Friday, May 4, 2018

Oxford University to screen documentary on #Pakistani Nobel laureate Dr Abdus Salam

Oxford University will screen a documentary on Pakistan’s first Nobel laureate, Dr Abdus Salam, on May 12.
This will be the first screening of Salam – The First  Muslim Nobel Laureate in the UK. It is a feature-length documentary about the life of the Pakistani physicist. According to the synopsis, “it is the story of a man who traversed two worlds with ease: one of science and religion, modernity and tradition, war and peace and obscurity and celebrity.”
A question-and-answer session with the makers of the documentary will follow the screening. The Oxford University Ahmadiyya Muslim Students Association is hosting the event. Oxford Pakistan Policy Council and Bloomsbury Pakistan are supporting it.
Dr Salam was born in 1926 in a remote Punjab village. He grew up in a small brick house with a large family. In 1979, he became the first Pakistani to have won the Nobel Prize.

On Line News.

Pakistan: Dr Abdus Salam's name to be dropped from varsity's Physics dept

 Pakistan's National Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution to rename the Physics department of Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, which was named after Pakistani physicist Dr Abdus Salam, belonging to minority Ahmadiyya community.


The Ahmadis are not recognised as Muslims after the anti-Ahmadiyya ordinance was made in the Constitution of Pakistan in 1984, which restricted the freedom of religion for Ahmadis.

The Abdus Salam Centre for Physics was named in hounour of Dr Abdus Salam, who won Pakistan's first Nobel Prize in sciences 1979, for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory.

A resolution presented by lawmaker, Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar sought to rename the department after Pakistani scientist Abu al Fatah Abdul Rahman Al-Khazini, contending he was the "biggest name for Muslims in Physics," Geo TV reported.

In 2016, then prime minister Nawaz Sharif had approved renaming of the National Centre for Physics after Dr Abdus Salam.

Safdar, who is also Sharif's son-in-law, is known for his anti-Ahmadiyya stance, and has previously gone on record to criticize the decision to rename QAU's physics centre after Dr Salam.

"Today, this Parliament has signed a resolution to highlight that the Physics department of Quaid-i-Azam University should be named after the famous scientist Abu al Fatah Abdul Rehman Al-Khazini who was the biggest name for Muslims in Physics," the resolution read.

The resolution hailed Al-Khazini for following in the footsteps of his teacher Al-Biruni and stated that "the whole European world used the works of this prominent Muslim scientist." 

http://timesofahmad.blogspot.com/2018/05/pakistan-dr-abdus-salams-name-to-be.html

#Pakistan- We are sorry, Dr Salam


We are sorry, Dr Abdus Salam.
We are sorry that Pakistan has said that you are not worthy of honoring.
From the defacing of your grave. Now to the attempts to remove your legacy from one of the country’s leading universities that paid tribute to your outstanding contribution to the world of science. We are sorry that a Nobel Prize, Pakistan’s first, was not enough for the religious right to see beyond your faith. Just as we are sorry that the criminalisation of the latter occurred on democracy’s watch.
But most of all, we are sorry that we, the citizenry, from civil society to the fourth estate to the defenders of Jinnah’s secular vision did not do more to fight back. For you. In your name. And that of the entire Ahmadi community. In short, all those who were left behind in this hostile land. We are sorry that we did not grasp that once extremism has been appeased, there is little, if any, chance of ever going back.
We are sorry that your religion today stands desecrated by a state intent on taking what should be the personal and regurgitating it as the political. From making the right to citizenship dependent upon denouncing you and yours. To maintaining separate electoral rolls that take the hard legwork out of witch-hunts.
Our head hangs in shame as we mourn the way in which this modern democratic state that we call home has, in recent times, capitulated to those firebrands that will not rest until they have bludgeoned to death the rich tapestry of religious pluralism. The bereavement is ours, too.
Indeed, we have no words when confronted with that bitterest of pill; the one that we have all been forced to swallow as the custodians of blind justice gorge out her eyes as they make declarations of faith a matter of public consumption. Or when the elected representatives of we, the people, let a certain retired captain run rampage on the Assembly floor uninterrupted as he termed you, Dr Salam, and your religious brethren, a threat to the country. With the only workable solution being to bar an entire community from the armed forces. Thereby positioning the latter as defenders of a certain faith as opposed to the citizenry.
But what we wish to apologise most profusely for is this. The way in which those who have untold blood on their hands are allowed to repent their sins while the state turns the other cheek. As the latter does its best to mainstream these reformed assets that will see them down arms in favour of the ballot. Thus the message is clear. It is easier to forgive murders, terrorists than it is to respect the right to religious diversity. And still we maintain democracy’s charade.
For all this and more, we are sorry. Yet the time has come for steeled resolve. For all progressive forces to find a collective tipping point; to swing the scales of injustice the other way towards de-politicising religion. It is the only way. To fulfil the dream of Pakistan first.
This, Dr Abdus, is the very least that you deserve.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari strongly condemns massacre of innocent labourers at the hands of terrorists in Kharan

Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has strongly condemned the massacre of innocent labourers at the hands of terrorists in Kharan, Balochistan and called upon the government to provide secure environment for the labour in all the projects, big and small in the province.
In statement issued here, the PPP Chairman said that terrorists have committed barbaric crime and there was tears in every eye over the bloodshed of the toiling labourers.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari expressed solidarity with the bereaved families of the victims and demanded adequate compensation to them besides providing improved security to labourers working in far-flung sites.
https://mediacellppp.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/bilawal-bhutto-zardari-strongly-condemns-massacre-of-innocent-labourers-at-the-hands-of-terrorists-in-kharan/