Pakistan’s development is thwarted by its security issues. Could Indonesia help in dialogues between Pakistan and Afghanistan?  We seem to be a coveted dialogue and cooperation partner these days. Indonesian Ambassador to Pakistan Burhan Muhammad has even suggested a Jakarta-Islamabad axis “to overcome the problems of terrorism and displaced persons resulting from the protracted political conflict in Afghanistan”....

When he betrayed Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan never saw this enraged version of Islam on the horizon. He did, however, know the act undertaken was irreversible, something allegorical to the murder of a vision. Perhaps it will now take a Parsi prime minister, a Hindu president and a Christian speaker of the House concurrently to bring back Jinnah’s Pakistan. Till then, the mists will remain and crazed orthodoxy shall revel. ...

These two massive challenges and goals – legitimate citizenship and coherent statehood – require complex negotiations among many different domestic players. This process is finally under way, but it is taking place in the midst of severe economic stress and lingering bitterness and distortions emanating from the excesses, thefts and crimes of previous regimes....

It is high time that the Government of Pakistan officially accept that atrocities were committed against its own people in East Pakistan, agree that it will open its archives to a truthful uncovering of facts, bring the people still alive and accused to justice and publicly declare that we, as a nation, are sorry for what we, yes ‘we’, collectively did in 1970-71.Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis, our former fellow citizens and Muslim brethren, are still in Shahbag Square, waiting to hear our reply....

Ahamad Moussalli, the professor of political science at American University of Beirut, argues that despotic Islamic governments have run against the Qur'anic concepts for their own political and personal ends: "For instance, Shura, a doctrine that demands the participation of society in dealing with the affairs of its government, became in reality a doctrine that was manipulated by political and religious elites to secure their economic, social and political interests at the expense of other segments of society," (In Progressive Muslims 2003).....

The younger generation of Bangladeshis has made history by not keeping silent when fundamentalist and communalist forces who had opposed the nation’s independence from Pakistan openly challenged the state. Since February 5, Dhaka’s Shahbagh Square has been the site of a mass protest in which young people have demanded capital punishment for all who committed crimes against humanity during the national liberation war in 1971....

India, therefore, does not belong to Hindus alone; it belongs equally to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsees, and Jains etc. Also, it is not only Hindus who can live in India as first-rate citizens while others have to live as second or third rate citizens. All are first-rate citizens here. The killing of thousands of Muslims and other atrocities on them in Gujarat in 2002 can never be forgotten or forgiven. All the perfumes in Arabia cannot wash away the stain on Mr. Modi in this connection....

My old, sane and traditional grandfather would, time and again, resent such alien activities of my father and exhort him to stick to the traditional Islamic school of thought prevalent in the village – Deobandism. Grandfather did not like my father’s intellectual subordination to Maududi’s teachings and the associated social and political activities. My father’s subscription to Islamism was Maududiyyat – a derogatory term for Maududi,....

Not troubled by their failure of ‘liking’ at the Facebook, the untiring Taliban came up with a new social rather well calculated political move manifested in the form of talks offer to Islamabad hardly one-week before Valentine’s Day, as if saying “Be my Valentine”. This offer came through a video featuring TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan, flanked by Adnan Rasheed, a fugitive of last year’s jail-break....

Mohammad Azharuddin, the outstanding cricketing talent and ex-Indian cricket Captain was mocked that he plays poorly when playing against Pakistan, to enable Pakistan to win!.  Shah Rukh Khan is another such celebrity. He had to face the double flak. Being a Khan, twice he was detained and stripped at the US entry points. Interestingly when he was detained many of his fans were approaching him for his autographs right there. In India the Shiv Sena, claiming to be a patriotic organization, holding on to Hindu Nationalism not Indian nationalism...

Maududi opposed Partition, saying that Muslims could not be defined through territorial nationalism but only through faith. He also opposed the first raid into Kashmir, launched under governor-general Jinnah, arguing that jihad could only be declared officially by the state using its army, not through freelancers. He was born in Aurangabad but moved to Lahore in 1940, remaining there and setting up the Jamaat...

A cleric only has uttered the word fatwa for news channels to go on overdrive. Let me take these three examples further. Vishwaroopam is a one-dimensional film about a Muslim “good cop” who goes undercover to unearth a sinister dirty bomb plan hatched by al-Qaeda. The film deserves no attention. It should never have taken more than paid advertising space.....

Trust capital is not increased by dire threats that you will be punished in the hereafter. Studies of European societies by Max Weber in the 19th century firmly established that those who share a religion may still cheat one another. His results can be succinctly summed: Protestants were this-worldly and ethical; Catholics were other-worldly and corrupt. Today, corrupt countries such as Greece, the Philippines, Mexico and Italy have more churches per...

Conspicuously, reiterating that the ongoing WC trials cannot be stopped by the anti-Liberation forces by unleashing attacks and enforcing Hartals, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed on January 31, 2013, categorically reiterated that the war criminals would not be spared. Sheikh Hasina said the present Government is pledge-bound to try the war criminals responsible for killing three million people and shaming many women during the Liberation War....

Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) and Muhammad Iqubal (1877-1938) are described in Pakistani schoolbooks as the first Muslim leaders who stressed Hindu-Muslim separateness. Revered as the spiritual founders of Pakistan, they share many commonalities. Both were knighted for services to the British Empire (respectively in 1888 and 1923), both advocated Purdah and had strongly traditional religious backgrounds, and both wished to liberate Islam from mullahs and Pirs....