Saleena Karim

Saleena Karim is from Nottingham, England. She is a freelance writer, researcher, editor, and artist. She is the founder of the Jinnah Archive and a co-founder and admin of the Visionary Fiction Alliance. She has authored two books on Pakistan's founding history. The critically acclaimed Secular Jinnah (2005) recounted her discovery that a famous quote attributed to MA Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan, and which is frequently cited by academics as supporting evidence of his political ideology, was in fact fabricated. Her second book, Secular Jinnah & Pakistan (2010) is a detailed treatise on Jinnah's political life as well as the ongoing debate over the historical significance of the Pakistan movement, containing independent research and utilising primary sources.Systems (2012) is Karim's first work of fiction. The 'Cohesive Ethics Theorem' featured in the novel, which is used to create a model for an ideal society on a supercomputer, is a factual concept. It reflects the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal's statement that an ideal society actively aspires to transform the three ideals of 'equality, solidarity and freedom … into space-time forces … to realise them in a definite human organisation'.Despite having no direct link with Karim's non-fiction, the core story is also loosely inspired by the original intentions of Pakistan's early leaders to try new social systems in line with the philosophy of Iqbal, the 'spiritual father' of Pakistan. In July 2012 Systems became part of a series of education courses on Iqbal, at the Marghdeen Learning Centre (an associative body of Iqbal Academy, Pakistan). Aside from writing books, Karim has worked as a webmaster, a translator and as an editor. She has translated a number of Urdu works into English, and she has also been a co-writer for a UK television show (Deliver!). She has composed soundtracks and themes for the independent TV/film production company, Deliverance Films (Deliver! and Curse of the Bands). She has also edited and published titles for OurBeacon Books, and also runs her own publishing imprint, Libredux Publishing.