Ziad Zafar

What do you call it when you don’t know what it is but you’re not allowed to ask because it’s not up for debate? It’s ‘The National Interest’. Sounds pretty good on the tin but nobody knows what’s in it except a few powerful people with guns. They say they have worked it out, presumably […]

Last week millions of Pakistanis received a text message from their country’s telecom regulator asking them to report incidents of blasphemy. This was less than a month after we witnessed a public lynching and the spectacle of several crazed mobs around the country baying for human blood. It has gotten off to a good start. […]

Ab roshni hoti hai ke ghar jalta hai dekhain Shola satawaaf-e-dar-o-deewaar karay hai – Mir Taqi Mir [Will it lead to light or the house burning down, we’ll have to see A spark of sorts is circling the walls of our home] In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold, an anonymous narrator […]

They say they have caught someone and he has confessed. That he killed her for this or that they still cannot decide. Those who were keen to see the narrative of her murder discussed in terms of ‘foreign hands’ and ‘sabotage’ are now more than happy to embrace this explanation. The lone gunman, a crazed […]