دہر میں اسم محمد سے اُجالا کر د ے
نحمدہ ونصلی علی رسولہ الکریم امّا بعد فاعوذ بااللہ من الشیطن الرجیم
بسم اللہ الرحمن الرحیم
معزز اسا تذہ کرام اور میرے ہم مکتب شاہینو!
آج مجھے جس موضوع پر اظہار خیال کرنا ہے وہ ہے: ’’دہر میں اسمِ مُحمَّدؐ سے اُجالا کردے‘‘
کی محمد سے وفا تو نے تو ہم تیرے ہیں
یہ جہاں چیز ہے کیا لوح و قلم تیرے ہیں
صدرِ ذی وقار!
ہم مسلمان ہیں، ہم کلمہ گو ہیں ، ہم اللہ اور رسولؐ پر ایمان رکھتے ہیں، ہم زباں سے بھی کہتے ہیں اور دل سے بھی تصدیق کرتے ہیں کہ اللہ ایک ہے اور محمدرسول اللہؐ اس کے آخری رسول ہیں۔
جنابِ صدر!
اس کے باوجود ہم پستی کا شکار کیوں ہیں ، ہماری صفوں میں اتحاد کیوں نہیں ہے، ہم متحد کیوں نہیں ہیں، ہماری زندگی میں عروج کیوں نہیں ہے، ہماری حیات پستی کی طرف کیوں مائل ہے۔
جنابِ صدر!
اس کا سبب یہ ہے کہ ہمارا اعتقاد صرف زبان کی حد تک رہ گیا ہے، ہماری محبت صرف زبانی ہے، ہمارا انس صرف عارضی ہے، ہمارا پیارصرف جزوقتی ہے۔ ہم نام کے مسلمان ہیں ہمارا ظاہر اور باطن یکسانیت کا مظہر نہیں ہے۔
جنابِ صدر!
اگر ہم چاہتے ہیں کہ اقوام عالم میں ہمارا نام ہو، ہماری دنیوی و اُخروی زندگی بہتر ہو، ہم معاشرتی لحاظ سے پسماندگی کا شکار نہ ہوں تو محمد رسول اللہؐ سے اپنی محبت کے معیار کو بلند کرنا ہوگا، رسول اللہؐ کی سنتوں پر عمل کرنا ہو گا، اسی سے ہم پستی سے نکل کر بلندی پرپہنچ سکتے ہیں۔
قوت عشق سے ہر پست کو بالا کر دے
دہر میں اسمِ محمد سے اجالا کر دے
والسلام
Islām is a religion of peace and it gives great importance to peace. Islamic teachings and laws are meant to create and maintain peace in the human society. But, unfortunately, Islām has been targeted as a source of terrorism, today. In this article, the author tries to defend Islām and differentiate between Jihād and terrorism. The word terrorism needs to be seen in its historical perspective. Different definitions of terrorism have been presented, but still it is an ambiguous term. In this paper, the author tries to define terrorism in the Islamic perspective. This paper discusses the points given below: m The concept of terrorism, its manifestations and types. M Encountering and prevention of terrorism from Islamic perspective. M Islām and the global brotherhood. M The punishment of terrorism. M The religious viewpoint against a cruel government. M The peaceful struggle against cruelty and injustice. Also, the difference between terrorism and jihad has been clarified. The rules and regulations of Jihād make it clear that it has nothing to do with terrorism, which is an unruly activity. A Muslim is supposed to be a peaceful citizen, who can never indulge in any act of terrorism. The rebellion against the rulers has also been discussed to draw the conclusion that it is not allowed except against the blatant kufr. The objectives of the Islamic punishments indicate the Islamic approach to minimize terrorism in the human society.
This dissertation analyzes the level of competition in the banking sector of Pakistan in the context of massive transformation in its structure and business activities since the implementation of financial sector reforms. The study employed a four-pronged empirical strategy along with bank level annual data from the year 1996 to 2015 to account for the multi-dimensional nature of banking competition. Relying on traditional measures of the market structure, five indicators of market concentration (number of banks, concentration ratio, comprehensive concentration index, Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI), and the HallTideman index) are used to analyze the changes in the market structure in the context of structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm. The results indicate that the market structure of banking industry in Pakistan has significantly changed in favor of competitive environment. As changes in the market structure indicators can also be interpreted in the context of efficient structure (ES) paradigm, this dissertation explicitly evaluated the relevance of both SCP and ES paradigms by estimating a reduced-form profit function. The formal tests of hypotheses do not provide meaningful support to SCP paradigm. The ES paradigm is more relevant in case of Pakistan as the cost efficiency plays a statistically significant role in determining profitability of banks. These results suggest that market structure indicators cannot be unambiguously used for exploring competition in banking sector of Pakistan. In the next step, the study focused on the formal tests of competition. One of the widely used Panzar-Rosse H-statistic is estimated by using panel data to measure the degree of competition in banking sector. The results suggest that banking sector of Pakistan exhibits the characteristics of monopolistic and perfectly competitive market structures. The relevance of monopoly structure is out rightly rejected across different specifications of the model. The validity of these findings is also supported by an explicit test of crucial assumption of equilibrium condition, and the analysis of pass-through from the policy rate to banks’ retail rates. The final assessment of competition among banks over time in this study is carried out by using the newly developed Boone indicator. A translog cost function is estimated by using bank level panel data and method of maximum likelihood to derive marginal cost for each bank, which is subsequently used to estimate the value of Boone indictor. The results show that Pakistan has a competitive banking sector as banks with higher marginal cost (inefficient banks) are losing their market share to banks with lower marginal cost (efficient banks). Moreover, the rolling (and year-wise) estimates of Boone indicator suggest that the level of competition among banks has gradually increased with passage of time. This dissertation provides strong evidence in favor of increasing competition in the banking sector of Pakistan. Detailed results suggest that the policy focus should be on promoting efficiency in the banking sector as: (a) there are more than enough number of banks in the industry to compete among themselves; and (b) traditional indicators of the market structure reflect a favorable environment for healthy competition in banking sector of Pakistan.