(Published in The Nation) The days of women as chattel are over and it is time for everyone to understand that women are human beings with the same rights as men. Rape is about power and as long as the narrative remains what it is, this manifestation of power is going to exist.
Tag: Pakistan
Naming the culprit
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
The Taliban and their ilk want to impose one particular theocracy in the country. As such they are Islamist extremists. There is no point in saying that this has nothing to do with Islam, because it does.
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.
Kashmir is not Pakistan’s ‘jugular vein’
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Kashmir is not the jugular vein of Pakistan. And therefore, it would be much better for us to move on from Kashmir and concentrate on the issues that are bleeding the country to death, slowly but surely. Instead of dreaming about adding to our land mass, it is necessary to fix all the damaged veins within Pakistan. Let’s work on that first. We can worry about Kashmir later.
Whither education?
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Between Dr. Salam and Malala there were no other Nobel Laureates. In the meantime, we seem to consider our biggest scientific achievements to be the atomic bomb and the ‘water kit’ car. What is wrong with this picture? The fact that we collectively as a nation do not consider education to be the most important aspect of human life.
‘News’ is a four letter word
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
My favourite singer Jim Morrison once said, “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.” This is true anywhere in the world but the Pakistani media takes this particular cake. Let’s start with the news channels, which show inane programmes for women in the morning, replete with faux weddings, beauty tips and the like.
Adapting to climate change
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Over the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that climate is changing across the globe. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first assessment report in 1990, highlighting this aspect. Since then, its subsequent reports have continued to provide further and increasingly stronger evidence that human induced climate change has immense effects on societies and ecosystems, especially forests and coastal areas, both of which are crucial for human societies. Extreme events are also expected to increase in magnitude and frequency, putting human lives in danger.
The right to critique and the right to renounce
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
It is important for Muslims as well as the rest of the world to realize that if criticism of Islam is not allowed, we will continue to see such acts of terror. If people are forced to go through rituals they no longer believe in, Muslims will not become part of the modern world. And most importantly, the denial that this had nothing to do with Islam, and the tagline that the killers could never be Muslims, must be abandoned.
Blaming the ‘other’
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
It is all very well to say that anyone who spouts such hate speech should be stopped, but why not also say that such expressions should be eliminated from our national psyche? And to do that we must start at the source of the problem.