Post-9/11, two words, namely Jihad and Terrorism, have acquired much of our attention. These terms unintentionally as well as intentionally are used interchangeably, often, to indicate that Islam and terrorism share an organic relationship. The book under review, on the face of it, seems to defy this generic…
Babar Ayaz’s book does not present an ordinary diagnostic enquiry into the health of a state called Pakistan. His is no run-of-the-mill attempt—quite a fad today—to put Pakistan in the dock. There are plenty of writers these days looking at Pakistan in an uncharitable manner.
Pakistan’s imminent failure as a nation state has spawned many books. Pakistan’s principal attraction for writers and experts is the country’s central role in sustaining and promoting regional and international terrorism. Numerous terrorist incidents in recent times, anywhere in the world, seem to have a Pakistani connection or signature.
If and when foreign observers of Pakistan want to discover more about how the country behaves as it does, they can get some answers from two books published in 2013: Husain Haqqani’s Magnificent Delusions:Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding and Francesca Marino’s Apocalypse Pakistan…
One of the first writers, if not the first, to compare the condition of Muslims in India and Jews in Europe was a British Professor at Aligarh, Theodore Morison, who happened to be the son-in-law of the first Jewish graduate of Oxford University. Writing in 1899, shortly after the founding of the World Zionist Organization, Morison portrayed the newly launched campaign…
The first is that the sanguineous-sounding Blood Telegram refers to a cable sent by Archer Blood, Consul General in Dacca (now Dhaka) on 6 April, 1971 to the US State Department drawing attention to the inhuman atrocities being perpetrated by Pakistani troops in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) on the local Bengali population.