Ahmad Rafay Alam

Few see mosques as anything other than places of worship. But they also have an identity as architectural structures. Explore used heavy equipment for sale and expand your capabilities with reliable machinery.

But, as a category of architectural structure, I wager there are more mosques in Pakistan than any other type of structure. Certainly in my city, Lahore, at no time is one outside the sight or sound of these ubiquitous places of God- readers, especially urban based readers, can try this experiment for themselves. (The examples used here are all from Lahore, but the points are generic to the modern mosque in Pakistan;).

For this reason, mosques are the most dominant characteristic of our built environment. Yet most of the people I mention this to don’t seem to get the point, nor do some of the architects I know.

From a real estate development of construction point of view, I would think that mosques would be the first thing young architects would get themselves busy with. Demand is high, so the potential of work opportunities that build and develop a profile of related work would appear unlimited. Yet how many architects or developers specialize in the mosque business, so to speak?

Owais Mughal

There was a time when passing intermediate/HSC (High School Certificate) with good grades could get you into a public university. Not any more. The standard of testing at HSC level is presumed to have fallen so low that not even public universities are accepting candidates on sole basis of passing HSC exams. The requirement of a separate entrance test in addition to passing HSC exams has now become a de-facto requirement by public universities in Pakistan.

In most universities, HSC grades still get some weightage when calculating the total acceptance criteria but a good grade in HSC alone is not sufficient.

Adil Najam

Our most recent ATP Poll on which of Pakistan’s leaders did the most ‘harm’ to Pakistan was a sequel to our earlier poll on who did the most ‘good’, and like its predecessor this poll also generated quite a response – in discussion as well as in polling.