Ripple Effect

Much has been said about Dawn.com editor Jahanzaib Haque's tweets that he did after attending a careers fair at his alma mater, Karachi Grammar School. The Express Tribune , where me and Jahanzaib were colleagues, even did a story on it here and whether they should or shouldn't have done it is an entirely separate debate. Many people on Twitter including some dear friends have expressed solidarity and support with him saying that he was courageous to have done what he did. Part of this may also have to do with the fact that many people want to be seen on the right side of a dispute so that their chances of being published by a major online site are not negatively impacted in any way.  That said,this entire debate misses a couple of crucial points and they need to be spelt out. Of course, it goes without saying that the issue is not that one cannot or should not criticise ones former school or university. This is a very common thing because people often...

9 things that Pakistani social science textbooks will not teach you By Omar R Quraishi 1. That Pakistan was once the home of people who used to follow Buddhism - check out the numerous ruins of stupas found all over the country especially in the north. A good example is the ruins of Taxila which at one time were home to a great Buddhist civilization over 2,000 years ago.  2. That Pakistan was once home to a significant population which followed Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism -- proof of this can easily be found in the dozens of abandoned Jain temples in Sindh, especially Tharparkar District, in the prevalence of Hindu temples (many of them still in use) in Sindh and abandoned Sikh gurdwaras throughout Punjab. 3. That Pakisan in fact did not win a single war against India - not the one in 1948, or the one in 1965 -- which at best can be called a stalemate -- nor the one in 1971 or the Kargil War in 1999 where it had to withdraw after international pres...

7 things you should know about Zakiur Rahman Lakhwi By Omar R Quraishi 1. The suspected mastermind of the Mumbai attacks is said to be 53 years old and was born in the Punjab city of Okara, close to Lahore. 2. Lakhvi, whose release was ordered by the Islamabad High Court earlier this morning (after it cancelled a detention order issued by the Islamabad local administration), was arrested in December 2008, along with 11 other LeT's activists. They were detained during a raid at an LeT facility near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The formal announcement of his arrest was not made a couple of months later in February 2009 by the then interior minister Rahman Malik. 3. While he has always denied any involvement in the Mumbai attacks, Lakhwi has been a proponent of sending fidayeen squads to Indian-held Kashmir. Addressing an annual congregation of the Markaz ad-Dawa wal Irshad, he said that Pakistan's withdrawal from Kargil had disappoi...

13 things you should know about Jihadi John 1. His name is Mohammed Emwazi 2. He is a British national of Kuwaiti origin and grew up and lived in West London 3. He is thought to have travelled to Syria in 2012 and joined the IS 4. He has a degree in computer programming 5. He was first seen in the IS propaganda video of James Foley who was beheaded in August 2014 6. He has appeared in a series of IS videos of Western hostages, all of whom were executed, some of whom Emwazi himself killed. 7. His friends say he radicalized after a planned safari to Tanzania along with 2 other friends (including a German convert) went sour 8. A former IS captive has said that Emwazi is obsessed with Somalia and the rise of Al Shabab there 9. He told friends that Britain's domestic spy service Mi5 tried to recruit him 10, In 2010, UK counterterrorism officials detained him after a trip to Kuwait and searched his belongings, 11. Following this search, Emwazi was stoppe...

Killing Dogs in Karachi  The screengrab above is from a disturbing video uploaded on Facebook by Karachi resident Hira Tareen ( https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155291511590492&set=vb.767165491&type=2&theater ) showing a dead stray dog killed by shooters hired by municipal authorities in an upscale Karachi neighbourhood.  This practice of getting rid of Karachi's stray dogs (estimates put the city's population of such animals, in the absence of a proper survey, at around 50,000) by killing them has been going on for years but thanks to the growing use of social media in Pakistan, its barbarity has come under increasing scrutiny of late. In the past, the Karachi Metropolitan Corportationn (KMC) in charge of this issue would carry out week-long campaigns every year where they would place food laced with poison for stray dogs (the packets used to be called 'gulab jamuns', named after a local sweet delicacy). While inhumane, this was done af...

Furore in Karachi neighbourhood over killing of stray dogs The disturbing video above was uploaded on Facebook by Karachi resident Hira Tareen ( https://www.facebook.com/zaratareen?fref=photo ) . This practice of getting rid of Karachi's stray dogs (estimates put the city's population of such animals, in the absence of a proper survey, at around 50,000) by killing them has been going on for years but thanks to the growing use of social media in Pakistan, its barbarity has come under increasing scrutiny of late. In the past, the Karachi Metropolitan Corportationn (KMC) in charge of this issue would carry out week-long campaigns every year where they would place food laced with poison for stray dogs (the packets used to be called 'gulab jamuns', named after a local sweet delicacy). While inhumane, this was done after publicizing the campaign through newspaper notices and with warnings to residents to keep their pet dogs indoors. However, as the city's gov...