مولانا شہاب الدین ندوی
قارئین معارف کو اس اطلاع سے نہایت رنج ہوگا کہ ان کے محبوب اور معارف کے خاص مضمون نگار مولانا شہاب الدین ندوی ۱۹؍ اپریل ۲۰۰۲ء کو سفرِ آخرت پر روانہ ہوگئے، اناﷲ وانا الیہ راجعون۔
وہ کئی برس سے موذی امراض میں مبتلا تھے اور چند ماہ سے موت و حیات کی کشمکش میں گرفتار تھے جس کی تفصیل مجھے ۳۱؍ دسمبر ۲۰۰۱ء کو اپنے والا نامہ میں اس طرح لکھی تھی۔
’’طبیعت بہت زیادہ خراب اور نڈھال رہتی ہے، کئی کئی دن بستر پر پڑا رہتا ہوں، علاج و معالجے سے کوئی فائدہ نہیں ہورہا ہے کئی قسم کے امراض میں مبتلا ہوں اور ڈاکٹر ان کی تشخیص نہیں کرپارہے ہیں، ایک بیماری ذرا دبتی ہے تو دوسری ابھر کر سامنے آجاتی ہے ان جان لیوا بیماریوں سے تنگ آچکا ہوں اور مزید طرفہ یہ کہ اب آنکھوں کی بینائی بھی مسلسل ضائع ہوتی جارہی ہے۔ داہنی آنکھ کا آپریشن ہوا مگر بینائی بڑھنے کے بجائے گھٹ رہی ہے، معلوم ہوتا ہے کہ اب میں صرف چند دن کا مہمان ہوں لیکن طبیعت جب کبھی ذرا سنبھلتی ہے تو جم کر لکھنے اور اپنے مسودات صاف کرنے بیٹھ جاتا ہوں‘‘۔
آخر وہی ہوا، خط لکھنے کے ساڑھے تین مہینے بعد وقت موعود آگیا اور مولانا کی ساری دینی، علمی اور تحقیقی سرگرمیاں ہمیشہ کے لیے بند ہوگئیں۔
مولانا کا وطن بنگلور تھا۔ میٹرک کی تعلیم یہیں ہوئی اور دینی تعلیم کی تکمیل دارالعلوم ندوۃالعلماء لکھنؤ میں کی۔ طالب علمی ہی کے زمانے سے ان کی طبیعت کا رجحان قرآنی علوم اور سائنس کی جانب ہوگیا تھا اور وہ ان میں تطبیق اور ہم آہنگی پیدا کرنا چاہتے تھے اسی لیے لکھنؤ کے بعض کالجوں کے سائنس کے اساتذہ سے ان کا ربط و ضبط ہوگیا تھا، دارالعلوم سے فراغت...
Nation-building is an evolutionary socio-political process. It not only provides security, dignity and ownership to a community, but also ensures democratic participation of people within the state to claim rights and perform duties. It enables a state to defend its sovereignty, achieve economic goals, and protect national interests at regional and global levels. Since 9/11 incident, terrorism has become a global challenge. To counter this menace Pakistan also aligned and provided land routes to foreign forces to get access to a landlocked Afghanistan. Across the Pak-Afghan border, through the tribal belt known as FATA, terrorism has spilled over Pakistan. The exclusive status of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in the past seventy years of Pakistan’s history, had deprived fundamental rights to the people of FATA. These tribal areas were governed by a separate law known as Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) made by the British in 1901. This law has proved as the main obstacle in bringing FATA in to the mainstream of Pakistan. After examining the historical and geographical aspects of FATA, the article shows how FATA remained outside the nation-building process in Pakistan. In this connection it seeks to see the position of FATA in the constitutions of Pakistan, including state initiatives to own this western belt and obstacles faced in merging FATA with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). It narrates the events that led to the merger of FATA with the KPK and high lights future challenges as well. It recommends that FATA’s merger would help establish a strong line of defence against terrorism. ______
This thesis explores the dynamics of returns and conditional volatilities for stocks at sector level in Pakistan and commodities such as oil and gold with a view to shed light on the portfolio implications and hedging insights. We utilize DCC-GARCH, ADCC GARCH and GO-GARCH models for the sample period January 2000 to December 2014. The conditional volatility parameters extracted from multivariate GARCH models; are used to construct the optimal hedge ratios and portfolios weights between sector stocks-oil/gold pairs. The results of the study signify that long and short term volatility persistence are evident of volatility clustering in all markets under consideration. The results for asymmetric volatility dynamics indicate that negative innovations in returns for all series except for gold asset tend to increase the future volatility more than positive innovations of similar size. This pushes the investors to consider safe haven assets during turbulence time in stock market. Furthermore, the results of the study demonstrate that conditional correlations are mean reverting across all pairs during the entire period of the study. The time-varying patterns of conditional correlations between all pairs help to investigate the hedge and safe haven properties for oil and gold assets. During the economic downturns 2007-2009, a downward pattern in correlations displays that oil asset play a role of safe haven asset only for health care industrial sector stocks whereas gold maintains status of safe haven asset for all sector’s stock except telecommunication and utilities industrial sectors. The evaluation of risk diversification in stocks portfolio and hedging potential of oil and gold assets for all pairs indicate that adding oil and gold to a stock portfolio improve the overall risk-adjusted return performance. For instance, investors in Pakistan should allocate more stock than oil and gold assets in their vi portfolios. The stock market’s investment risk can be hedged by taking the short position in oil and gold markets. The time-varying pattern in hedge ratios for all sectors and alternative assets indicates that investors should update their hedge position regularly according to market conditions. Finally, the efficiency of allocation weights of oil and gold assets in risk reduction varies across industrial sector stocks. The findings of the thesis enable the policy makers, portfolio managers as well as investors in their decision related to the markets under consideration.