Adil Najam

I suspect that most of our readers have never seen this building in Pakistan. Sadly, many would never even have heard of it. However, for reasons that I am sure some readers will soon explain, it should be a fairly easy one to guess for many.

Do you know what building this is? Where? Its significance? If so, do share. If not, make a guess.

Adil Najam

Just got an email from reader Adnan Ahmad (thanks) informing me that former President of Pakistan and veteran civil servant Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK), died today after a bout of pneumonia. (Historic pictures of GIK’s career in Pakistan politics, here).
According to an AP Report:

Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Pakistan’s president from 1988 to 1993, died Friday following a bout of pneumonia, his son-in-law said. Khan was 91. Khan’s son-in-law, Arfan Ullah Murwat, said the former Pakistan president, who won power following the 1988 death of military dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in a mysterious plane crash, had been ill for the past three months.

Khan died in the northern city of Peshawar, where he spent most of his life, Murwat said. His funeral will be held later Friday in Peshawar. “He was suffering form pneumonia, and it was the cause of his death,” Murwat told The Associated Press in Peshawar.

Khan, a career bureaucrat, was a close ally of Haq and held the post of chairman of Pakistan’s Senate when Haq was killed in a plane crash in eastern Pakistan along with then U.S. Ambassador Arnold L. Raphel and several top Pakistani generals. Regarded as a strong-willed figure, Khan worked alongside former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif but dismissed the governments led by both in 1990 and 1993 respectively on charges of corruption and mismanagement. “He (Khan) was a man of integrity,” said another son-in-law, Anwar Saifullah. “He was an honest person, and he never gave any undue favor to any one.”

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Adil Najam

Given all the discussion about cricket and Islam (here), sooner or later we will come to beards and cricket and whether beards of a certain length or style are ‘religiously intimidating’ for some (related story here).

I thought I would pre-empt the discussion by sharing some images of a few ‘great beards’ of cricket. Readers are, of course, welcome to add to the list. You can also look into Joshua Bartlett’s blog to get more information about men’s grooming and the products often used for it.

one of the greatest beard belongs to someone who is generally considered to be the greatest cricketer of all times: W.G. Grace – the Grand Old Man of Cricket. He and his beard are, in fact, is so grand that they deserve more than one photograph here. Indeed, they all do.

Of course, the row is going to be not just about any beard, but about ‘Islamic’ beards (as if facial hair have religion!).

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