By Anwaar Hussain This one will be as painful to read as it was to write. There is this old method of hunting practiced in some parts of the world. It is called a fire-hunt. Two people are required. One goes ahead carrying a blazing torch (or a high powered flash light these days), while [...]

By Anwaar Hussain Meerwala is a small, dusty village in the mostly rural Muzaffargarh District in the south of Punjab province of Pakistan. This small, nondescript village has produced a personality whose name has been reverberating across the globe for some years now. The name of this person is Mukhtaran Bibi (also known as Mukhtar [...]

By Irfan Husain ALTHOUGH I get my share of spam in my inbox, I often receive very interesting and useful links as well. One took me to a recent debate at New York University. Organised by Intelligence Squared, the topic was ‘Islam is a religion of peace’. IQ2 has become an increasingly important forum for [...]

By Nadeem F. Paracha It was horrifying: the beating to death and then the upside down hanging of the two young brothers in Sialkot. Accused of theft, the teenagers were brutally beaten with sticks and kicks by at least four men — an event that was watched in silence by a couple of cops and [...]

By Masood Hasan The Goddess of Despair and Despondency has taken up permanent residence in this 63-year-old-country which lurches from crisis to crisis every single minute of the day. She has spread her shroud of death over this land and watches from afar as we implode within and impale without on poisoned spears that inject [...]

By Anwaar Hussain Phew! exclaimed Alice with relief on being awoken, ‘that was some nightmare.’ Except, immediately later, a wave of anxiety swept over her—she would be sleeping again tonight. Will she be back in Talibland? Presently, however, she put the thought away and agreed to accompany her sister to the river bank to pick [...]

By Masood Hasan As institutions and all that we once held in great esteem fall around us like ninepins in a bowling alley where the players have gone berserk, very few of us now have the luxury of taking a step back and simply evaluating our position. Instead, we seem to be swept along the [...]