Pakistan Opinion Blog

Entries may be a little edited for clarity or brevity. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of PakPositive.

The reasons for declining book sales in Pakistan

By Salman Ahmed In Pakistan, book reading was a hobby enjoyed by many, however, for the last ten to fifteen years book reading habits have been consistently declining due to several reasons. I myself am a book enthusiast who got very disappointed to realize how my fellow countrymen were not taking this habit seriously. Therefore, [...]

Why our rich don’t pay taxes for our miseries?

By Dr Muhammad Iqbal Every kind of trouble – man-made or God-given – seems to have descended on Pakistan. Earthquakes, floods, bombs, load shedding, violence, disease epidemics, wars, displaced refugees. You name it. And yet, after each disaster, the government and a large portion of our society routinely start the “plea making” business: XYZ in [...]

Non-Stop Bloodbath Party

By Dr Muhammad Iqbal Even on a slow news day when stories from other countries of the world show people’s celebration, happiness and achievements, the ‘Land of the Pure’ is capable of producing continued, non-stop blood bath, blasts, sieges, attacks and death-fests for a ‘nation’ of it’s size. So this post is for all the [...]

‘Powerful Army’ Caught with its Pants Down

By Dr Muhammad Iqbal Whenever the world media describes Pakistani Armed Forces, there’s always an almost-salutary sounding title preceding it: ‘Powerful’. That is not because the Pakistan Army is being given a nod of approval for being militaristically powerful. It is to describe the Army’s power-hold that it wields over the Pakistani establishment: domestic society, [...]

No-Nation Theory: Smaller Provinces in Pakistan

By Dr Muhammad Iqbal Another self-important political ‘debate’ in Pakistan is being discussed within what’s little left of our intellectual circles (these are those who aren’t intellectually competent enough to have already fled in the brain-drain). Everyone is singing, completely ignoring the elephant in the room, and everyone is jumping on to the punditry of [...]

Pakistan’s Minority Cleansing Campaign Continues

By Dr Muhammad Iqbal This time a Christian citizen (a Minorities Minister at that) Shahbaz Bhatti of our Islamic Republic of Pakistan is assassinated with religious fervour. The bloodbath orgy continues with fervent believers having the best time of their lives! Hurrah for freedom, democracy and independence! The usual condemnation pity party has begun. Whatever [...]

Allowing Democracy to Fight Intolerance, Bigotry and Extremism

By Saad Hafiz We know that Pakistanis can be hard on themselves as no other nation. But why? After all, Pakistan is no different than most Muslim and developing nations where inequalities are embedded in the system, no democracy or flawed democracy is the system of governance, and ruling oligarchies control the levers of power [...]

Pakistan’s slow and steady failure

By Dr Muhammad Iqbal I was shocked that there are people who were ‘shocked’ to learn about the assassination of Governor Salman Taseer. I mean, what were we so shocked at? What did we expect, to be honest? What could possibly be expected in our land of ‘the pure’? A ‘governor’ means nothing in a [...]