Combatting Religious Extremism in Pakistan from the Youth Perspective

The rise of Islam, which emerged as a panacea for the world problems is seen as a problem itself by the west today. The reason for this blame is the rise of extremism and Islam phobia in the western societies. This has serious implicat-ions for personal, communal, national and international security. The involve-ment of youth in extremist exertions is very high. They are being more action-oriented, easy to be influenced by radical ideologies and as an agent for thrus-ting social change.  Keeping in consideration the role of youth in adopting to or combatting extremism, it is imperative to find the perception of this important population about the problem under investigation. The research study was conducted in six universities in the federal capital Islamabad to reach to the youth’s population. The research was guided by research questions that aimed at exploring students’ perception about extremism and its various dimensions. The researcher collected data through an open-ended questionnaire from 1840 students to seek an in-depth understanding of the problem. In order to increase credibility in the findings, the researcher conducted focused group interview with 12 young faculty members. The data from the questionnaires were conver-ted into percentages based on common themes. The interview data set were thematically analyzed to understand the causes of extremism and its suggested solutions. Recommendations were suggested to tackle the menace of extremism in Pakistan.  

A Comparative Analysis of Panel Unit Root Tests under a Single Framework

This study compare twenty four panel unit root tests belonging to the null hypothesis of unit root and null hypothesis of stationarity on the basis of size and power properties using Monte Carlo simulations. Eighteen tests having the null hypothesis of panel unit root and six tests having the null hypothesis of stationary have been compared using stringency criterion discussed by Zaman (1996) to make comparison under a unified framework. For this comparison, first size of all (unit root and stationary) tests have been stabilized around nominal size of 5% by using simulated critical value instead of asymptotic critical values. The critical values are computed by Monte Carlo simulations assuming different level of the cross section in the panel and different time series length. After equalizing size of all panel unit root tests, power comparison of tests have carried out for both categories of tests for two specification of deterministic parts: with intercept term and both with intercept and trend terms. A standard bench mark on the basis of maximum shortcomings is made to identify best, mediocre and worst tests before making comparison for fixed cross section units with varying level of time series and vice versa. It is observed that De Wachter, Harris and Tzavalis (DWH); Im, Pesaran, and Shin (IPS); Levin, Lu, and Chu (LLC); and Westerlund (WT) tests having the null hypothesis of panel unit root are found to be best at small, medium, and large samples. The second category tests having the null hypothesis of stationary have concluded Hadri (HD) and Hadri and Larsson (HL) tests as the best performing tests as compared to other stationary tests in the both specification of deterministic cases. Empirical evaluation of best performing panel unit root tests have been carried out using purchasing power parity hypothesis on the basis of bootstrap method for sixteen OECD countries. The results of empirical study justify simulation study results for the best performing tests on the basis of empirical power.