Defenseless rights on May 7, 2017The Pakistani edition of the International New York Times has yet again censored an op-ed by a leading Pakistani writer about our recent embrace of militant commander Ehsanullah Ehsan. It is next to impossible to censor anything on the Internet and I am sure more people read it precisely because it was censored. There was […]
Parliament is the right forum for PM’s accountability on April 30, 2017A few readers have objected to my use of the term tamasha for the Panama papers hullaballoo. They felt that I was being too unfair to an issue of great public importance that involved abuse of power for personal gain. Be that as it may, and I certainly do not endorse any abuse of power […]
Silence or death: no third option on April 23, 2017 Lately, all one watches on TV, reads in print and on social media and hears in private gatherings is about Panama Papers. We love a good tamasha — a spectacle — and cannot live without one for long. Panama seems to be the new tamasha in town and with the formation of a Joint […]
Ours is a society that eats its own on April 16, 201716-years old Mahomedali Jinnahbhai, as he was known then, was sent to England by his father to learn the tricks of business at an established British firm. A curious and bright young man, never a conformist, he wanted more out of life than the drudgery of business ledgers. Soon after settling down in London, Jinnahbhai […]
Freely on April 9, 2017 The Objectives’ Resolution passed in 1949 by Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly was supposed to be a compromise document between the “secularists” and the “theocrats”. In hindsight we know how well that idea turned out. Nevertheless there were parts of the Objectives’ Resolution designed to safeguard minorities and their rights as citizens of Pakistan. In particular […]
Muslims need to challenge fundamentalists in their fold on April 2, 2017In a tweet a few years ago, the Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour complained that Saudi Arabia’s critics were just too obsessed with the ban on women driving in that country; after all the Kingdom gave women 10 weeks of paid maternity leave. This tweet was recently dug up, no doubt by her most vociferous […]
Banning the Internet? on March 19, 2017Disturbing news is coming out of the Islamabad High Court, where first a judge threatened to ban all of the social media and then the interior minister said that the government would consider banning social media if need be to eradicate blasphemous content. Will that be enough? As long as there remains the internet, blasphemous […]
Our soft power on March 5, 2017I was recently asked for my professional opinion in the case of a Pakistani Christian family-seeking asylum in a western country. Apparently, this family has been accusedof blasphemy by a local imam in their village in North Punjab. The questions I was asked were embarrassing to me as a Pakistani, not the least because professional […]
Indias fascination with Jinnah on February 26, 2017A few years ago, A G Noorani, the famous historian, journalist and lawyer from India, writing on Jinnah quoted the following Sahir Ludhianvi verse (translation): You are for me still the heaven of my dreams / On your grounds lie buried four years of my youth. But I have been very much brought up in […]
Butchery of our soul on February 19, 2017The attack on Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine at Sehwan as well as the attacks in Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar was nothing less than an attack on Pakistan’s soul. It shows that the terrorists, be they of Jamaatul Ahrar or Daesh, are acting in a coordinated way and are clear about their targets. It is a […]