(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Muslims have this tendency of explaining to others that Islam provided rights to women in an era where they did not have those rights. I tend to disagree with that but that is a whole other debate. Let’s assume that they were provided with these rights. And these rights were perfect. The thing to understand is that they were perfect for 7th century Arabia. They are not perfect today. In fact, they are not even rights but just methods to subjugate women.
(Published in The Huffington Post)
Blasphemy is a crime in Pakistan, the punishment for which can be death. The law is a left over of the Indian Penal Code that the British had introduced, and which was later expanded upon by the military dictator Zia ul Haq. More often than not, it is used to target minority communities, especially the Ahmadiyya, who were declared non-Muslims in 1974, through a constitutional amendment. Under this amendment, the community is banned from using Islamic terms, using Islamic texts to pray or even calling their places of worship ‘masjid’.
