Pakistan vs India Hockey World Cup 2010: Clash Of Rivals

World Cup Hockey is going to start today February 28, 2010, and in the opening day arch rivals India and Pakistan are going to play against each other. This time, the event is going to take place in India and that is why millions of people of these two countries are eagerly waiting for this match.

India vs. Pakistan World Cup Hockey 2010 will start at 20:35 local time India and it will be broadcast in many TV channels right across the world. A few weeks ago, the two countries met with each other in Argentina in Champion’s Challenge Cup.

Zeeshan, who will turn 32 on February 28, is hoping to celebrate his birthday with a victory lap in New Delhi. “It’s our first match and the fact that we are playing India makes it very important. It will be a must-win game for us.”

Zeeshan added: “We play aggressively on the field but outside the arena, I have really close friends in the Indian team like Sandeep Singh, Rajpal Singh, Deepak Thakur and Prabhjot Singh. There is no rivalry once the match is over.”

India will play all their league matches at 8.35 p.m. They come up against Australia on March 2, Spain March 4, England March 6 and South Africa March 8.

The two semi-final matches are scheduled for March 11 and the final is on March 13.

Miladunnabi being observed

Muslims in Pakistan were observing Eid-e-Miladunnabi on Saturday, as both the birth and the death anniversaries of the prophet Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH).

Pakistan:

Secularism vs Islamism

In a recent TV debate on this subject, the applause meter would have given the win to Islamism. The debaters, three on each side, faced a small mixed audience — quite a few girls, many wearing hijabs, also young men in jeans and a handful of beards.

The ‘secularists’ appealed, in measured tones, to the intellect, made references to European history, called for tolerance, pluralism and progress. The ‘Islamists’ were assertive, emotional and received applause when they spoke of the ‘moral decadence’ of the West and condemned, to louder applause, the West’s aggression against Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq.

So do the people of Pakistan want an Islamist state? Well, yes and no.

A poll of young persons in a recent issue of the Karachi monthly Herald shows the complexity of the Pakistani mindset. A substantial majority (64 per cent) wanted an Islamic state but the religious parties that espouse this cause received only three per cent of the vote. By an emphatic majority they preferred democracy to military rule. Most were optimistic about the future, but even so 53 per cent would leave the country if given the chance. There were other questions that touched on lifestyles, friendship, marriage, etc, the answers to which showed a predictably conservative bent of mind.

During the TV debate’s question time, one young girl in the audience said: “Show me one verse of the Quran that is against tolerance, human rights and democracy. Then I too shall be for secularism.” She was saying in effect that western secularism does not offer anything that Islam as such does not provide, refuting both Samuel Huntington and Maulana Maududi.

It brought to my mind what a French thinker had written at the time of Iran’s Islamic revolution: nothing worthwhile can be done in Muslim countries except in the name of Islam.

However, when someone in the audience recalled the tolerance and progressiveness of Moorish Spain, one debater on the ‘liberal’ side responded: let us not always be talking about past glories. The dismal present of the Islamic world, she said, is what we must face up to — poverty, ignorance, intolerance, and corrupt and autocratic governments. “In the entire Muslim world there isn’t one world-class university.”

What one may make of this, if one takes the Herald poll as representative, is that the Pakistani youth has faith in the Islamic system but does not go along with what is proposed by the religious parties; thinks democracy is compatible with Islam; is patriotic but also pragmatic; and is conservative in the matter of social mores. He/she feels strongly about the West’s policies towards Muslims and is repelled by its sexual permissiveness.

Could one say then that the gulf between Islamists and secularists is not as wide as the 60-year contention on the subject would indicate? The dispute arises from confusion over the terms of the debate. Secularism in its European meaning of separation of church and state does not apply to Islam which has no church, no priesthood. What our Islamist parties want would indeed amount to creating a sort of institutionalised priesthood.

In their view democracy, in which decisions are taken by majority vote and not according to the will of God, is not Islamic. In the first Constituent Assembly they proposed that a council of ulema, which can interpret His word, be established to vet all legislation. They did not get this but the assembly instead adopted an Islamic ‘Objectives Resolution’.

This somewhat ambiguous document, when all is said and done, says no more than that Muslims should be ‘enabled’ (not obliged) to order their lives in accordance with Islam. Otherwise it calls only for all accepted democratic values — equality of status, and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association.

But in due course more substantive measures followed. Only a Muslim could be president or prime minister (what then of equality of status?). Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims. A more draconian blasphemy law was introduced, along with the Hudood Ordinance, the Qisasand Diyat(an eye for an eye) law, and the Qanun-i-Shahadatregulations under which a woman’s word is worth half that of a man. And the list doesn’t end there.Few, if any, of these provisions were introduced as a result of public demand or debate. Most of them, such as the ban on interest, have remained a dead letter, no one has had his hands cut off, no adulterers have been stoned. When the Hudood Ordinance was amended some time ago there was no public outcry. I daresay there wouldn’t be too much if it was done away with altogether.

