mori’ (Moth­er in Pash­to lan­guage) by the great Pash­tun poet-philoso­pher Ghani Khan that made me cry. The video inten­si­fied my care and love, which we all at times for­get out of neglect, for my age­ing moth­er in […]

Evaluating the National Action Plan

It is very time­ly to ana­lyze the exist­ing Nation­al Action Plan (NAP) meant to erad­i­cate extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism from the coun­try. At the begin­ning, I shall high­light that eval­u­at­ing both aspects – extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism in iso­la­tion will be a blun­der. Because extrem­ism, irre­spec­tive of its type and rea­sons, is the root cause of insta­bil­i­ty, […]

Pakistan’s Responsibility to Protect

The dead­ly assault on cen­tral Imam­bar­gah in Shikarpur on Jan­u­ary 30, alleged­ly by the TTP splin­ter Sun­ni mil­i­tant group Jun­dul­lah, which killed more than 60 Shia Mus­lims and left as many severe­ly injured, is not the first of its kind on the Shia pop­u­la­tion of Pak­istan. It is a con­tin­u­a­tion of hun­dreds or per­haps thou­sands […]

Are Shias Not One of Our Own!

Run, while you can. Run away from this mon­strous state that Pak­istan is becom­ing. Run before the denial and igno­rance of the cit­i­zens of this land of pure devours your soul. Run before you lift a stranger’s life­less body bathed in blood. Run before that body is of your loved one’s. Run before you are […]

“Through my eyes — Soul of Pakistan”

[block­quote style=“3”]Through my eyes — Soul of Pak­istan is an ongo­ing project by Maria Dost in exchange with young peo­ple and dif­fer­ent pho­tog­ra­phers and artists from Pakistan.[/blockquote] Maria Dost is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er from Berlin, cur­rent­ly work­ing in Pak­istan. Ini­tial­ly a the­ater prac­ti­tion­er and film pro­duc­er, Dost ven­tured into the realms of pho­tog­ra­phy dur­ing […]

The Deadlock on National Action Plan — Editorial

As Pak­istan final­ly seemed to be in the process of tak­ing a final and deci­sive action to counter reli­gious mil­i­tan­cy in the coun­try, expect­ed­ly a num­ber of reli­gious par­ties have decid­ed to be a hur­dle in the process. They have start­ed with a decep­tive­ly prin­ci­pled stance of oppos­ing the 21st Amend­ment. Indeed the 21st Amend­ment […]

Stateless in Pakistan

Cit­i­zen­ship to the coun­try is a fun­da­men­tal right of the res­i­dents who call the coun­try their home. Hence, denial of cit­i­zen­ship right is an extreme fail­ure of the state. Apart from denial of cit­i­zen­ship to cer­tain peo­ple cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Pak­istan, in oth­er cas­es, those liv­ing out­side the ter­ri­to­ry of Pak­istan and want to be […]

Standing up Against Taliban is still Dangerous in Pakistan: Rights Activist Facing Death Threats

Find­ing a threat­en­ing hash­tag on social media is enough to give any­one sleep­less nights. But for civ­il soci­ety activist Jibran Nasir the #HangJi­bran­Nasir on Twit­ter only made him more deter­mined to stand up and be heard. After Decem­ber 16, 2014 which has become the dark­est day in Pakistan’s his­to­ry, when ter­ror­ists alleged­ly mem­bers of Mul­lah […]

Peshawar Attack: Pakistan is still in the State Of Denial

On the fate­ful day of 16th Decem­ber 2014 when Pak­istan was remem­ber­ing the tragedy of loss of its east­ern wing, anoth­er tragedy took place. Sev­en armed ter­ror­ists moti­vat­ed by reli­gious zeal wreaked hav­oc in a school in Peshawar and killed 132 chil­dren and 9 staff mem­bers. Pak­istan has suf­fered many grue­some ter­ror­ist attacks dur­ing last […]

The Challenge of Federalism in Pakistan

Fed­er­al­ism can be defined as a sys­tem in which the pow­er and author­i­ty to gov­ern is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly divid­ed at two lev­els into two gov­ern­ing bod­ies, usu­al­ly called cen­ter and province. In oth­er sys­tems, provin­cial units are named dif­fer­ent­ly such as states and coun­tries. It is one of the essen­tial prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy to decen­tral­ize the […]