Do you kill your own goat?
Do you kill your own goat? No Why? It’s gross Hmm… so where do you think your masala ribs come from? An organ donor? How many people do you know that jump on the “qurbani is against animal rights” bandwagon every year around Bakra Eid? How many do you know who blindly accept that children being exposed to acts of slaughter has no deterimental effect on them? Reading the heated debate going on underneath the post “10 things I hate about bakra Eid” inspired me to go out there and shoot some reactions myself. While those against the practice of animal sacrifice presented “gross” and “cruel” as ...
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Pakistan, a place where non-Muslims also live
A lot has been written about the plight of minorities in Pakistan – some by minorities themselves but mostly by the majority. In most such reports, analyses and blogs, the focus has been on the aggressive tactics used by a violent and regressive few to intimidate and persecute the middle to lower-middle class of Christians and Hindus. I speak not of Ahmadis, as the persecution they face is a more severe one resulting in death and legislation-led despair. Theirs is a plight I pray for daily. In this piece, however, I want to focus on another aspect of the issue that ...
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Edhi, we expected better from you
We all suffer from occasional bouts of madness. It is a hazard of being a human, a side effect of possessing a mind. We all have thoughts, wishes that cannot and should not be taken seriously. Mostly, we keep these thoughts to ourselves but sometimes, we blurt them out. If we are lucky, not many witness our moment of insanity. However, if you are someone with a fan following, if you are someone who motivates and inspires, someone who has a standing in society, you are expected to refrain from having public bouts of mental diarrhea. What to say then of Abdul Sattar ...
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Rangers shooting: Lust for blood
The video of Sarfaraz Shah’s last traumatic moments imploded on to cyber space with some enthusiasm and a profusion of expletives. Messages like “check kar yeh video” (check out this video), “here’s the full video, yaar,” “sharing the HD version,” “uncut footage” and “exclusive video” pepper the Facebook newsfeed. Bloodied and battered thumbnails accompany the excited posts. Lust for blood, it seems, is not exclusive to criminals. Slowly, steadily and grimly, Sarfaraz Shah’s life was extinguished on tape. His blood was squeezed out drop by drop, fanning out in a wider and wider crimson circle around his wiry frame, as ...
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Confessions of a ‘heretic’
It was like a nightmare. Dark shadows, mysterious phone calls, dreaming of death -there should have been a reason for all of this, but there was none. I had been declared an accursed heretic. I could feel them chasing me down, chopping me into pieces and celebrating wildly afterwards. I could sense the happiness they would gain from spilling my blood. The days were getting darker. I was alive but there was a deadly silence around me. Suddenly, my friends had stopped talking to me and so called ‘moderate’ art teachers started discriminating against me. My once ‘liberal’ social ...
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Pakistan needs to celebrate Mothers Day
Today is Mothers Day – a day specifically marked in the calendar around the globe to honour the women of our society who throughout their lives labour so that their children may have better lives. At first, I didn’t believe in celebrating a day created by the Hallmark Card Company to make profits off emotionally charged children. But, after reading some of the most shocking stories related to mothers in this very newspaper, I have been forced to change my thought process. Mothers Day is important for the entire world – but more so for Pakistan. While we are going through, what can ...
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I will not dance on Osama bin Laden’s grave
I have been in the US for the past two years and in this time I have felt culture shock twice – the first, when I first arrived, and then again on the night of May 2, 2011. Any supporter of peace would feel nothing but hatred for Bin Laden and his organisation, and I do hate him or I thought I did. But, Sunday night when everyone was out on the streets celebrating, chanting “USA” and firing fireworks, I felt like an outsider. I couldn’t join in – partly because it still felt wrong and partly because I realised instantly that ...
Read Full PostAll hope died with Shahbaz Bhatti
As I write this, the body of Shahbaz Bhatti is being flown to Faisalabad for burial. He has been dead for three days. As expected, Rehman Malik has claimed that the assassination was Bhatti’s own fault and not the interior ministry’s. The government has called it an act of terrorism, condemned it and is observing three days of mourning. The maulanas of two mainstream religious parties have issued lukewarm condemnations on TV but have refrained from actually meeting the minister’s family. But none of the leaders have so far said a word about the blasphemy law that has been used as an excuse ...
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