Raza Rumi
Decades of imperialism have left Afghanistan and its people devastated. But the fall of the Taliban, and the much touted “liberation” of Afghanistan, has produced a new spate of novels, films and other artistic media dealing with the “Afghan victim.”
And when I say “Afghan victim,” I mean a nauseating overdose of burqa-oppression, Taliban brutality [...]

Raza Rumi
Fahmida Riaz is Pakistan’s premier female poet. She became a sensation in the early 1970s when her bold, feminist poetry created a stir in the convention ridden world of Urdu poetry. Riaz was expressive, sometimes explicit, and politically charged. She created a completely new genre in Urdu poetry with a post-modern sensibility. Later, she [...]

Raza Rumi
God, You created the night, I made the lamp
You created the earth, I made earthen pot out of it
It is me who created the mirror out of stone
It is me who made elixir out of poison

Today Pakistan celebrates Allama Iqbal’s birth anniversary with the usual lip-service. The key messages of Iqbal seem to have [...]

Raza Rumi
The other day when my spouse complained for the umpteenth time about the peculiar attitudes of men towards their female counterparts in Pakistani workplaces, I had no option but to be blunt.
“You need to get real,” I yelled. “You must shed all notions of human complexity when dealing with the Pakistani male. He’s a [...]

Raza Rumi
140 dead and 538 injured - this little byline cuts through hearts and our future!
Yesterday was the day of images - moving pictures of excitement, energy, applause and then the saddest of recent tragedies. Innocent men and women charged with emotion and enthusiasm were blown away by suicide bombers, remote devices and alien belief [...]