How Malik Riaz Became Billionaire in No Time

ote: We  are cross-posting from Kafila an interesting article by Dr. Siddiqa on Pakitsan’s real estate tycoon Malik Riaz Hussain. We are glad that Dr. Siddiqa has not written about M. Mansha and the other Billionaire supporters of PML-N. This is the time to show that PML-N is just as liberal as PPP and PML-N is headed by a mature NS while PPP is headed by adolescents. it’s time to get on the PML-N bandwagon by subtle digs at PPP so that the sins of PML N are covered.

It’s also time to ditch NAB’s chairman Bokhari who has turned into a corrupt leaf and is also not mature enough. The signal has been given. It’s now time to get behind the mature and incorruptible Suddle – the conqueror of Murtaza Bhutto and the Protector of Ibne Iftikhar Cahaudhry.

It seems that there is narrative being built that PML-N and PTI are the liberals and TTP the conservative. There maybe as many as four categories  Animals (TTP ASWJ LEJ etc) conservatives (PTI and JI) Absolute sell your souls with no ideology whatsoever (PMLN), and sell out corrupt liberals PPP ANP and MQM.

This is how establishment hijacks and captures both, Islamists and liberals. Noora Kushti is an outcome, where real liberals are sidelined and impure Muslims are marginalized. (end note).



As Pakistan battles with militancy, part of the war is also being fought in the arena of ideas.

In order to fight militancy, some argue, Pakistani society has to win hearts and minds back from extremists. It is the ‘fundamentalist’ thinking in our midst that prevents us from confronting militants wholeheartedly. On the other side of the talking divide stand those who feel that ‘liberals’ are forcing the state to declare a war on its own people under the guise of fighting militancy.

There is, however, at least one way in which both camps are similar. Regardless of who is right or wrong, the two sides view each other as being incompatible binaries with nothing in common. This is a flawed approach. No society, and especially not one as complex as Pakistan, can be divided so cleanly into two groups that do not overlap.

Part of the reason that it is unfair to use the liberal versus conservative binary is because liberal has become increasingly fuzzy and difficult to define, especially with the gradual and systematic injection of new elites in the country. In fact, one of the most problematic binaries pertains to the idea of ‘feudal’ as being a permanent class in Pakistan. Surely, feudalism does exist in the country but less as an institution and more as a social norm. More important, by using this aforementioned category we forget that there were four systematic injections of elite in the country: (a) 1950s under General Ayub Khan, (b) 1970s under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, (c) 1980s under Zia-ul-Haq, and (d) 2000s under Pervez Musharraf. New individuals were inducted into the elite through forced empowerment mainly by military regimes. While most of the elites were inducted as part of the political process or through the local government politics, some people were taken on board for their capacity as economic players. Thus, with time the new elites, which largely came from the rural and urban middle class and sometimes lower-middle class, became part of the elite. These people are different from the old or traditional elite as they are more conservative; they are intellectually and emotionally neither secular nor liberal. Nonetheless, their lifestyle may often make them appear ‘modern’, a term that we tend to often wrongly misconstrue as liberal. The overall impact of this is that there is a less clear-cut division between liberalism and conservatism. And one person who is living proof of this is the well-known, controversial real-estate tycoon and philanthropist Malik Riaz Hussain.


How Malik Riaz Became Billionaire in No Time... by Awaiz_pp