Aisha Fayyazi Sarwari

Fayyazul Hassan Chohan from the party of our hopes, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), went on television on March 13, 2014 and when asked to comment on polygamy, answered by telling a ludicrous joke about a man and his two wives. In the story, these women bickered and fought, but they were first threatened and eventually controlled […]

When 2013 was ending, Obama effigies were burned in India, there were demonstrations by Indian Americans outside the New York consulate where Devyani Khobragade was deputy consul general for India and the Indian press went wild with accusations of racism against the US. Devyani Khobragade was strip-searched and said to be treated like a common […]

Jamshed Dasti, it seems, does not have a degree but that is not the only education he lacks. The ilm (knowledge) of Bulley Shah, the one where you quit fighting with the devil and fight your nafs (self) first, is also absent. You would think that, as a son of Punjab, a grassroots politician who […]

This war could be lost, not because territory was ceded, but because the Taliban would have taken over Pakistan’s airwaves. A country of 180 million, many of whom are in the rural and under-served areas, are accessing unregulated, illegal radio stations run by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which broadcast routinely the ‘sharia or else’ narrative. […]

The cure to the exploitation and oppression of women is more freedom for them, not less. The Taliban do not agree. In fact, women factor in the equation as the ones to be eliminated, purged, removed from sight and safely under the claws of men who are mostly misogynists. All this killing and bloodshed is […]

Any exposition on the murder of Salmaan Taseer points to the fact that the Pakistani media was squarely responsible. Not just that, the pundits made a hero out of the killer. It’s déjà vu. In a ratings rave, both print and electronic media have picked on the pet peeve: Islam in danger, and now marked […]

Our message to young girls reads as: you can be shot in the head for fighting for your right to an education; you could be imprisoned if you are framed for blasphemy, and you could be gang-raped for being what 5-year-olds are: vulnerable. The stories of Malala Yousufzai, Rimsha Masih and the 5-year-old left at […]

Article 19 of the Constitution of Pakistan guarantees every citizen of Pakistan the right to freedom of speech and expression subject to reasonable restrictions imposed amongst others in relation to ‘contempt of court’. The question is then what is a reasonable restriction on freedom of speech. Only the Supreme Court of Pakistan is sufficiently empowered […]

“Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won” — Walt Whitman. When it came to movies, I never thought geopolitics and nuanced ideologies could be executed in such a flow. Mira Nair, in scene one to the last, got The Reluctant Fundamentalist the movie singing to the orchestrated beats of Mohsin’s […]

Civilisation has credited both destruction and mystery of creation to God. Let’s face it: the divine cannot be brought to any court of law for the destructive forces — violence, war, famine and the rest. Instead, there must be acceptance and a submission to the order. The destruction, however, resulting from the direct consequences of […]