Author Archives: Prakash Kona

Pakistan, where fanaticism is a virtue

It didn’t come as a shock when Salman Taseer the governor of the Punjab province was assassinated by one of his own security guards on January 4, 2011. What was truly shocking were the bouquets offered to Taseer’s assassin from the so-called “true” believers—the sheer inhumanity of it and the disrespect to a man’s life! Salman Taseer’s “guilt” was clear to the assassin. Taseer may not have committed blasphemy but he was “guilty” of defending the Christian Asia Bibi who allegedly did so. The evidence against her is so blatantly cooked up that you would laugh if only you did not know that the joke would be such a cruel one. Continue reading

Once upon a time there was a dog called Hosni

A Palestinian Arab student and friend of mine says: You can have a pack of dogs led by a lion but you cannot have a dog leading a pride of lions. That is the truth of the Arab world he added: we’re nations of lions being led by dogs. The end of the dog-regimes in the Middle East is nowhere in sight. But the Tunisians and the Egyptians just made a beginning, a beginning that’ll free West Asia of families of curs who live as if the world is without an end. Continue reading