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News of Bin Laden’s Death and Social Media’s Power of Communication

Sidrah Zaheer — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:01:42 +0000

I was about to sign out of my email account, when there appeared a new email in my inbox. I immediately opened it to check it out. It was from one of the citizen journalism social networking sites I am a member of. All it said without any details to the information was that Bin Laden died. He was killed finally. How was it all done, the email did not elaborate. Just as this email came to my inbox due to subscription to its newsletters, it went to many others too for revealing one the biggest headlines of the year.

I was intending to shut down my computer to carry on with the day’s routine. But when I received the email, I changed my whole plan of following on my usual routine, at least for the next forty minutes or so. All I was curious to know was how did Bin Laden meet his death. Indeed, it was good news, but not a relieving one. Since killing the name behind the terrorist attacks on 9/11 doesn’t finish off the evil intent his other co-networkers still hold.

I went to Google further about Bin Laden’s death to get the details. There was a whole stream of updates scrolling from the micro-blogging website, Twitter. Almost each second, people from all around the world, were tweeting their reactions about the news and their feelings on the matter. Everyone from journalists to news readers, all were there streaming their immediate thoughts. It is amazing how the breaking news of Bin Laden’s death was actually broken by Twitter. The world came to know of one of the greatest headlines in recent history, but not through mainstream news media, but through the social networking website, Twitter.

Although it does show the status Twitter has achieved and the importance of connectivity through social networking in this advanced era of fast communication, it also tells us how any news can be spread instantly without any detailed analysis. The first impact is obtained and a perspective fixed at the outset. This is the power of social media and it is growing ever more.

This year is the 10^th anniversary of the dreadful events in the New York City in 2001. Let us hope that just as the evolution of social media has given us such communicative power, different nations from around the world also evolve in their understanding of each other and learn to respect their differences in cultures and traditions. Though there are many different languages, but keeping in mind the essential purpose of a language, which is communication, let us negotiate and build bridges. Living peacefully together and co-existing in harmony is what I hope can attain such power of connectivity as social media has today.

How One in Four People Worldwide is Muslim.

Faiza — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:56:09 +0000

The global Muslim population stands “surprisingly” at 1.57 billion, a think tank report revealed yesterday.

Almost one in four people in the world is Muslim and 1.6 million of them live in Britain, the landmark study said.

The report, by America’s influential Pew Forum, took three years to compile. It claims that Britain has a total of 1,647,000 Muslims – 2.7 per cent of the British population, and 0.1 per cent of the global Muslim population.

One of the researchers said last night that the overall figure was a surprise. “Overall, the number is higher than I expected,” he added.

Using census data from 232 countries and territories, the report showed that 20 per cent of Muslims live in the Middle East and North Africa.

Data also showed that there were more Muslims in Germany than in Lebanon, and more in Russia than in Jordan and Libya together.

The report found that more than 300 million Muslims live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion.

‘The overall figure was a surprise. The number of Muslims globally is higher than I expected’

It claimed that about five per cent of Europe’s population (38 million) practises Islam. Until now, experts have been guessing at the precise number of Muslims in the world, with estimates from one billion to 1.8 billion.

“The whole idea that Muslims are Arabs and Arabs are Muslims is really just obliterated by this report,” said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University, yesterday

The study identified about 317 million Muslims – or one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population – as living in countries where Islam is not the majority religion.

About three-quarters of Muslims living as minorities are concentrated in five countries: India (161 million), Ethiopia (28 million), China (22 million), Russia (16 million) and Tanzania (13 million).

By John Chapman

Daily Express UK

Pakistani blogosphere continues to gain ground…

Saeed — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:32:21 +0000

I believe it is no longer a hidden fact that the Pakistani blogosphere has been growing at an amazing pace during atleast these last couple of years. What with the government blocking the blogspot.com domain, the seriously troubled political situation in Pakistan and all, but Alhamdulillah, Pakistani bloggers have definitely rose to the occasion and have made their mark. Kudoos to everyone for that!!!

