Comic book to steer young Pakistanis away from extremism
ISLAMABAD: When Taliban militants stormed a school in Pakistan’s northwest region last December, killing 150 people, mostly children, in the country’s deadliest terror attack, comic book creators Mustafa Hasnain and Gauhar Aftab had some other plan in mind.
The pair had already been working on a series to raise awareness about the corruption that plagues the economically-underperforming Muslim giant of
200 million people.
But they quickly decided to shift their focus to violent extremism — and felt holding candle-light vigils was not the best way to effect change.
Hasnain, a Britisheducated computer graphics specialist, founded his own company Creative Frontiers in 2013, today employing 20 people, including young male and female artists, programmers and writers, in a Silicon Valley-style office in the city of Lahore.
He explains: “It was a huge watershed moment for us. I got together with Gauhar and I said ‘We really have to do something about this’.
“We used to stand over there (at vigils) with a candle... but we wanted to do something more.”
The result was ‘Paasban’ or ‘Guardian’ — a threepart series featuring a group of close friends at college who begin to worry when one of them drops out to join a religious student group that is ostensibly working for charitable causes. Some in the group however, suspect it may have darker aims.
Fifteen thousand of the books are set to be distributed for free from June
1 at schools in the cities of Lahore, Multan and Lodhran while some copies will be made available in book stores.