Irfan Husain:“Understanding Fatal Faultlines: Pakistan, Islam and the West”

Irfan Husain has been writing on a wide range of subjects for newspapers in Pakistan and elsewhere since 1970. He currently writes two weekly columns for Dawn, Pakistan's widely circulated and highly respected daily.

As a civil servant, he used a number of pseudonyms, including Mazdak.In the face of rising religiosity in Pakistan, IH has maintained a secular, democratic worldview in his columns that reflect an abiding faith in humanism and reason.

He has consistently refuted the inflamed levels of hysterical anti-west and extremist sentiments that increasingly dominate the public discourse in much of the Pakistani media.Born in Amritsar, India, in 1944, IH migrated to the newly created state of Pakistan with his parents in 1947. His father, Dr Akhtar Husain Raipuri, was an eminent Sanskrit scholar, a literary critic, and a short-story writer who received his PhD from Sorbonne University. His mother, Hameeda, was a famous author as well, beginning her illustrious literary career late in life after her husband's death in 1992.