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Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas Shaheed and Flt Lt Mati ur Rahman Shaheed. Heroes.
The author tells the story of the 20 August 1971 T-33 crash that killed Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas and Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman, both later awarded their country’s highest gallantry…
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Society
Poetic Perversion
The author takes up right-wing Pakistani pundit Orya Maqbool Jan’s response to the Kasur child abuse scandal, a reported ring that filmed abuse to blackmail families, and the wave of…
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Quaid e Azam and Iqbal. A meeting of minds..
An imaginary meeting between Jinnah and Iqbal, a short story by Pakistani-American writer Asif Ismael, in which Jinnah questions the idea of a separate Muslim homeland.
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Culture
The Helper Boy
The author reposts Asif Ismael’s short story The Helper Boy, about a truck-driver’s helper, after the day’s child abuse scandal in Punjab, noting that officials dispute the extent of the…
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History
The (British) Indian Army’s Legacy in India and Pakistan
Hamid Hussain argues in this older piece that the armies of India and Pakistan share a heritage built in the Raj, when Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Gurkha soldiers served together,…
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Religion
Patricia Crone. Scholar of Islam
A collection of remembrances of the historian of early Islam Patricia Crone, who died in July 2015, with three of her Open Democracy essays, shared by Robin Khundkar as worth…
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Geopolitics
Assassination attempts on senior Pakistani army officers
Hamid Hussain surveys assassination attempts on senior Pakistan army officers since 2002, arguing the army entered the war on terror unprepared, lost control of the tribal areas and Malakand, and…
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History
Do Colored People Exist if There Are No White People to Observe Them?
The author quotes a post from Unz Review asking whether history would have differed had Dara Shikoh defeated Aurangzeb, noting that by the 17th century Hinduism and Indian Islam had…
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Politics
India: “Secular”? “Hindu”? or Both?
The author posts a Twitter exchange with a Hindutva-leaning friend, sparked by an article calling Hinduism an ‘aggregate religion’, asking whether India is secular, Hindu or both.
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Charleston: A terrorist attack in America
After the Charleston shooting at a historic Black church, the author argues it was plainly terrorism, responds to complaints that only Muslim attackers get that label, and posts his off-the-cuff…