I happened to create a new Google account today and when I logged in at iGoogle to customize the content on my homepage, what I saw not only surprised me but filled me with a sense of joy and pride as well. Google is well known to customize content based on the user’s geolocation, I believe by IP address. Upon logging in, at the very top was this message:

“Welcome to iGoogle, your home on the web. Start by selecting some of our most popular content.”

There was a list of RSS feeds from various international sources, among which were also listed some of the most popular Pakistani blogs and websites, including ALL THINGS PAKISTAN, Bloggers.Pakistan, MusicPakistan.net and even Liberty Books! Click the thumbnail below for a complete list of content that iGoogle offers to users based in Pakistan.

I just wanted to congratulate everyone at the blogger community. It was indeed a pleasure to see Pakistani content being recognized internationally and you all deserve the credit for it!

Just not cricket: This time it is personal

Saeed — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:14:02 +0000

Like every other Pakistani, I am simply appalled and very deeply hurt by the recent terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team that took place in Lahore. ALL acts of terrorism should be condemned, but this was definitely much more than a physical attack. It was an attack on the very core of our Pakistani-ism, keeping in view what cricket means to this nation. Faisal Irfan Mian at Sportz Insight very beautifully puts his thoughts into words and I strongly agree with him…this time, it IS personal.

My very sincere apologies to the whole Sri Lankan team and nation. I hope that you all realize that this barbaric act of violence by no means reflects the sentiments of the Pakistani nation for your team or you as a nation. May Allah be with you all. Aameen.

This time it is personal. Long before I realized I loved the game of cricket, I remember hiding a transistor radio under the desk mid-lesson just to hear the score of the test match. Long before IPL and Stanford and Bollywood stars and commercial contracts, I remember improvising our writing pads into bats and scotch tape around scrunched up paper for a ball. It was just what you did as a Pakistani kid. This time it is personal. When I was fifteen and learned how to drive a car, I remember racing around the same Liberty round-about the bus was attacked. When I was 26, I remember sitting in the same Gaddafi stadium watching the same Sri Lanka chase 241 runs to become world champions. Yes, this time it is personal.

It is not that blowing up school children in a bus or businessmen in a hotel was any less tragic or underlined the ruthlessness and pointlessness of these perpetrators of terror any less. But targeting guest cricketers from a friendly country just crosses the line at so many different levels in the context of Pakistani culture.

Cricket is the one thing our struggling country has been able to be good at on a global level and consequently the one thing Pakistanis have come to closely associate with their sense of self worth. Foreign commentators on the country’s obsession with the sport always seem to miss this point. It is the one thing that has united a divided country, across age, across ethnicity, across political or ideological leanings. To attack cricket is to make a statement that these terrorists will pull out all the stops. They will attack children, they will attack teachers, they will attack women, they will attack indiscriminately, and yes, they will attack cricketers as well. Yes, this time it is personal.

I don’t want us to just condemn anymore. I don’t want us to use scape goats anymore, to point to “foreign hands”, to make excuses for our own impotency and political bickering. I don’t want us to justify why such a thing might have occurred or to be defensive about why it could be our own mistake and our own people who are involved in perpetrating it. I am, we all are, tired and frustrated and exhausted with this very real problem, our problem, created by us… only ever likely to be solved by us… but only if we acknowledge it and face it as our own… or we will be condemned to be what Frantz Fanon described in a different context as “the wretched of the earth”. Yes, this time it is personal, very very personal.

US Drones attacking Pakistan are housed on Pakistani soil

Saeed — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:28:32 +0000

I was simply shocked to read this report by Teeth Maestro where he points out that the US drones firing missiles in the North Western Pakistani territory have been parked in our backyard all along, from where they are able to fly them and launch an attack within minutes.

