A disappointed Pakistani Christian
Dear Pakistani Muslims, Pakistan has been hell for my family and I. Yes, we get Christmas and have a few churches here and there and attend the same schools as the rest of you, but life as Christian minorities has been torture for us. I had to carpool in a public van to a convent school that had the richest and most influential of Pakistani Muslims in attendance. I shared class rooms with the most spoilt and unforgiving spawn of business tycoons, politicians, smugglers and architects who called me a “karanti”. A karanti is a derogatory, slang term for dark Christians, because of course ...
Read Full Post
Who is watching the social media wardens?
The recent issue of Maya Khan vigilantism and the subsequent uproar that ensued in the social media, resulting in the termination of the said anchor and her team, has brought to fore a number of questions. Whereas I wholeheartedly ascribe to the widely held opinion that this is a major victory for the liberal coterie which is otherwise known for keyboard ‘jihad’ alone, I have my contentions. Let’s not put down the entire thing to a liberal win. The impact of the social media’s protest over this issue, in particular, was hugely galvanised because it struck a chord with a vast ...
Read Full Post
Explaining the garlands for Qadri
You may argue that a large number of people in Pakistan condemn the assassination of Salmaan Taseer. But the truth, though bitter, is that many instead of condemning the heinous act of a murderer, condemn the verdict of the court which proclaims capital punishment for Mumtaz Qadri. There are campaigns running throughout the country that pay tribute to a murderer. Huge posters of Qadri, decked with Quranic verses and beautiful roses, are plastered all over and yet there is no one to remove such aberrations. Some believe that the reason for this queer phenomenon is illiteracy, and talk about it in a ...
Read Full Post
Following Bhutto’s way: Religion above rights
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister and president of Pakistan and the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), still remains one of the most popular and most controversial figures in Pakistan. With the title Quaid-e-Awam (leader of the people), he is undoubtedly the most charismatic political leader Pakistan has ever seen. Bhutto was also the first democratically elected leader to introduce the culture of using religion for political gain in Pakistan. In 1974, Pakistan’s parliament, under his premiership, adopted a law declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. For Bhutto, the move was purely political as he sought to appease religious conservatives. If this move was ...
Read Full Post
Salmaan Taseer in Kafka’s Pakistan
“One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.” Thus begins Franz Kafka’s novella masterpiece Metamorphosis. The novel inhabits the familiar bizarre frame of Kafka’s work, of a world where the transformation of Gregor Samsa into a giant insect-like creature elicits hardly any surprise from Samsa’s family and associates, or indeed from Samsa himself. Samsa spends no time pondering his metamorphosis, why it may have occurred or how the process may be reversed. He busies himself instead with mundane concerns, and immediately upon his transformation spends an inordinate amount of ...
Read Full Post
Christmas in Maryland
Ijazz Yousaf was born in a church in Anarkali, Lahore, the year of Pakistan’s birth. A resident of Maryland since the mid-80s, he has worked in a government job with mentally challenged citizens. Living in a suburb in Maryland with his wife and children, Yousaf invited me to interview him and his family about their life in Pakistan and Christmas preparations. As we stand in his front yard, surveying the twinkling lights of the Christmas decorations in the garden, he says: “ It was a different time, no one cared what your religion was.” In a year when the blasphemy law has ...
Read Full Post
Does Mumtaz Qadri deserve to die?
“Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the self-confessed murderer of former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, has been sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court today”reads the latest breaking news. Ten months after he drilled Salmaan Taseer’s body with 25 bullets for the ‘crime’ of supporting Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman accused of blasphemy Qadri has been sentenced. The former governor’s killer had been regaled as a hero and showered with rose petals. YouTube videos of him defending his actions turned the stomach. What kind of man would do this I wondered? Kill an innocent man and then proudly recite naats as if he was one of God’s chosen ...
Read Full Post
Rehmat cries for Salmaan Taseer
Today, when the MQM-Mirza conflicts have shifted most people’s interest from Indian soaps to Pakistani news channels and local conspiracy theorists declare dengue fever an American agenda; when Shahbaz Taseer has still not returned home and most people prefer Aafia Siddiqi over Taseer, I want to share something with you – something that you may not find as interesting at all, but still… This real account includes incidents that take this story beyond me or the people related to it – it is a story relatable to every citizen of our decaying country. It all begain in March on Faiz’s centennial when ...
Read Full Post
A long wait for Aasia Bibi
She has already suffered a lot but it looks like a longer, more painful and tiresome journey lies ahead for her. Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sent to the gallows by a district court in central Punjab last year for committing blasphemy, will have to wait for several years before the Lahore High Court (LHC) takes up her application, seeking review of the lower judiciary’s verdict. Lawyers associated with the case have indicated that it is unlikely that the LHC would take up any time soon the review petition in arguably the most ‘controversial’ case in the country’s recent legal ...
Read Full Post
Karachi violence: Murder on their mind
Several decades ago I read in an issue of the Time magazine about a murder in the woods somewhere probably in Ireland that frightened the song birds into silence. For nearly ten years no bird was heard chirping in the forest. For some days now I have been haunted by the report which I mentioned in a column in the good old days. When I visit Lawrence Gardens, the city’s central park, in the morning the thought that the birds continue to sing despite the many murders all around us is disturbing. Could it be that the birds here have grown ...
Read Full Post
