Originally published: London: C.Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 2013.

The military rule of General Zia ul-Haq, former President of Pakistan, had significant political repercussions for the country. Islamization policies were far more pronounced and control over women became the key marker of the state's adherence to religious norms. Women's rights activists mobilized as a result, campaigning to reverse oppressive policies and redefine the relationship between state, society and Islam. Their calls for a liberal democracy led them to be targeted and suppressed. This book is a history of the modern women's movement in Pakistan. The research is based on documents from the Women's Action Forum archives, court judgments on relevant cases, as well as interviews with activists, lawyers and judges and analysis of newspapers and magazines. Ayesha Khan argues that the demand for a secular state and resistance to Islamization should not be misunderstood as Pakistani women sympathizing with a western agenda. Rather, their work is a crucial contribution to the evolution of the Pakistani state. The book outlines the discriminatory laws and policies that triggered domestic and international outcry, landmark cases of sexual violence that rallied women activists together and the important breakthroughs that enhanced women's rights. At a time when the women's movement in Pakistan is in danger of shrinking, this book highlights its historic significance and its continued relevance today.

The idea of Pakistan stands riddled with tensions. Initiated by a small group of select Urdu-speaking Muslims who envisioned a unified Islamic state, today Pakistan suffers the divisive forces of various separatist movements and religious fundamentalism. A small entrenched elite continue to dominate the country’s corridors of power, and democratic forces and legal institutions remain weak. But despite these seemingly insurmountable problems, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan continues to endure. The Pakistan Paradox is the definitive history of democracy in Pakistan, and its survival despite ethnic strife, Islamism and deepseated elitism. This edition focuses on three kinds of tensions that are as old as Pakistan itself. The tension between the unitary definition of the nation inherited from Jinnah and centrifugal ethnic forces; between civilians and army officers who are not always in favour of or against democracy; and between the Islamists and those who define Islam only as a cultural identity marker.

Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province rich with natural gas, gold and copper. Located on the borders of Iran and Afghanistan, land of the Balochs, where the first Baloch confederacy was founded in 1666, has had a bitter history of exploitation and suppression by a strictly centralized federal government heavily influenced by the country’s military. While the central government and the province confronted each other four times since the forceful annexation of the Baloch land into Pakistan in 1948, the ongoing movement entails more systematic and radical dimensions. Malik Siraj Akbar, editor of the The Baloch Hal, the first online English newspaper of Balochistan, takes a look at the last one decade how the dimensions of the Baloch movement changed. A Hubert Humphrey Fellow at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Malik reveals the “enforced disappearance” of hundreds of Baloch political workers and their brutal murder by the Pakistani security services under a “kill and dump” policy during detention in a phenomenon similar to Argentina’s Dirty War. The book analyzes growing state-sponsored radicalization in secular Balochistan. Malik is the most widely quoted journalist on Balochistan. He insists that the killing of former governor Nawab Akbar Bugti, 79, by Pervez Musharraf’s regime proved as the 9/11 of Pakistan’s relations with the resourceful province. The Balochistan question merits attention of the international community not only for a stable Pakistan but also to provide the world alternative options for a secular buffer state between Iran and Afghanistan if Pakistan falls in the hands of Islamists.

Veteran Pakistani journalist and commentator Zahid Hussain explores Pakistan's complex political power web and the consequences of Musharraf's decision to support America's drive against jihadism, which essentially took Pakistan to war with itself. Conducting exclusive interviews with key players and grassroots radicals, Hussain pinpoints the origin of the jihadi movement in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the long-standing and often denied links between militants and Pakistani authorities, the weaknesses of successive elected governments, and the challenges to Musharraf's authority posed by politico-religious, sectarian, and civil society elements within the country. The jihadi madrassas of Pakistan are incubators of the most feared terrorists in the world. Although the country's "war on terror" has so far been a stage show, a very real battle is looming, the outcome of which will have grave implications for the future security of the world.

This book deals with the Khilafat movement (1918-1924) in British India, which aimed at mobilizing pan-Islam for saving Ottoman Turkey from dismemberment and securing political reforms for India. It also examines the gradual transition of Muslim politics from pan-Islam to territorial nationalism.