In a shocking discovery reports have emerged from simply Google Earth images evidence of three drones parked on an airfield in some remote destination within Baluchistan, the images were captured by orbiting satellites and archived within Google Earth data warehouse to suddenly be discovered recently. Though there is no denying that during the Musharraf regime bases were rented out to the American army costing them a massive deficit to the tune of $10 Billion. But what probably irks the nation is that the Pakistani government have categorically denied that the Pakistani bases are being used to launch drones-

Omar Qureshi who writes for The News broke this discovery locally in Pakistan

The picture of the drones on the Pakistani soil, taken in 2006, has three drones, all Global Hawks. The picture has coordinates and they can be vaguely read as 27 degrees, 51 minutes North; 65 degrees, 10 minutes East. These coordinates place the strip not far from the nearby Jacobabad airbase which is around 28 degrees north, 68 degrees east.

One can easily verify the authenticity of the picture taken in 2006 with the 2009 image found online on Google Maps by merely inserting the above coordinates [or follow this LINK] in satellite mode

The Times Online also carried the report

The CIA is secretly using an airbase in southern Pakistan to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, a Times investigation has found. The Pakistani and US governments have repeatedly denied that Washington is running military operations, covert or otherwise, on Pakistani territory — a hugely sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim country.

The Pakistani Government has also repeatedly demanded that the US halt drone atacks on northern tribal areas that it says have caused hundreds of civilians casualties and fuelled anti-American sentiment. But The Times has discovered that the CIA has been using the Shamsi airfield — originally built by Arab sheikhs for falconry expeditions in the southwestern province of Baluchistan — for at least a year. The strip, which is about 30 miles from the Afghan border, allows US forces to launch a Drone within minutes of receiving actionable intelligence as well as allowing them to attack targets further afield.

But it all started a few days earlier when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee commented on 13th of February that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in Pakistan. The disclosure also marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.

The CIA declined to comment, but former U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, confirmed that Feinstein’s account was accurate.

While Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said Feinstein’s comments put Pakistan’s government on the spot.

If accurate, what this says is that Pakistani involvement, or at least acquiescence, has been much more extensive than has previously been known,” he said. “It puts the Pakistani government in a far more difficult position [in terms of] its credibility with its own people. Unfortunately it also has the potential to threaten Pakistani-American relations.

Chowrangi very rightly sums up the dilemma facing the people of Pakistan

But now the cat is out of the bag. So that is once more proved that how much regard American and our own government has for the people who reside in Pakistan. Their lives are of no value and our own government is involved in the killings. What a shame and what a sorry state of affairs. Another lie of our president has been caught and nobody knows how many more are on the way

For now the Government of Pakistan has a lot of explaining to do and just mere diversion tactics towards Musharraf might alone not help their case.

Israel’s terrorist attacks on Gaza

Saeed — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:13:04 +0000

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I called Israel a terrorist! Can anyone call their bloody attacks on Gaza anything else but an act of terrorism? How about have a look at these images and then answer?

Note: The images posted below may be found by some as graphic and disturbing. That does not mean that you or I can face away from them, just because they portray the ground reality.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui speaks out

Saeed — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:42:17 +0000

Source: Dr. Aafia Siddiqui speaks out

Posted by Khurram Ali Shafique also managing About Aafia Blog

At last a word has come out from Dr. Aafia Siddiqui herself about her travails. On Tuesday, October 6, four Pakistani senators met her in Texas but unfortunately their account has not been properly covered in many news reports. One exception is Daily Times, whose correspondent Khalid Hasan has given a remarkably detailed account of what Aafia told the senators in a meeting which lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes.

ACCORDING TO HER:

She was on her way to the Karachi airport in 2003 with her children when she was taken. She remembers being given an injection and when she came to she was in a cell.
She was being brainwashed by men who spoke perfect English. They could be Afghan or others. She did not think they were Pakistanis.
She was being forced to admit things she had allegedly done. She was made to sign statements, some of which included information on phone calls she was said to have made.
She has been tortured (but she provided no details).
She was told by her captors that if she did not co-operate, her children would suffer (two of them are still missing).
She said she did not know where her children were and it was not clear if they had been with her during her captivity.
The assault case against her has no basis in fact.
She expressed her lack of confidence in the court hearing her case and the US legal system.
She said she didn’t trust the two lawyers who are representing her.

