Cross-Border Romance & iPakistan

By Zohaib Ahmed

The flux of information after 9/11 has put Pakistan and all the other Muslim countries into a climacteric melodrama. With fragile conditions in the neighboring countries, raging “Tribal Insurgence”, Pakistan amid of the pressure from USA & Nato, has been in the awkward and sweaty circumstances for more than a decade (Don’t forget the dozen of blasts in the news). Not just the internal issues are argumentative but folks who are living abroad are dealing with discrimination and prejudice.

A week ago, I received an email containing a link and information on a website called “iPakistan”, which is the brain child of Rehman Ilyas, an Economics and Finance student at Hong Kong University, who is completely fed up by the judgmental labeling of Pakistanis living abroad as a “Taliban Spawn” or a “Terrorist”; imagine a response after visiting a foreign country, “Is your family any Taliban?”

The reaction has not led to feverishly aggressive riposte but rather to a vivid and a dynamic concept, leading a multicultural team of qualified people from around the globe; the team is determined to change the subconscious image of this beautiful country and influence others.

Shedding some light on the background, the initiative started as a Facebook page ‘iLahore’, with overwhelming support received, the website was launched on 5th of December 2011 as iLahore.net on a test run, the current Facebook portal is ‘iPakistan’, sided by a ‘Youtube’ channel and a ‘Twitter’ page, the captain and crew of the respected channels are updating the fans and followers daily. The appreciation and support have enabled the team to widen the objective and expand their actions with the domain name ‘i-pakistan.net’ which will be officially launched around at the end of March 2012. The platform will be benefiting the like minds with creative skills and will be a channel to outsource web-based content.

iPakistan is filled with information and is rich in content; the articles are put up by university students who take a lot of their time – researching – and presenting the pie of the information as accurate as possible. Further I have come across an interesting section “What The World is Saying About Pakistan” in which the team has asked two simple questions, and the answers are given by the international students, which are presented in an unconventional manner.

Most of the sections are undergoing developing stage but I reckon the guys will be putting a great deal of energy in the forum section – to reunite – and bring together the academics of the 4 provinces; to share their experiences and support the goal. After all it is the support that matters and changing the perception globally, requires to change the perception internally, for that I believe the team is putting up and making a good use of any opportunity available.

May God Bless Pakistan.

Ameen.

Originally Published : http://focalkit.blogspot.com/2012/01/cross-border-romance-and-ipakistan.html