By Zubeida Mustafa
AT the inaugural session of its 70th anniversary conference, the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, Karachi, did us proud when the proceedings were conducted in Urdu. It was a pleasure to hear chaste Urdu perfectly articulated at an occasion not dominated by our Urdu litterateurs.
I was told that this was at the suggestion of President Mamnoon Hussain who was the chief guest. Masuma Hasan, the chairperson of the institute, confirmed it, adding that it was her idea as well. Urdu is Pakistan’s national language, so no one should challenge Masuma’s decision. However, the smooth sailing at the PIIA function made me wonder why the demand for other provincial languages being given the same constitutional status cannot be considered favourably. Continue reading It wasn’t English
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
MUCH significance is being attached to the rise of the TLYRA (Tehreek-e- Labaik Ya Rasool Allah) and its political face TLP (Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan) ; and the MWM (Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen). There must be finer points of differentiation in party postures but the new bodies seem a Maulana TQ’s PAT derivative in terms of political leverage (intent is a matter of speculative personal opinion). But the future may be fraught with menacing linkages.
In 2012 Maulana TQ baulked from venturing to show how his national electoral vote-bank matched the heft of his staunch foot soldiers in road-camps. Awesomely righteous he remains; but a comparatively familiar game changer does not occasion the anxiety the undefined goals of these fresh but by-electorally promising moral stalwarts do – or, perhaps even more pertinently, could be projected as embodying. They are not waving the Daesh flag (anyone can chalk walls or paste posters of any sort) but they have made their debut customized to the current international perception of militant Muslim obscurantism. Their apparent success and the government’s apparently craven surrender enables international global-jihadism terrorist-risk-perception tanked up thinkers to move Pakistan a notch higher on the flashpoint watch-list of alarmingly unstable, no matter how wistfully democratic, extremism prone Muslim countries. Continue reading Playing with hellfire
By Zubeida Mustafa
A RECENTLY launched collection of Hamza Alavi’s papers and speeches should be a timely reminder to us about the role that faith has come to play in Pakistan’s politics. Translated into Urdu by Dr Riaz Ahmad Shaikh (dean of Social Sciences, Szabist), Tashkeel-i-Pakistan: Mazhab aur Secularism leaves no one in doubt about the misuse of religion by our leaders to gain advantages in public life at the expense of the people’s well-being and the national interest.
Hamza Alavi, who was a Marxist scholar recognised in world academia, firmly believed that the founder of this country never sought to set up a theocratic state. Yet that is the direction in which Pakistan appears to be heading. Continue reading Misuse of faith
By Zubeida Mustafa
READING is an essential element of education, and textbooks are an integral part of the curricula of formal education that can’t shrugged off. But reading books other than course texts helps children enrich their minds and makes them superior to their ‘non-reading’ peers.
Yet the general impression is that our children are not into the reading culture. This is surprising because in the last few years children’s books have flooded the market and some of them are really good. They have all the qualities a book should have to grip the readers’ interest — a lively style, strong storylines and characters with which our children can connect. Continue reading Storytelling
