Folk Devils A moral panic is a widespread fear — most often an irrational one. The fear is about someone...

In the early 2000s, a T-Shirt became popular among the then young ‘millennials.’ The message on the T-Shirt said, “I’m...

Sacralising the Secular The shift from pre-modern societies that were deeply rooted in religious beliefs and rituals, to modern ones...

On the 26th of April, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up near a van carrying Chinese teachers on the...

I’m sure by now you must have come across people (mostly on social media) who let loose a barrage of...

Consumerism, or the preoccupation of society with the acquisition of consumer goods, largely emerged from the 19th century onwards. It...

There were many who were shocked after witnessing a barrage of hateful posts and tweets when Malala was shot and...

Dear friends and fellow tabdeelians, Hi. You must have noticed how we are being ridiculed for supporting our besieged Prime...

At this year’s Lahore Literary Festival, I was approached by a group of six or seven college students immediately after...

Jiyala (جیالہ) is an Urdu word meaning a passionate devotee. It is often associated with diehard supporters of the Pakistan...

South Asian Islamic scholar and one of the pioneers of ‘political Islam,’ Abul Ala Maududi (d.1979), often described secularism as...

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Russia just has to be one of the most surreal events in international diplomacy....

At the time of Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the only established student organisation was the Muslim Students Federation (MSF), the...

By war and battles here, I do not mean actual armed conflicts. What I mean is a tussle between various...

Love lost Italian dictator and one of the founders of fascism, Benito Mussolini was greatly admired by millions of his...

On a beaten track On January 17, an article written by PM Imran Khan appeared in some English and Urdu...

The PML-N is perhaps the country’s largest ‘big tent’ party. Big tent parties absorb members from various diverse (and even...

During a recent appearance on a TV show, controversial journalist and ‘intellectual’ Hassan Nisar stated that the country needed a...

As a young man in the late 1980s, I often visited a recluse by the name of Dr G.M. Mehkri,...

Sacralism is the merger of Church and State wherein one is called upon to change the other. It is not...

In his hugely influential book Orientalism (1978), Edward Said — a founder of ‘post-colonial studies’ — demonstrated how the West...

Just before the 1946 general elections in ‘British India,’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s All India Muslim League (AIML) was poised to...

The American historian Richard Wolin in his book The Seduction of Unreason wrote that after being disillusioned by the collapse...

‘Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion.’ This is a famous quote of the former Chief Justice...

The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) did not emerge from a vacuum. The roots of the party lie in how Sunni Barelvi...