Photograph in a brothel in Pakistan by Kate Orne
Prostitution in Pakistan? Yes it exists, despite the most dire consequences if discovered. Photographer Kate Orne has been documenting the underworld of Pakistani prostitution since 2005 and has formed a website to bring attention to the plight of these women. Prints can be purchased at the website with benefits going to two schools for children and a clinic. Check out the presentation and gallery at http://www.mayyouneverbeuncovered.org/
Taliban Increasingly Unpopular in Pakistan
Four percent say Taliban’s presence is positive influence
by Julie Ray and Rajesh Srinivasan, gallup.com, March 12, 2010
This article is the first of a two-part series that looks at Pakistanis’ and Afghans’ views of the Taliban’s influence and their respective countries’ efforts to combat terrorism.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Taliban’s presence on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is largely unwelcome, but increasingly so in Pakistan, where Gallup surveys show they have lost much of the little appeal they had. Four percent of Pakistanis in a November-December 2009 poll, conducted prior to Pakistan’s current push to rout the Taliban within its borders, said the Taliban’s presence in some areas of the country has a positive influence, down from 15% in June. Continue reading Gallup on Taliban Popularity
Current cover illustration by Amar Raza, “A Prayer for Protection”
There is a new online journal for anyone interested in Pakistan studies. The first issue of the second volume is now available. Here is the journal description of focus:
Pakistaniaat is a refereed, multidisciplinary, open-access academic journal offering a forum for a serious scholarly and creative engagement with various aspects of Pakistani history, culture, literature, and politics.
Though several existing journals do pay a fair degree of attention to the issues of South Asia and Postcoloniality, we feel that under the current climate of high capital and war on terror, Pakistan, often subsumed under the larger registers of South Asia or Postcolonial Studies, needs a particular space of its own in our academic and creative undertakings. Thus, Pakistaniaat aims to provide a public space on the Internet to introduce and discuss hitherto neglected aspects of Pakistani cultural and literary production and to make this knowledge available to a worldwide audience. Continue reading Pakistaniaat: New Journal
Secularism vs Islamism
By Iqbal Akhund, Dawn.com, 22 Feb, 2010
In a recent TV debate on this subject, the applause meter would have given the win to Islamism. The debaters, three on each side, faced a small mixed audience — quite a few girls, many wearing hijabs, also young men in jeans and a handful of beards.
The ‘secularists’ appealed, in measured tones, to the intellect, made references to European history, called for tolerance, pluralism and progress. The ‘Islamists’ were assertive, emotional and received applause when they spoke of the ‘moral decadence’ of the West and condemned, to louder applause, the West’s aggression against Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq.
So do the people of Pakistan want an Islamist state? Well, yes and no. Continue reading What do Pakistanis want?
Hussain’s painting courtesy of Dr. Bruce Lawrence
One of the most famous, and at times infamous, painters in modern India is M.F. Hussain, who was born in 1915 and currently resides in London. He is perhaps best known for the controversy over his nude paintings, especially one that depicted “Mother India” and caused such a major backlash that he removed it from view. Less known, perhaps, are his paintings about Islam. Bruce Lawrence recently sent me several illustrations of paintings by Hussain on Islamic themes. Several of these were commissioned by Sheikha Mouza of Qatar for the Islamic museum in Doha. The picture above portrays the three monotheisms as “People of the Book.” As a painter it is clear that Mr. Hussain is less interested in promoting a particular religion than in celebrating the human spirit through his art.
Here is Bruce’s description of the painting above (this is an excerpt from a volume on Hussain, edited by Sumathi Ramaswamy and to be published by Routledge in October 2010): Continue reading M F Hussain’s Aesthetic View on Islam
HOW SHARIA LAW PUNISHES RAPED WOMEN
by Hasan Mahmud, Mudugnet.com, November 20, 2008.
On October 30, 2008, the United Nations condemned the stoning to death of Aisha Duhulow, a 13-year-old girl who had been gang-raped and then sentenced to death by a Sharia court for fornication (Zina). She was screaming and begging for mercy, but when some family members attempted to intervene, shots were fired by the Islamic militia and a baby was killed.
Local Sharia courts in Bangladesh regularly punish raped minor girls and women by flogging and beating them with shoes.[1] Similar cases of punishing raped women are Mina v. the State, Bibi v. the State and Bahadur v. the State.[2] Sharia courts in Pakistan have punished thousands of raped women by long term imprisonment.[3]
You might think that such horrific barbarity cannot be the real Sharia law; that it is a misapplication of the law by ignorant clergy. Sadly, neither is true. Continue reading Rape and Shariah Law
Is there a ‘Final Solution’ to the Muslim Question?
by Tareq Fatah, The Muslim Question, Wednesday, May 20, 2009
On the weekend I came across an article by Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch in which he mocked Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar for daring to suggest that Pakistanis “are like us.”
This mild exhibition of empathy towards Pakistanis so riled up the good Mr. Fitzgerald that he blasted not just the two senators for having the the temerity to equate Americans and Pakistanis, he suggested we not trust any Muslim until he or she renounces Islam.
The fact that Americans and Pakistanis are both human beings governed by democratically elected governments who seek to wipe out the scourge of Jihadi terrorism, and that both admit to having played a role in creating these monsters, was lost on Fitzgerald. The fact that two countries have been allies–militarily and politically–for two generations, mattered little to the writer. The fact that nearly a million Americans have Pakistani ancestry did not matter either. For him, since Pakistanis are Muslim therefore they cannot be “like us”. Continue reading Final Solution
Iblis (the Devil) from The Book of Nativities (Kitâb al-Mawalid) by Abû Ma’shar, 15th Century.
by Suroosh Irfani, Daily Times (Pakistan), May 7, 2009
Jewish denial during the war is perilously instructive for Pakistan today: a country where the founding spirit of justice and democracy is blighted by falsehood and fear. Small wonder that last month, Prime Minister Gilani virtually ignored the seditious speech of Sufi Muhammad.
Noted Saudi novelist Turki al Hamad’s novel, Kharadib, has sold over 20,000 copies in the Arab world since publication in 1999. Al Hamad continues to live in the Saudi capital Riyadh, despite fatwas of Saudi clerics against him, and Al Qaeda branding him an apostate.
The reason? Hamad’s teenaged protagonist in the controversial novel dares to ponder the question of God and the devil.
King Abdullah, then the Crown Prince, reportedly offered Hamad bodyguards for his protection, while reputed Saudi scholar Sheikh Ali al Khudair, who initially censured Hamad, withdrew his fatwa in 2003.
The retraction suggests that the musings of Hamad’s protagonist on “religion, sex and politics, the three taboos in Saudi society†had triggered a rethink on an issue that Muslim luminaries like Jalaluddin Rumi (d.1273) had addressed, long before German writer Goethe cast the devil in new light in his epic poem Faust in the 19th century.
However, it remained for Allama Iqbal’s genius to bring together Goethe and Rumi in a discourse on the devil, burnishing wisdom of the past with his own insights on evil. The upshot of it all is a realisation that “evil is not mere darkness that vanishes when light arrives. This darkness has as positive an existence as light,†as Javed Iqbal, former Chief Justice of Lahore High Court, notes in “Devil in the triangle of Rumi, Iqbal and Goethe†in Iqbal Review. Continue reading God, the Devil and Pakistan