I agree with HN on all things except two:
1. Don't be such a thaka hara hua insaan, if you don't have the belief that we can improve - you won't improve. It's correct we need to fix our mentality before we worry about our intentions (which aren't that clean either). But its doable, you have to believe that otherwise why are we alive? Let's all jump off a cliff. However bad things get, there is always the next day which might be better once you do things better.
2. I agree glory of the past, whether ours or Arabian is nothing to hang on to the way we do or even that if we think Islam will bring that glory to us magically, thats wrong too. But there are merits in the type of people we as Muslims must try to be. Good upstanding moral, hardworking people - all values that Islam imparts in one way or the other. Islam can't be a definition of who we are, but it can be one of the many by products that our lives may produce. By showing such an anti-Islamic point of view you are not portraying what Liberalism or secularism truly is. It has nothing to do with being anti-Islamic. It's just freedom.
Rest of course I agree with him belittling Allama Iqbal, I think he got carried away in opposing Zaid Hamid. The shair he stated "Lara de Mamoolay ko shahbaz se" (Let the ordinary challenge the greats) and he stated that ordinaries are made ordinary by god and the greats as great for some reason.
Being secular lets discount God - then we're left with mostly inherited ordinaries and inherited greats meaning they are like this because someone much before this time did something great and were stuck doing something ordinary. But the weak - can rise too once they do something great and I come to point number one - you got to believe in that. From my experience, age makes you wise and also a little too ready to give up. Bringing change and transforming the world is a task of the young and that's why the Iqbal goes on to mention "Jawanon ko peeron ka ustaad kar" (Let the young guide the old).
Rest Zaid Hamid is a joker, a pathetic scourge on Pakistani youth who will lead all his followers to ruin and mental stagnation with the garbage he spews with each word uttered. His brand of enthusiasm is as undesirable as was Nisar's pesimism. He can be owned left right and center by most people on this forum and it was some very intelligent people against him in this debate. No biggie.