Adil Najam, Bilal Zuberi, Owais Mughal

From all of us at All Things Pakistan (ATP; Pakistaniat.Com) we wish our regular readers, our contributors, and all passers-by a wonderful and very happy Eid Mubarak (Eid Greetings). We wish you happiness, prosperity and all things good; now and forever.

You have all already given us great happiness by having become our extended circle of friends and family. The best compliment we ever got was Pervaiz Alvi saying that coming to ATP is “like going home every day.” We, too, feel that this is another home for us and look forward every day (many times each day, actually) to comments from regulars as well as the many who appear occasionally, then disappear, and sometimes appear again!

ATP was launched as a small individual experiment on June 11. Today – just over 4 months, 275 posts from 24 authors, 4000 comments, and very nearly quarter million page hits later – we are proud that an ‘community’ has emerged around ATP. We could not have possibly asked for more.

Like any community, not everyone agrees on everything. Sometimes tempers get flared. Often smiles are shared. Occasionally laughter breaks out. Most often there is a sense that we are thinking about the same things, even if in very many different – even divergent – ways. Most importantly, there is something that brings this community together; we would like to believe that thing is Pakistaniat.

P.S. Eid will be celebrated in much of North America and in many other places (including parts of the NWFP in Pakistan) on Monday. It will be celebrated elsewhere, including most of Pakistan, on Tuesday. Hopefully we have timed this post right and it gets to you either as your Eid has just begun or is about to.

Adil Najam

According to a Reuters report (CricInfo version here) Pakistan cricket players have “been advised to strike a balance between religion and cricket.” This according to Dr. Nasim Ashraf, the new Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).

The report goes on to say:

Since last year, the Pakistan team has made it a point to pray in public and hold religious gatherings in team hotels. Ashraf said in a television interview he did not believe there was any connection between Maulvism, ultra orthodox Muslims, and cricket. “There is no doubt their religious faith is a motivating factor in the team. It binds them together. But there should be balance between religion and cricket,” Ashraf said.

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Bilal Zuberi

Cake seems to have become a universal dessert, perhaps only rivaled by rice pudding.

Frankly, I tend to prefer ice-cream cakes over cream cakes, but frankly I will take any cake, as long as it is not sugar free.

Over the years I have seen many shapes and sizes of cakes: from miniature cakes the size of brownies, to sheet cakes of 2 square foot area with a picture of edible Einstein on it.

But this one really takes the CAKE!