The blasphemy laws
Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani, the chairperson of the Council of Islamic Ideology, has offered to look into the possible doctrinal inconsistencies in the blasphemy laws, “should the government refer” this…
Supreme Court on blasphemy
The killing of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his security guard Mumtaz Qadri, on the allegation of blasphemy and in the name of Islam, was never merely a murder case.…
Non-violent ways to combat blasphemy
Since religious, racial and ethnic identities are central to human conceptions of self-worth, non-constructive speech whose sole purpose is to deliberately insult such identities should certainly be discouraged. Pakistanis burnt…
Blasphemy law revisited
The recent killing of two blasphemy accused in police custody and the case of a mentally unstable woman who spent 14 years in confinement on a charge she could not…
Something wicked this way comes
We live in a world where we are increasingly depending on artificial intelligence (AI) to generate answers to our multiple questions and in some cases to write text for voice…
A kind of insanity
The US has consistently followed a line which either veers to the right or in a few cases has deviated slightly to the centre. It has not really moved from…
Patriarchal anxiety and Aurat March
International Women’s Day, observed annually on March 8, serves as a global reminder of the historic and ongoing struggle for gender equality. Its roots trace back to the early 20th…
Exit democracy
WHILE Pakistan clings to fantasies of hybridity regarding its political framework, the Economist Intelligence Unit has categorised it as an authoritarian regime. The EIU’s latest Democracy Index ranks Pakistan 124…
Indonesia’s ‘smooth’ polls a beacon in sea of strongmen
Indonesia pulled off a complex yet peaceful election across its vast - and ethnically diverse - island territory this week, cementing its place as a democratic beacon in a sea…
Gloomy prognosis
WHEN I first started working as a journalist, my senior colleagues and field-hardened editors introduced me to the concept of the release valve. I was often surprised that we were…