Aafia’s version is not basically different from what the human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Asian Human Rights Commission have been suspecting for long (and it is not just Aafia’s “family” or her “lawyers” who have been raising these allegations, although some news report attempt to give that impression). The importance of this meeting cannot be exagerrated because now, finally, Aafia has narrated her side of the story in her own words, however incoherent she might have been due to the stress she has gone through. The world has been wanting to hear her side of the story.

The most alarming part is the distrust she has shown about the two lawyers representing her case. In my opinion the issue needs immediate attention and questions need to be raised about how the case is being handled. Eyebrows were raised when her lawyers didn’t seek bail for her on August 11.

Also, the controversy about her mental instability. On two occasions when Pakistani representatives met her (August 9 and October 6), they reported that she was articulate and okay. Yet her own lawyers Elizabeth Fink and Elaine Whitfield Sharp as well as the US Attorney Michael Garcia have unanimously established a perception that she needs psychiatric evaluation, and their position has eventually led to her transfer to Texas.

Perhaps it will be remembered that Judicial Activism Panel (Pakistan) demanded as early as August 12 that the Pakistani government should allow a panel of Pakistani lawyers to visit the US to fight her case in the American court.

The issue here is more than just one case. By exploring this case with some responsibility, a lot of related issues about international law and justice can be brought to the front. I think it’s important and let’s focus our attention on what can be done in this regard, and soon. Already, more than two months have elapsed since the issue was brought to the US court on August 6.

Pakistan’s president tells Palin she’s ‘gorgeous’

Saeed — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:28:18 +0000

I have no words to express my disgust over this piece of news. Does this moron not realize that he is representing Pakistan at an international level in the capacity of the President of Pakistan and its 160 million Pakistanis? Or maybe its just his “vadera” background which took over him…

NEW YORK (CNN) — Pakistan’s new president called GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin “gorgeous” when the two met in New York on Wednesday.

Palin has been in New York meeting international leaders in town this week for United Nations meetings.

On entering a room filled with several Pakistani officials Wednesday, Palin was immediately greeted by Sherry Rehman, the country’s information minister.

“And how does one keep looking that good when one is that busy?” Rehman asked Palin, drawing friendly laughter from the room.

“Oh, thank you,” Palin said.

Pakistan‘s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, entered the room seconds later. Palin rose to shake his hand, saying she was “honored” to meet him.

Zardari then called her “gorgeous” and said: “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you.”

“You are so nice,” Palin said, smiling. “Thank you.”

A handler from Zardari’s entourage then told the two politicians to keep shaking hands for the cameras.

“If he’s insisting, I might hug,” Zardari said. Palin smiled politely in response.

The Alaska governor did not answer questions from reporters at her first two appearances on Wednesday, when she joined running mate Sen. John McCain in meetings with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko and then traveled downtown to meet with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

But she did offer brief remarks to a reporter at the Zardari meeting who asked about her day.

“It’s going great,” Palin said. “These meetings are very informative and helpful, and a lot of good people sharing appreciation for America.”

Source: Pakistan’s president tells Palin she’s gorgeous

Pakistan’s Contribution to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Faiza — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:12:52 +0000

Large Hadron Collider (LHC – not to be confused with Lahore High Court in anyway) is a Physicist’s dream come true. Being world’s biggest science apparatus ever built this is a show of science on how far have we come to in our mental and analytical evolution. Today with the LHC we are at brink of understanding the existence of ours from the very basic ground up. This time we are not even looking at the DNA, neither we are exploring the fossils, we have even gone beyond all that. We are today finding how the Big Bang happened. And there especially to know about that first particle (infamously called, the God Particle) known as Higgs boson.

This LHC spans over an area of 27 KM underground setup spanning over the Swiss-Franco border, with support from thousands of Physicists, scientists and laboratories from over eighty-five countries. It is housed in the same tunnels which were dug in 1989 for Large Electron-Positron Collider, with of course some new specialized construction. With an estimated cost between €3.2–6.4 billion, this machine successfully fired itself up on 10th Septemeber 2008, whereas the full high intensity firing will be done by 21st October. Yet already it has made sensational news world wide.

