Making Sense of Pakistan

Iftikhar Malik Farzana Shaikh’s earliest historical study, based on her doctoral research, was a timely attempt to investigate the quest of a cohesive political community anchored on the historical and intellectual ethos of worldwide Islam within a specific South Asian context. That volume had tried to move the discourse on Pakistan’s evolution from the prevalent paradigm of high politics of a few powerful men at the top, nudging its reader to seek long-term explanation of this country’s evolution, especially after the post-1857 trauma. Surely, this was a dilemma faced by the Muslim élite who often differed... (Source)

Mani Shankar Aiyar Yes, it is the very best book I have read on Pakistan. If Pakistan can introspect, it will have to recognise that in their Islamic republic, as Omar Khayyam said all those centuries ago, “the two and seventy jarring sects confute” – all these sects are part of the family of Islam. The question of whether there should be a Muslim nation or not on the subcontinent is one that is only of historical importance now. They do have an overwhelmingly Muslim majority country in Pakistan. Pakistan is as much a geographical as an historical reality and reversing that reality is simply out of the question. (Source)