The Pakistan International Forum

On Tuesday, April 29th I attended the Pakistan International Forum at CSU Chico. It was something I was looking forward to a lot because my understanding of Pakistan and its history is not very good. The speaker's name for the night was Mahan Mirza (Who is actually a professor of religious studies here on campus). The headline of his lecture was "Understanding Pakistan". There were four topics that he touched on in his speech. First was demographics, followed by history, politics, and the current Pakistan.

I learned that Pakistan used to be broken into two regions. These two regions were East Pakistan and West Pakistan. East Pakistan is now known as Bangladesh. Because it is surrounded by Iran, India, Afghanistan and China the country is quite vulnerable to attacks.

The climate there is not much different then what we have here in Chico California. They have hot summers with an average temperature around 90 degrees. The population level is just about twice that of California's. The national language spoken there is Urdu, however they do speak many other languages. This is something that I found interesting because it seems to me that almost all countries, other than the U.S., speak more then one language. I feel that as a nation that is something that should almost be required due to the wide range of people we have here in the States.

The history of Pakistan is based on religious persuits. The Muslims first came from India followed by the British in India. They gained their independence in 1947, no too long ago.  The country then became Islamic Republic. They went back and forth from an Islamic Republic to a Republic and back again about 7 times.

I felt that this was a very educating and eye opening experience. I did not know much at all about Pakistan and now I feel that I am at least somewhat educated on their past and present. With their wide range of landscapes from Mountains to plains, and from rivers to oceans it sounds like it is not too much different then here. I urge everyone to try to learn as much as they can about our world. I have found that the more I learn, the more respect I get for those I did not once understand.