With reports of people filing a petition against it, to an Indian 16 year old girl who committed suicide as she thought once LHC is fired it will bring end of the world (refer to as Doomsday), to continuous circulating emails and forum postings calling relating it with playing God, to finally sending death threats to some of the leading involved scientists. World has gone paranoid it seems to the frenzy the LHC’s elaborate marketing has caused. Doomsday prophets have suddenly popped out everywhere. Just only tragedy would be that majority of them don’t even know what are they talking about!

In order to help explain the whole process to the common people, perhaps even those who have gone paranoid, a scientist working at the CERN has even released her own rap! Honestly, if you follow it carefully it explains it way better than most of the texts you will find about it online.

Coming back from a brief introduction to the LHC, lets talk about the contribution of Pakistan it. Its a matter of pride for me at least at the moment as a Pakistani is that LHC has been assisted in this by Pakistani wonderful scientists too. Pakistan has a long history of participating with CERN and has a long tradition of wonderful physicists who are working around the world. A prime example would be Dr Abdul Salam himself who sadly was forgotten by Pakistan just because of his religious preferences. Dr Salam was the first man to be accredited with all the collaboration with CERN which continues till todate when he convinced CERN to give Pakistan stacks of nuclear emulsion exposed for further study of pions, kaons and antiprotons in 1960s.

In 1997 Ishfaq Ahmad (special adviser to the prime minister of Pakistan and former chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission) was able to sign a contract between PAEC and CERN after elaborate discussions an in-kind contribution worth one million Swiss francs for the construction of eight magnet supports for the CMS detector.

In 2000, CERN signed another agreement which doubled the Pakistani contribution from one to two million Swiss francs. And with this new agreement Pakistan started construction of the resistive plate chambers required for the CMS muon system. While more recently, a protocol has been signed enhancing Pakistan’s total contribution to the LHC programme to $10 million.

Pakistan with all these efforts is already hoping to become an observer state at CERN.

All in all, Pakistan has contributed the LHC in numerous ways including some of the following in particular:

1. Detector construction
2. Detector simulation
3. Physics analysis
4. Grid computing
5. Different mathematical software developments
6. Manufacturing of mechanical equipment
7. Alignment of the CMS tracker using lasers
8. Testing of electronic equipment
9. Barrel Yoke: 35 Tonn each feet made in Pakistan
10. Assembling of CF Fins for the Silicon Trekker’s TOB
11. Out of the total 300 chambers of CMS 245 were made in Islamabad, out of which 226 are already installed at CERN

I wonder how many Pakistani news channels picked this positive news coming from Pakistan? Did you know at least? Why not tell others why you feel proud as a Pakistani on it?

Source: Pakistan’s Contribution to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

The World’s Top 10 Public Intellectuals are Muslims

Saeed — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:48:02 +0000

A friend of mine happened to forward this ranking list a few days back and I was not only genuinely surprised but proud as well to learn that the top 10 ranking individuals are all muslims. Do note that Aitzaz Ahsan is listed at number 5!

Do note that the list was created after nominations and voting by over than 500,000 people around the world.

The World’s Top 20 Public Intellectuals

1. FETHULLAH GÜLEN
Religious leader • Turkey
An Islamic scholar with a global network of millions of followers, Gülen is both revered and reviled in his native Turkey. To members of the Gülen movement, he is an inspirational leader who encourages a life guided by moderate Islamic principles. To his detractors, he represents a threat to Turkey’s secular order. He has kept a relatively low profile since settling in the United States in 1999, having fled Turkey after being accused of undermining secularism.

2. MUHAMMAD YUNUS
Microfinancier, activist • Bangladesh

More than 30 years ago, Yunus loaned several dozen poor entrepreneurs in his native Bangladesh a total of $27. It was the beginning of a lifetime devoted to fighting poverty through microfinance, efforts that earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Over the years, his Grameen Bank, now operating in more than 100 countries, has loaned nearly $7 billion in small sums to more than 7 million borrowers—97 percent of them women. Ninety-eight percent of the loans have been repaid.

