What is Terrorism and How to Fight It?

Terrorism is defined as the use of violence without warning at places of one’s own choosing in order to achieve political aims. There are other such definitions too and all of them refer to acts such as the hijacking of aircrafts, detonating bombs in public places, indiscriminate firing upon civilians, derailing trains, demolishing buildings, releasing dangerous gases in public places and so on. In short, the definitions refer to the ...

The UNESCO as well as many linguists agree that children should get their basis schooling in their mother tongue. Pakistani schools, as I have argued in my article published in this section earlier (Dawn 23 November), generally impose alien languages upon them. There is, however, one school which makes a conscious effort at giving respect to a language other than English. As it is an elitist English-medium institution for small children it h...

POVERTY AND EDUCATION by Dr. Tariq Rahman

Vocabulary of arrogance – Dr Tariq Rahman

Courtesy to “Dawn”

A DEBATE is raging in a section of the English-language press in Pakistan about the use of the term ‘bloody civilians’ for the nonmilitary population of Pakistan. Before going into the issues raised in the debate, let me attempt a definition.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives many meanings of ‘bloody’. Most of them are related to blood, slaughter and the colour red. The meaning relevant to this article...