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IT is rare for elections to leave democracy weaker, not stronger. But this is what will happen after July 25. Whether the PML-N, headed by Shahbaz Sharif wins or, instead, […]

WHEN the legendary physicist Stephen Hawking died earlier this year, it was headline news across the world. Soon thereafter universities and colleges in Lahore and Islamabad asked me to speak upon […]

IT’S always been easy for power-seeking Pakistani clerics and politicians to set our simple-minded religious masses on fire. But, as Prime Minister Imran Khan just discovered, jumping on to a […]

When Pakistani students open a physics or biology textbook, it is sometimes unclear whether they are actually learning science or, instead, theology. The reason: every science textbook, published by a […]

On this very day, exactly 18 years ago, riotous celebration erupted after Pakistan tested its nuclear weapons. Just 17 days earlier, India had experienced a similar moment. Then, one year […]

In Pakistan, anger has greeted the killing of Afghan Taliban head, Mullah Mansour, by an American drone on Pakistani territory. When senior US officials visited army chief Gen Raheel Sharif […]

LIBERALS in Pakistan have been an endangered species for quite a while. How many dodos remain? Nobody quite knows, but a day after the assassination of Governor Salmaan Taseer in […]

ONE wonders why the Indian army, with nearly 600,000 soldiers and paramilitary personnel, saw 22-year-old Burhan Wani and his Kashmiri lads as a terrible threat needing elimination. Surely these were […]

MORE and more Pakistanis have come to believe that they live in a hostile and conspiratorial world with shadowy enemies all around bent on the country’s destruction. The suicide bombing […]

PAKISTAN’S Foreign Office says Pakistan is “deeply saddened” by the execution in Bangladesh last week of Mir Quasem Ali. Mir Quasem was found guilty in 2014 by a Bangladeshi court […]