3. YUSUF ALQARADAWI
Cleric • Egypt/Qatar

The host of the popular Sharia and Life TV program on Al Jazeera, Qaradawi issues w .eekly fatwas on everything from whether Islam forbids all consumption of alcohol (no) to whether fighting U.S. troops in Iraq is a legitimate form of resistance (yes). Considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qaradawi condemned the September 11 attacks, but his pronouncements since, like his justification of suicide attacks, ensure his divisive reputation.

4. ORHAN PAMUK
Novelist • Turkey

Part political pundit, part literary celebrity, Pamuk is the foremost chronicler of Turkey’s difficult dance between East and West. His skillfully crafted works lay bare his native country’s thorny relationship with religion, democracy, and modernity, earning him a Nobel Prize in literature in 2006. Three years ago, Pamuk was put on trial for “insulting Turkish identity” after mentioning the Armenian genocide and the plight of Turkey’s Kurds in an interview. The charges were later dropped. Today, Pamuk teaches literature at Columbia University.

5. AITZAZ AHSAN
Lawyer, Politician • Pakistan

President of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, Ahsan has been a vocal opponent of President Pervez Musharraf’s rule. When Musharraf dismissed the head of the Supreme Court in March 2007, it was Ahsan who led the legal challenge to reinstate the chief justice and rallied thousands of lawyers who took to the streets in protest. He was arrested several times during the period of emergency rule last year. Today, he is a senior member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, formerly led by Benazir Bhutto, and one of the country’s most recognizable politicians.

6. AMR KHALED
Muslim Televangelist • Egypt

A former accountant turned rock-star evangelist, Khaled preaches a folksy interpretation of modern Islam to millions of loyal viewers around the world. With a charismatic oratory and casual style, Khaled blends messages of cultural integration and hard work with lessons on how to live a purpose-driven Islamic life. Although Khaled got his start in Egypt, he recently moved to Britain to counsel young, second-generation European Muslims.

7. ABDOLKARIM SOROUSH
Religious Theorist • Iran

Soroush, a former university professor in Tehran and specialist in chemistry, Sufi poetry, and history, is widely considered one of the world’s premier Islamic philosophers. Having fallen afoul of the mullahs thanks to his work with Iran’s democratic activists, he has lately decamped to Europe and the United States, where his essays and lectures on religious philosophy and human rights are followed closely by Iran’s reformist movement.

8. TARIQ RAMADAN
Philosopher, scholar of Islam • Switzerland

One of the most well-known and controversial Muslim scholars today, Ramadan embodies the cultural and religious clash he claims to be trying to bridge. His supporters consider him a passionate advocate for Muslim integration in Europe. His critics accuse him of anti-Semitism and having links to terrorists. In 2004, Ramadan was denied a U.S. visa to teach at Notre Dame, after the State Department accused him of donating to Islamic charities linked to Hamas.

9. MAHMOOD HAMDANI
Cultural anthropologist • Uganda

Born in Uganda to South Asian parents, Mamdani was expelled from the country by Idi Amin in 1972, eventually settling in the United States. His work explores the role of citizenship, identity, and the creation of historical narratives in postcolonial Africa. More recently, he has focused his attention on political Islam and U.S. foreign policy, arguing that modern Islamist terrorism is a byproduct of the privatization of violence in the final years of the Cold War. He teaches at Columbia University.

10. SHIRIN EBADI
Lawyer, human rights activist • Iran

Iran’s first female judge under the shah, Ebadi founded a pioneering law practice after she was thrown off the bench by Iran’s clerical rulers. Having initially supported the Islamic Revolution, she cut her teeth defending political dissidents and campaigning for the rights of women and children. A fierce nationalist who sees no incompatibility between Islam and democracy, Ebadi became the first Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

11. NOAM CHOMSKY
Linguist, activist • United States

Chomsky is perhaps best known for his scathing criticisms of U.S. foreign policy extending back to the Vietnam War. An outspoken activist, a lively debater, and an icon of the international left, Chomsky rarely shies away from assailing American power and venerating those he deems the world’s oppressed. The failures of American mass media and the greed of big business are also frequent targets of his critiques. Beyond his political provocations, Chomsky’s contributions to modern linguistics are immense, particularly his theory of generative grammar. The bestselling author of more than 30 books, Chomsky has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than half a century.

