Why does celebrating Halloween in Pakistan scare the wits out of Islamists?

(Published in The Nation Pakistan) Please do not tell the rest of us how to live our lives based on your idea of religion. Because that is not religious freedom, that is religious privilege and we are not going to soothe your fears by holding ourselves back.  Or to paraphrase Jon Stewart, “We are not going to censor ourselves to comfort your ignorance”.

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If there is no compulsion in religion then why can’t I eat in public during Ramazan?

(Published in The Nation Pakistan) Enforcing “respect” for religions cannot and must not come at the cost of not respecting human rights. This isn’t about respect.  It is about forcing people to follow one ideology and it is time that we left such ideas behind.

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If praying means others do not matter, then you are doing it wrong

(Published in The Nation Pakistan) I fail to understand why it is necessary to make things difficult for others so one can perform one’s religious obligations. Aren’t Muslims taught that “Huqooqul Ibad” are very important? So when did we get to the point where consideration for your fellow human is something alien to us?

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Blasphemy and blood money

(Published in The Nation Pakistan) This and many other Shariah laws have no place in the world today. And any demand to impose them over society, instead of secular laws, is not an idea that we should accept. And therefore, we must step up and be vocal about their abrogation. This is because most of these laws exponentially favour some people and are not very considerate to women, minorities and the poor.

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Groundhog Day

(Published in The Nation Pakistan)

Whatever the state is doing to eliminate terrorism is not going to work because it is concentrating on only one end of the pipeline. The need to is to also concentrate on the other end by regulating foreign funding for madrassas; by regulating what is being taught in these schools; by ensuring that banned religious organizations are actually banned and not allowed to roam our streets with impunity.

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