As the Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has recently clearly identified who are extremists and who are terrorists, and as these extremists and terrorists are waging a war in Pakistan to impose a world view of theirs on the people of Pakistan through the use of gun, this war in its truest meaning is a war against Virtue. Here are the arguments:War against virtue All coercion is part of the war against virtue unless morally and legally justified. Our share of the terrorists or Taliban has perfected what we have been suffering in our country at smaller or

Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see it, click the link below: Brij Narayan Chakbast Ka Aik Sheyr

Yesterday’s Pakistan Print Edition of International Herald Tribune contains Why waiting is torture, by Alex Stone. A very good piece which discusses our psychology of waiting in line and how we respond to various waiting situations. Alex Stone writes: “Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting in line.” I wonder, how much time Pakistanis spend waiting in lines here and there, both at private and public establishments! I do not know about any such study for Pakistan. Actually, it’s no “issue” at all here. No guessing – how much time Pakistanis spend in waiting. But no doubt their

Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see it, click the link below: Pakistani Siyasat Ka Keechar

Usually I do not read statements and speeches given by government officials, elected or nominated; but only when due to the interest in a certain issue it requires to go into its detail. It was on September 2 that I was going through the op-ed pages of The News that these lines used as teaser caught my eyes: “The preparation of violence with a clear conscience is a delight to ideologues who distort the teachings of religion. This was what General Kayani had in mind when he had said that a person who imposes his views on society is an

Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see it, click the link below: Muslim League (N) Ka Tarz-e-Hukmarani

It’s strange but is true. Even after the constitution of 1973 was enforced, if we go through the writings, be they are Leftist or Rightist, there is talk of government, society, politics, and such things, but no mention of the constitution, its provisions could be found in the intellectual / political discourse of the country. I shall share some of such samples later. For now, here are some thoughts on what are the pre-requisites of a constitutional rule in Pakistan: Pre-requisites of constitutional rule in Pakistan (1) Any person who abrogates or attempts or conspires to abrogate, subverts or attempts

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This does not relate to the crimes states commit against one another. This takes exception to the crimes states, or Pakistani state, commit against their own citizens. As it’s a truism that states kill. Sometimes they kill, as Syria does now, by using the weapons they purchase or manufacture with citizens’ money. I say Citizens’ Money because most of the times what states extract from the pockets of the citizens in the form of taxes can never be justified as a just tax. And in many cases, states kill their own citizens by making and implementing unwise and elitist policies,

Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see it, click the link below: Tareekh Ki Muhim

Now it’s a considered view of mine that it is in making rules, just rules, and following them, and implementing them across the board that humanity’s emancipation lies. And, I think, broadly it is rules which saved the West, including the USA, and made it the West. Not only is it the state of the rule of lawlessness in Pakistan but the same state prevailing in most of  the world that makes one attach so much importance to rules and the institution of the rule of rules. As Eisenhower once said,“The clearest way to show what the rule of law

Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see it, click the link below: Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast: Pakistani Siyasat Ke Pech-o-Khum Ka Falsafiyana Muhakma

This August 10, Alternate Solutions Institute released my 2nd Urdu book, Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast: A Philosophical Critique of Pakistani Politics. Copied below are the English and Urdu media releases: Urdu Book “سیاسی پارٹیاں یا سیاسی بندوبست“ (Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast) published The book attempts a philosophical analysis of Pakistan’s political parties The book smashes a number of political myths and cliches Author dubs political parties as enemies of the citizens and focuses on how to make them friends of the citizens Lahore August 10, 2012: Alternate Solutions Institute released today Dr. Khalil Ahmad’s 2nd Urdu book, “Siyasi

This is in continuation of a previous post, “Hind and Sindh civilizations and getting religion politicized.” As I see that, and ,of course, for that matter everyone with a keen eye must have observed that, History has been proving, as Samuel Johnson dubbed Patriotism, the last refuge of (not a scoundrel) but all those intellectuals, men of letters, leaders, communities, nations, sections, or any other such introverted individuals or groups, who think themselves victim of this or that “injustice” at the hands of especially those who are ahead of them in any respect, be it economy, politics, philosophy, science, sports,

Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see  it, click the link below: Swiss maktoob koi ishoo naheen!