12. AL GORE
Climate change activist, politician • United States

From the dejection of losing the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Gore has come to define political renaissance—and vindication—in the years since. For his second act, Gore found his true voice in raising public awareness of the effects of global warming. His efforts have earned him an impressive list of titles—Oscar winner and Nobel Peace Prize recipient among them—and acclaim as perhaps today’s most influential environmental crusader.

13. BERNARD LEWIS
Historian • Britain/United States

Professor emeritus at Princeton University and the author of dozens of books, Lewis is one of the foremost historians of the Middle East. He is also one of the most sought-after advisors on the region’s politics and on Islamic society. Lewis’s works have recently focused on the source of antagonism between Islam and the West, a conflict he attributes to Islam’s failure to adapt to modernity.

14. UMBERTO ECO
Novelist, semiologist • Italy

Renowned for intricate, richly written novels that blend obscure historical events with complex plots and symbols, Eco is easily one of the world’s most scholarly writers of fiction. His day job, professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, provides him ample material for his bestselling books, which have been described as encyclopedic in their historical breadth.

15. AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Activist, politician • Somalia/Netherlands

A fierce critic of Islam’s treatment of women, the Somalia-born Hirsi Ali is known for her full-throated defense of the West, reason, and freedom. Her public rebellion against her Islamic upbringing has come with a steep cost: death threats and around-the-clock protection. She first received notoriety for penning Submission, a film renouncing the subjugation of Muslim women. (The film’s director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim fanatic in Amsterdam in 2004.) After being elected to the Dutch parliament in 2003, Hirsi Ali resigned her post three years later over a scandal involving false information on her citizenship application.

16. AMARTYA SEN
Development economist • India

As a young boy, Sen witnessed the devastating 1943 Bengal famine, which killed nearly 3 million people. Decades later, Sen’s investigations of the political and economic underpinnings of famines established him as the premier welfare economist of the 20th century. In addition to his famous assertion that famines do not occur in democracies, Sen was one of the first economists to empirically examine gender disparities in Asia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1998.

17. FAREED ZAKARIA
Journalist, author • United States

Editor of Newsweek International, Zakaria is one of the most influential and respected commentators on international affairs. His article “Why Do They Hate Us?” a Newsweek cover story in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, upended the conventional explanations of the day for a nuanced discussion of the economic, political, and social forces pulling Islamic societies apart.

18. GARRY KASPAROV
Democracy activist, chess grandmaster • Russia

One of the greatest chess players of all time, Kasparov is today a leading opposition figure in Russia, critical of Vladimir Putin’s tenure and the election of his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Agitating against what he calls a “police state,” Kasparov heads the anti-Kremlin coalition The Other Russia, which frequently stages pro-democracy protests. He recently launched an “alternative parliament” in a bid to unite the country’s opposition.

19. RICHARD DAWKINS
Biologist, author • Britain

One of the world’s preeminent evolutionary biologists, Dawkins established an international reputation with his 1976 work, The Selfish Gene, which holds that genes compete to propagate. He possesses a renowned ability to synthesize and communicate complex scientific ideas to the wider public. He is perhaps best known today for his criticism of creationism and religion. An avowed atheist, his most recent bestselling work, The God Delusion, is a vigorous defense of science and reason.

20. MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
Novelist, politician • Peru

A giant of Latin American literature, Vargas Llosa has written dozens of works of fiction, drama, and literary criticism in his decades-long career. He is a firm believer in literature’s power to expose the injustice and tyranny of dictatorships, while providing moving defenses of free speech and individual liberty. He writes frequently on political issues in widely published columns.

PakFellows Blog » International

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