Political Impact in Pakistan of the 10/08 Quake...and Other Thoughts

I found this a couple of days ago. I hadn't seen it before. It's a report from the International Crisis Group (the ICG) on the Impact on the political scene in Pakistan of everything that happened because of or around the earthquake that hit the north of the country in October last year:

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4023&l=1

As I never tire of saying, people don't pay sustained and close--but most importantly, sustained--attention to this sixth largest nation and second largest of Muslim countries in the world.

Of course, one could go overboard and scream "Terrorist Haven!", "Terrorist Haven!", but then there's the opinion of the likes of Richard Armitage to pay heed to:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/20/opinion/edbue.php

But my favorite media discussion this week was an interview of Akbar S. Ahmad on CSPAN. You can watch it from here;

http://www.q-and-a.org/Program/index.asp?ProgramID=1090

or go directly to the Real stream file at:

rtsp://video.c-span.org//archive/qa/qa081306_ahmed.rm

I think he overdoes explaining the Abrahamic commonalities between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, but he does do a good job of explaining the relevance of Pakistan--for better and for worse--and it's founding father. Now you might dismiss that as the bias of a self-described "Jinnahist" like me, but do listen to the interview. It might bring up a couple of new things you didn't know or a way of looking at things you hadn't thought of.

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Moderate Muslims - Pakistan