The following article is reproduced with permission of the Jinnah Institute. The original article can be read on the Jinnah Institute website by clicking here. This August has been cruel. Haunting images of Sindhi Hindus, essential to the cultural reality and demography of the province, leaving the country [i] shook those who believe that Pakistan belongs to [...]
In my last article I asked the readers if it is justified to have Anti-American sentiments after I had come across an article talking about Farah Ahmed, A Pakistani American woman standing for city council elections and how the US state of Texas had denounced all personal propaganda created against her for being of Pakistani [...]
Well, well, well…look who has turned an about face on the blasphemy law! It is none other than JUI chief Fazlur Rehman himself. This is the same man who termed requests to reconsider the blasphemy law “a favor to the US” last December and then after Salmaan Taseer Shaheed was murdered could not bring himself [...]
Yet another staggering loss for Pakistan, Minister Shahbaz Bhatti’s assassination is further proof of the brazen confidence with which extremists kill our leaders. The assassination of the Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, should have awakened us to the fact that we are now fighting for our country. The brutal killing of Minister Bhatti must remind [...]
Leftovers from yesterday’s establishment have us chasing shadows. An American with connections to the CIA shoots two armed men at Mozang Chowk and now we are regaled with stories of thousands of Raymond Davis’s acting as silent assassins stalking the streets. Jamaatis march in the streets demanding ‘blood for blood’ and making fiery speeches condemning [...]
Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari spoke in London taking a strong public stand on the assassination of Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer, the issue of religious freedom, and a promise to defend the minorities of Pakistan against threat from extremists. In doing so he has removed all ambiguity in PPP stance on blasphemy and obscurantism. A [...]
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Salmaan Taseer left the Governor House with both honour and dignity intact. In a country where the megalomaniac pull [...]
No nation, no matter how young, can excuse criminal violence. The measure of a successful democracy lies in the strength of its laws, and the debate amongst its elected leaders with the public to amend or repeal them. If the structure of society cannot be respected, and a nation enters lawlessness, the results will be [...]
The following documentary called ‘Blind Faith’ is about the blasphemy law created by the penal code of 1860 and carried in four sections related to offenses against religion. These were originally enacted under British rule to diffuse communal tension in the multi-religion society of the subcontinent. Anyone voluntarily disturbing religious ceremonies was punishable. In the [...]
There is no doubt Pakistan has experienced a tumultuous 2010. Heartbreaking reports of terrorism filled the headlines as floods submerged one-fifth of our nation. Our great country is working to better itself on multiple fronts – social, political, and economic – and our current place on the world stage allowed the entire world to bear [...]