Macabre as it is, the body of a 65 year-old Muslim woman was found covered with bacon in a hospital mortuary in London. She had died of cancer. "How could anyone think of such a thing...I do not know why they chose my mother?" said her devastated daughter.

With hate crimes ascendant in the West, now the Brits are betraying their bias by refusing visas to Muslims - non-whites of course - from all over the world ever since Tony Blair tagged along with Bush to "liberate" Iraq. And nearer home - that is USA, Yahya Jalil, a Stanford graduate from Pakistan now at Wharton School of Business, was stopped from re-entry after he returned from his spring break due to the US Immigration Services (INS) mess up.

A tennis star who left Pakistan many moons ago to seek greener pastures in the US, married a white woman to appear politically correct and became fully Americanized was heard saying: "Man, even I have lost my job!"

Is Fahd Husain then returning to Pakistan for all of the above reasons? "No", says the former editor of The Nation and a PTV host, who came to Columbia School of Journalism three years ago for a Masters degree. "I was the only Pakistani in the class and was elected class president two weeks after 9/11." Also, he stood first and bagged the Pulitzer Travelling Fellowship. Thereafter, he was snapped up by CBS as an Associate Producer.

At age 35, Fahd appears to have climbed the slippery totem pole, but is homeward bound.

"Never for a second have I been tempted to make America my home. While it's been a great learning experience for me, I am very excited to go back - a whole new world of television is waiting out there with so much potential, so much volume of stuff that needs to be done and I can make a difference."

With this as his raison d'etre to return, "running a newsroom back home," thrills him. His cool demeanour changes and his eyes blaze as he repeats again and again that TV in Pakistan is the "real engine for change" and has the "sheer power" to make a difference in the lives of people. "TV is like a wedge which rips open the story...every street corner in Pakistan is crawling with stories that must need be told."

But are the TV guys in Pakistan exactly ripping open stories? "No, there's this incestuous trend between print and electronic media - where you have, for example, newspaper reporters working for private TV channels! Holding a microphone does not make you a professional TV journalist."The 'tyranny of the small picture' demands ardour. "In Pakistan, we merely cover the news, not tell the story. Over there it's 'he said, she said' but over here it's synthesizing the facts. In America, a TV reporter makes a strong pitch to the editor why his story should be aired, he fights over space."

With a decade of journalism behind him, Fahd says what he learnt in one year at Columbia has made all the difference, "I had forgotten what hard work really is. Here I've been eating, sleeping and drinking journalism 24/7. It's in my pores. Shaken out of sahibdom that surrounded me in Pakistan, it's good to come down to earth and then start all over again."

"And I'm going back. I never burnt my bridges."

For those staying back, life in the US is another story. Many feel let down by Musharraf and his policies. "Pakistani professionals here have no input, no clout, no rapport with mainstream America. We have no strategy, no influence in the media to counter Indian propaganda. India is defining Pakistan. Our successive ambassadors have damaged Pakistan's image and they are not being held accountable...one has been made the foreign secretary and the other our ambassador to UK!" The grievance list is long on how Pakistan has lost the race inside the beltway in Washington. "Anyone who tells you that our image on the Hill is hunky-dory is lying!"

At a schoomzefest by a Pakistani activist, Rashid Chaudhry, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz was heard claiming that Pakistan got burnt by 9/11, but his mojo managed to pull it out of the fire. "He should not be taking credit for something he did not do. It's common knowledge that Pakistan gained more than it lost on balance after September 11 by supporting the US against terror."

Asif Alam has a whole new take: He hates Pakistanis who "bleat and whine" (as the above) without really "delivering for their country." Believing in thinking big, but starting small, the systems architect founded the AOPP (Association of Pakistani Professionals) and soon attracted volunteers as passionate about Pakistan as himself to go that extra yard and find a niche to "proactively engage the American media" in defusing the "dangerously false impression that Pakistan begins and ends with gun-toting extremists."

An unenviable task, indeed. Imagine writing scores of letters to major news outlets impugning Pakistan each day? Not surprisingly then, AOPP's voice of reason often gets drowned in the cacophony of Pakistan-bashing; typical American arrogance; and corporate media's indifference, but the charge of the light brigade with 200-strong march on and recently pushed a resolution passed by New Hampshire Legislature demanding a just solution for Kashmir.

AOPP is now preparing a Journalist Review Database that will carry all the articles and editorials published in the media here on Pakistan, along with names and contact information of writers and publishers. Similarly, a congressional database archiving all the statements made by congressmen in reference to Pakistan is in the works.

Asif says there are many doubting Thomases for whom the AOPP is a road to nowhere. "But move on we will with our mission to promote the right image of Pakistan."

Born in Karachi and raised in Paris, Abu Dhabi and New York, Mahnaz Fancy who lives in New York City likes being called a South Asian: "I have enormous pride in my Pakistani heritage, but I choose to identify myself as a "South Asian", placing greater emphasis on the cultural heritage that we share rather than the religious and political differences that divide us."

With a background in arts and currently pursuing her doctoral studies in comparative literature, Mahnaz says children of immigrants - educated, raised or born in the US - prefer to be called South Asians. "Another factor in choosing this term is that the breadth of the South Asian Diaspora has rendered the national categories limiting when talking about our culture in today's world. In a personal sense, living away from our homelands while trying to maintain a cultural identity has forced us to re-examine the limitations of carrying historical enmity into our lives and bridging the prejudices."

"I am founding the South Asian Arts Forum with another Pakistani-born woman, Laleh Ispahani, whose education in law and social justice provides the ideal complement for my experience."

Mahnaz gets "enormous comfort and pleasure" in meeting other South Asians sharing the same "language, cuisine, music, literature and film." This diversity forges "new bonds across the political, national and religious divisions."

"It's not so much a question of assimilation or attachment to one's country," she says of Pakistani professionals here, "but rather finding a comfortable point somewhere in between the two. As immigrants, we move here for educational and professional opportunities but maintain strong ties to our homelands. As Muslims in post-9/11 America, this issue has become more complicated and we need to think about this more carefully."

Admitting that Pakistani-Americans don't have much of a public image here, Mahnaz thinks the solution lies in educating the US population about "our history, religion and culture." This "responsibility falls on my generation of Pakistanis, who are equally conversant in both American and Pakistani culture."

You can't quibble with her there!