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A long way to go RELIGION has remained central to all political discourse in Pakistan. At the same time, governments have been able to manoeuvre skilfully the force of religiosity into public policy. Every government has added its own brand of religious flavour to the political environment in the country....		EXCERPTS: Like ‘an English country garden’ BRITAIN was the first country to establish municipal parks. These parks were owned by local authorities and were fully and freely accessible to the public. “They were created throughout Britain during the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century,...
ARTICLES: Lofty heights THE history of any nation turns meteorically cognisable with the noble achievements of its men and women of superior merit, knowledge, wisdom and fine art. It, however, is in a matter...		ARTICLES: Roy returns to fiction ARUNDHATI Roy is to return to fiction writing, 10 years after winning the Booker prize with her first novel The God of Small Things. According to an exclusive interview with Reuters...
ARTICLE: The desert queen IN her day she was often dubbed the “Desert Queen” and the Bedouins called her Khatun, an honorific title. Although few in the Middle East or elsewhere would readily recognise her...		AUTHORS: Naseem Riaz – Paving the way AS I wait in her living room, I gaze at a beautiful sketch hanging on Dr Naseem Riaz’s wall. I find it to be quite similar to the picture on the...
REVIEWS: Through Indian eyes IN William Dalrymple’s latest work, Bahadur Shah Zafar seems to be the natural choice for protagonist. For Dalrymple, the last Mughal king embodied the ethos of the city where he spends much of his time....		REVIEWS: The book club HISTORIAN and film-maker Tariq Ali is the author of bestsellers such as Trotsky for Beginners, Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity and Bush in Babylon....
They’re reading "The book I recently read and enjoyed is called Guzashta Lukhnow. Apart from carrying a detailed description of Lucknow, it talks about how the city was built and developed by the Nawabs and their people....		REVIEWS: Sincere and impartial SLOWLY but surely the world is getting to know the truth about life in the Israeli-occupied territories. In August 2005, Israel vacated the Gaza strip but in reality it continues to be occupied, like the West Bank....
REVIEWS: The snowball affect THIS book is a significant contribution to the genre of research works on women’s issues in the country. Shahnaz Khan, the author, is a Canadian immigrant of Pakistani origin, currently tenured...		REVIEWS: Power of the pen CHANGE in any society is beyond reach without a change in the social attitudes of the common people. In the Pakistani context, in every field and profession, whenever women want to come forward they have to cope with gender discrimination....
REVIEWS: Children’s book review of the week IT’s cold and chilly in Antarctica, the highest and the most isolated place on earth. There are no permanent human inhabitants and nobody owns even a single inch of land in...		REVIEWS: Good teaching GREG Mortenson came to Pakistan as a climber. He had decided to scale the K2 (28,267 feet), reputed to be the toughest peak on the earth to conquer....
In brief IN the past couple of years there has been a lot of hue and cry about promoting tourism in Pakistan. International tourism is now the fourth largest industry in the world, growing at an annual rate of eight per cent; however, Pakistan’s share in it is negligible....		REVIEW: Dancing with Rumi THERE has been a commotion in many literary circles in Pakistan. Fahmida Riaz and Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi? Surely, this is an uneasy alliance! And not just uneasy, perhaps even an impossible one, logically speaking....