The real debate is not between Islam and secularism but between democracy and theocracy, and in that context the entire history of our constitution-making shows on which side the people stand.

The situation is paradoxical. The average Pakistani is devout and religion is an important part of his being. Islamic signs and symbols are everywhere but Pakistanis are not willing to be ruled by clerics and do not vote for the religious parties. Yet a rightwing Islamism (the Shariat Court calling land reform un-Islamic, for instance) coupled with an exhibitionist religiosity has been making headway in the country’s politics and hearts and minds.

The Islamists care little for votes and elections but rely on sympathisers in the administration, the education system and the military to promote an agenda concerned with ritual and revival rather than welfare and progress. Obscurantist teachings in madressahs, Friday sermons spewing sectarian bias and, more recently, some religious TV channels have cast a medieval pall over Pakistani society and created an atmosphere of bigotry and intolerance.

It will not be an easy task to bring about a more open-minded, tolerant attitude. Musharraf’s ‘enlightened moderation’ did not go anywhere because it did not have the support of his power base in the army and he did not have the courage of his convictions. For the moment nobody else is even trying. I don’t at all see the Taliban in our future but don’t rule out Taliban-lite, some of which is here already.

Aziz, advisor to India steel Mogul
Former prime minister Shaukat Aziz has been appointed as financial advisor to prominent Indian businessman Lakshmi Mittal. According to details, Shaukat Aziz has been playing a new role as financial advisor to Lakshmi Mittal to whom the former PM had sold Pakistan Steel Mills, which was later stopped by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Lakshmi Mittal, who is owner of some 30 steels mills in India, made Shaukat Aziz's appointment in his London office.
People had expressed their annoyance over the disgraceful step taken by the former prime minister for accepting offer from an Indian businessman in the wake of recent tension between the two countries on different core issues particularly water dispute and Kashmir issue.

Remembering Sadequain

February 10 marks Sadequain’s 23rd death anniversary. Sadequain Foundation estimates he painted close to 15,000 paintings, murals, calligraphies and drawings. Most of his work was gifted to institutions, individuals, acquaintances, and total strangers. Sadequain, at the time of his death was painting the stupendous ceiling mural at the Frere Hall, which though left incomplete, nonetheless, adorns the ceiling of the historic building.

Sharmeen at Ted

Sharmeen Obaid Chinnoy is not only making documentaries but conscientious ones too. Her ventures like Reinventing the Taliban and more recently Children of the Taliban have garnered her international acclaim.

So it’s no surprise that Ms Chinnoy has been asked to speak on Ted (a reputed event that takes place in the US annually and where a great many influential people have aired their views). The topic of her talk is “the next generation of suicide bombers are getting inspired and what we can do to change that!”

Indeed the subject is a loaded one and needs careful handling. Knowing Sharmeen’s ability to communicate with her audiences, it’s likely that she’ll do a good job.

Simply Sonya

Sonya Jehan is radiant. The world knows her as a half-Pakistani Indian actress and we are quite happy with rights on her being just that. Born as the legendary Madam Noor Jehan’s granddaughter to a Pakistani father (Akbar Rizvi) and French mother (Florence Villier), she is now married to an Indian banker (Vivek Narain) and is shifting homes from Delhi to Mumbai as we speak. And of all the traits she carries in her genes — fame, France, a penchant for performance, a love for food and simple elegance — the Pakistani gene is the most dormant. She speaks Urdu, but often chooses not to and when English and French roll off her tongue much more easily, you could never guess that she was anything but French. The give-away, if any, is her offhand sense of style, which lends her originality beyond Noor Jehan’s opulence and her mother’s French chic. These are the two women — both of whom have incredible individual identities — who have had the maximum influence on her personality but Sonya has emerged very much her own person. She has a deep, melodic voice that is trained to sing like Daado (as she fondly calls Noor Jehan) and she has a love for food like her mother (who lives in Karachi and owns the only French restaurant in town).

Tehran protest image wins top news photo award

“the beginning of something, the beginning of a huge story”

An image of women shouting from the rooftops in protest at Iran's presidential election last June won the top World Press Photo prize for news photography on Friday.

Described by judges as “the beginning of something, the beginning of a huge story”, the photo is part of a series that Italian Pietro Masturzo shot on Tehran's rooftops at night, when people were shouting their dissent over the election results as protests raged on the streets during the day.

Pakistan flung into fresh turmoil

Pakistan headed into fresh crisis Sunday with President Asif Ali Zardari locked into a humiliating confrontation with the country's top judicial authority over the appointment of a senior judge.

The crisis arose when the president appeared to ignore a candidate nominated by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry for a vacancy on the Supreme Court, instead selecting another senior judge.

The Supreme Court suspended the president's decree appointing Khawaja Sharif, the top judge in Pakistan's second biggest city Lahore, and a judge to fill Sharif's shoes, and summoned the attorney general to appear in court.