Recently I read an interview of Romila Thapar, renowned historian. Here are some questions and their answers which relate to the issue of religious identity in the sub-continent: Q: Some scholars claim Hind and Sindh to be different civilizations. Do you subscribe to this view? A: I don’t subscribe to this at all. I think the Indus civilization was very widespread. It spread out to many regions that are now part of Pakistan and India. I strongly object to this view because you can’t push an event that took place in the twentieth century five thousand years back in history.

AFP reports that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urged President Barack Obama to end the US “witchhunt” against his whistleblowing website, in a speech Sunday from the balcony of Ecuador’s London embassy. “I ask President Obama to do the right thing, the United States must renounce its witchhunt against WikiLeaks,” said Assange, making his first public statement since being granted political asylum by Ecuador on Thursday. [August 20, 2012]     I love Julian Assange. His initiative of wikileaking clandestine governments strikes at the root of the politics of ruling elites, or better say, political elites.   Here is the explanation: Wikileaking clandestine

Reflections on various things: Signs of decline I am an integral part of this society; but I am an observer of it also. I feel, i.e. smell, taste, touch, hear, and see the all-encompassing decline of the Pakistani society.  As I notice, a clear sign of decline is this: Any entity set up for a specific purpose starts working against the same purpose. This idea has been reverberating in my mind since long. If A is created to fulfill purpose B, and if it defies that very purpose, and works to achieve purpose C, what will happen. No doubt, by losing

“Gunmen who are believed to be Islamist militants attacked a major Pakistani Air Force base where some of the country’s nuclear weapons are thought to be stored early Thursday (August 16), setting off a heavy battle in which eight attackers and one security official were killed. The attack on the Minhas air force base in Kamra, 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, northwest of the capital, Islamabad, was a stark reminder of the threat to Pakistan’s most sensitive installations despite ongoing military operations against militants in their tribal hide-outs.” So, the story goes on in the local Pakistan edition of The

Earlier in the post, The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan, the following was stated: “. . . the author thinks that humanity is entering a new Age of Rules, superseding the Age of Ideologies, and the present book (The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan) derives its inspiration from the same enlightenment.” Here is one article (written in May this year) where I tried to formulate this thesis of mine: At the Confluence of Two Ages Today humanity is standing at the confluence of two Ages. The one has tenaciously flown from the past, and is trying hard to

Reflections on various things: Entertainment in Pakistan It was in 2003 that I was in Ankara (Turkey); one of the acquaintances put a question that dumbfounded me. He asked: what’s the people’s entertainment in Pakistan? I had no immediate answer astonished me. I smiled and told him to let me think and find it. I tried to imagine Pakistani people (and my family) back home and see what’s there they mostly entertain themselves with and said: They watch TV! Now it’s 2012, and things haven’t improved a bit. The top most entertainment is still TV watching. Here for most of

Please note: This post has been shifted to the Urdu Blog – Civil Pakistan. To see  it, click the link below: Pakistan – Tareekh Chali Ultay Pauoun

Today, on Pakistan’s independence day, www.google.com – how beautifully www.google.com used the Pakistan’s Truck-Art! Fantastic!

This February Alternate Solutions Institute released my first Urdu book, The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan (Pakistan Mein Riyasti Ashrafiya Ka Urooj). Here is a brief statement of what the book tries to discuss and formulate: —– Last year, Alternate Solutions Institute wanted to hold a series of seminars on the theme: Ashrafiya Ka Naheen, Sab Ka Paksitan (Not For Ashrafiya, Pakistan For Everyone). So I thought of writing a 2-3 page explanation of the slogan. But the paper kept on expanding, and I let it, and tried to state the argument with as much detail as I could.

That rulers and ruled are different. That means governments and their citizens are different. That means ruling elites and the ordinary citizens are different. That persons are good or bad by nature is irrelevant to Political Philosophy, or I think should be irrelevant to it; though it may have academic significance or relevance to other sciences. That persons usually change as the circumstances incentivize or allow them to. That means Pakistanis, or others in the “underdeveloped” and the “developed” world, are not bad by nature, and may change with time. That they are all, the same human beings who want