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October 24, 2024

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Security (in) Security

The number of suicide bombers supposedly loose in the city at a given time are broadcast on news-ticker marquees at traffic lights, fueling a further angst in the hearts of people waiting for the light to turn green. I have often heard people questioning why the security agencies fail to apprehend these individuals despite all the advance intelligence they go around flaunting. It seems right now there are two opposing apparatuses of force operating in and around the cities of Pakistan: one supposed to be providing security, enforcing law, and ensuring order; the other producing insecurity, creating discord, and generating chaos. Ironically it seems the latter is better equipped, more motivated, and with far superior training compared to its sluggish target. As it stands now, it seems even the providers of security are feeling the chill of insecurity. All the streets leading to the cantonment area of Lahore were barricaded for more than an hour the morning after the at...

No God But God -- a critique

Reza Aslan's book 'No God But God' can, at most, be seen as a feeble attempt to redeem the religion's tattered image in the eyes of the liberal West. Aslan takes the battle for the interpretive cohesion of Islam under a grand unification back to the familiar battle ground of progressivism versus traditionalism. Indeed, the public image of the religion has been dismembered in this post 9/11 climate, and any smear campaign waged by both the left and right quarters of the Western intelligentsia targets the obviously obese sitting duck represented by the oligarchic Islamic clergy the contradictions it disseminates and the shocking contradictions to liberal and modern sensibilities. While the right wing hawks are busy aggravating the masses by dehumanizing the Islamic other, the flaming left is out to show Islam as an archaic and borderline barbarism. Aslan is attempting to turn the tables on this debate by enlightening the liberals and discrediting the conservatives on both...

Load-Shedding Re-Dux (a supplement for Dawn Blog readers)

Alright so this is a supplemental reprise to the post on the Dawn Blog for all you people reading it till the end and going like.. 'Hmm I wonder what this Asif Akhtar blogs about at e-scape-artist.blogspot.com'. So here's the whole deal with this capitalizing on load-shedding business proposition for all you entrepreneurial types, and anyone else questioning the logic of a post-electric world where Pakistanis rid of their dependence on electricity would rise to the challenge of leading the world into a self-sufficient existence as a global human society. When I said in my blog on Dawn that we need to start getting used to no power, I really wasn't joking. If we take things seriously, we can develop an acoustic-lifestyle-rehab industry which could well become our leading national export in the post-energy world of the future. We could set up lifestyle re-hab clincs in all parts of the world. Think of all those extremely wired people out there and the wit...

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