Opinion Piece

The recently enacted law in Portugal prohibiting facial concealment in public spaces spells out a significant shift in the country’s approach to democratic values and civil liberties. The said ban on face coverings directly affects Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab or burqa. While presented as a neutral measure to enhance public safety and social cohesion, the policy represents a governmental bar on personal expression and religious freedom.

For decades, international security has been the realm of armies, borders, and old-fashioned geopolitics. Stability was assessed by states’ military strength, capacity to defend their territory, and capacity for strategic competition. Today, however, some of the deepest threats do not come from military mobilization.

On 7 August 2026, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement — a mutual-defense pact its signatories describe as defensive rather than directed at any state. This piece examines what the accord signals about middle-power diplomacy, the complementary strengths each country brings to the table, and the geoeconomic stakes — from Gulf energy security to Pakistan's Gwadar corridor — that tie defense cooperation to regional prosperity.

Pakistan enjoys strong brotherly ties with the North African Countries. Based on a strong Islamic cultural heritage, the countries are naturally inclined towards each other, resulting in sustainable diplomatic engagements.

Central Asia has been searching for the sea, almost all its modern history. Trade in the area has always been heavily channelled through two rather than one. Meanwhile, though, Russia, which is a far more important partner in regional trade than either of these two countries, even though it sits more centrally to Central Asia's markets than they do, is a diminishing presence, with its trade with China falling from 58 percent of regional trade in 1995 to about 19 percent today.

Pakistan, saddled with a far less central role in Central Asia's markets, registers barely at all in that picture. Its bilateral trade with the region stood at just over 2.4 billion dollars in fiscal year 2025, a fraction of what China alone moves through the region in a single year. This gap is the real subject of this piece, not because Pakistan lacks the geography to close it, but because it has spent the better part of a decade unable to use the geography it has.

Central Asia has had to rethink its options in the wake of two disruptions in recent years. In the Somali crisis of 2022, and following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a fifth of the world's oil and gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz, while in the case of war insurance on ships transiting the Gulf, it rose from about 0.12 percent of a ship's value to as high as 3 percent to 8 percent in just weeks for a single mid-sized tanker.

These crises were sufficient to push Central Asia to look south. What is not talked about is that the path it was most appropriate for traffic was never Iran, and never high passes of China. It passes through Afghanistan, it was, it is.

All states on the planet have geographical borders however the climate is commonly shared. An environmental crisis in one country can have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world. Pakistan is a prime example of such regions. For the past three decades, the said land has been confronted with a severe crisis caused by Climate Change, to ones’ surprise the unfortunate reality is that Anthropogenic Warming by Pakistan is mere less than 1% in the case of the carbon budget, which contributes 66% to global warming.

Uncertainty in the Middle East is rooted in deep ideological divisions and competing visions of regional order. Israel has steadily expanded its military and political footprint, while Iran has positioned itself as a counterweight through asymmetric alliances and regional networks. The United States, Israel's long principal strategic partner, continues to provide diplomatic and security backing despite criticism of Israel's expansionist rhetoric associated with the idea of “Greater Israel.” At the same time, Washington maintains extensive strategic partnerships across the Gulf, shaping its broader regional posture.

H.E. Mr. Hissein Brahim Taha, the Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), strongly condemns the continued and escalating Israeli military aggression against the Gaza Strip, persisting over twenty-three days in a row.

An Opinion Piece by Rafaqat Hussain, Research Associate, MUSLIM Institute

An Opinion Piece by Tahir Mehmood, Research Associate, MUSLIM Institute