The Muslim World is faced with many challenges and one of the pressing questions of the contemporary era remains whether Islam is essentially a political or an apolitical religion. This question was posed to young Afghans and Pakistanis by Farman Kakar, an academician and a writer, invited as the Chief Guest and Speaker at the 9th Pak-Afghan Youth Training Workshop at the Center for Research & Security Studies (CRSS) held on Monday, April 09, 2018. Participants of the workshop included young Afghans and Pakistanis enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programmes at Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), National Defense University (NDU), International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI), Bahria University, and National University of Modern Languages (NUML) in Islamabad. Speaking on the theme of ‘Political Islam in Contemporary Times,’ he stated that, while Islam is a divinely revealed religion dealing with religious aspects of human life, scholars also refer to it as a ‘Deen’ – where the religion lays out a complete way of life entailing all personal, social, economic and political spheres. In the contemporary world, while Islam is both partially a political and apolitical system of beliefs and practices, it does not allow non-state actors to have monopoly over the use of force. Categorizing the typologies of Islam in this respect, Mr. Kakar stated that political Islam claims to power by proposing the implementation of the religion as a system of government; either through violent or non-violent means. This is done by Islamists who can be democratic, in case of non-violent and legal methods to establish an Islamic system, or militant, those who use violent means to achieve their objectives. He cited several examples of these groups from both Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as the Middle East; including that of ISIL, Taliban, JUI etc. He also stated that Islam also has an apolitical aspect where the religion is considered as one’s private affair. The precedence of...

Weather permitting, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is set to land in Kabul on Friday. Both Abbasi and Afghan president Ashraf Ghani will meet in the context of immense grief and raging public sentiment over the killing of nearly 100 people, many among whom were students in their teens or even younger, in a seminary in Kunduz. Afghan government officials said the raids had targeted a Taliban gathering, but witnesses and local officials maintained that at the time of the attack, a Dastaar Bandi ceremony – an event celebrating young men completing the memorisation of the Quran – was taking place at the seminary. The near daily dance of death and destruction – mostly by Afghan Daesh and Taliban militants and to a lesser extent by Afghan security forces – inevitably and invariably casts ominous shadows on Pak-Afghan parleys on bilateral issues, making a meaningful conversation in an already complex geo-political environment very difficult. Such a toxic and loaded environment throws up several challenges for both countries. Thus, as both leaders meet today, enormous challenges rooted in history and geopolitics stare them in the face. The monstrous challenge for Pakistan is to convince the Afghan leadership that it is walking the talk on Afghanistan and is carefully sequencing its steps to avoid an internal militant eruption. Another challenge, for both Pakistan and Afghanistan, is to determine how to balance the US – the main financial lifeline for Kabul – against Moscow’s newfound love for Pakistan. Both are pushing and banking on an intense geopolitical and geo-economic engagement with Pakistan. One of the biggest roadblocks to a constructive Pak-Afghan engagement is the Pakistani military establishment’s unease with the Indo-Afghan geopolitical proximity as both feed into the USA narrative on Pakistan.   India, supported by the US, is developing interests in UAE, Saudia and Qatar, worry top military officials. The daunting task for them, they insist, is to...

Three parallel encounters in South Kashmir on Sunday have left behind a trail of blood: 13 local militants, four civilians and three soldiers were killed in the span of a few hours. Government forces celebrated the operation, the largest in a decade, as a major success against militants whose presence has seen a rapid increase in Kashmir in general and South Kashmir in particular. But first, the term “encounter” needs to be interrogated. Online dictionaries have started listing a separate meaning for the word in the South Asian context: “A violent incident in which a suspected criminal is killed by a member of the police, especially under controversial circumstances.” In Kashmir, the word has come to signify, more often than not, a carefully planned operation with coordination between various security forces, the police, the Army and the Central Reserve Police Force. According to the police, the standard operating procedure demands that forces closing in on a target ask the militants to surrender. In most cases, however, these operations end with death. After Sunday’s gunfights, police officials also spoke of a change in strategy – operations launched late at night and finished by first light in order to minimise civilian casualties. Reportedly, security agency records speak of “search and destroy” operations conducted in the last few months. Even when used in the South Asian sense, the term “encounter” seems inadequate to describe the violence in Kashmir. Almost every operation seems to follow a pattern that has become a ritual, from the search operations and the laying of the security cordons, to the opening of fire and the protests by civilians, to burnt houses and bodies and vast public funerals. Do these encounters help in bringing peace, or have they pushed Kashmir into a situation where violence has become a norm? Up in arms The phenomenal increase in militancy, especially local militancy, has brought the situation back to square one. From a few dozen...