Category Archives: Pakistan

Why hedonistic polygyny is against Islam

Gender and Sexuality, Pakistan, Qur'an


Mukhtaran Mai

Why hedonistic polygyny is against Islam

by A. Faizur Rahman

The marriage, under pressure, of Mukhtaran Mai, the courageous woman who stood up to the atavistic tribal laws of Pakistan after being honour-raped by a gang of human beasts, has brought into focus the enormity of the gender bias prevailing in Muslim societies, particularly through the misuse of the law of polygyny. Without doubt, Ms. Mai is a victim of both emotional and physical blackmail. That she is also a victim of medieval indoctrination can be deduced from her unqualified statement (“A controversial marriage in Pakistan,” The  Hindu, March 30, 2009) that taking a second wife is permitted in Islam. Therefore, it could be said with some conviction that it was the belief that her marriage was not un-Islamic (rather than the fear of jeopardising the marriages of three other women) that prompted her into marrying an already married man. For it is unbelievable that a woman of the mental strength of Ms. Mai could have succumbed to the threats of a cowardly blackmailer. Continue reading Why hedonistic polygyny is against Islam →

Sufi Soul

Film and Video, Islam: Introduction, Morocco, Music and Dance, Pakistan, Sufism, Syria, Teaching Resources, Turkey, YouTube Watch

Cyberspace is increasingly crowded with videos, the virtual youtubization of the internet. This is especially the case for documentaries. Youtube has a wide range of videos on Islam, from professional films to homemade khutbas and television reruns. The diversity of Muslim practice is available, as is the worse Islamophobia, with just a click of the mouse and a wifi point. This ease of access is also convenient for professors, who can often find relevant video excerpts to power point into their lectures. Of the numerous videos out there, here is one well worth watching: Sufi Soul – The Mystic Music of Islam, a 50-minute film directed by Simon Broughton for Channel 4 in the U.K. To watch it, click here.

Here is a brief description of the film: Continue reading Sufi Soul →

New Age Islam in the Digital Age

CyberOrient, Islam in Europe, Journalism and Media, Pakistan

A LONG STRUGGLE AHEAD: Sultan Shahin set up a website that has taken on the religious right head-on.

Praveen Swami, The Hindu, March 24, 2009

Back in the summer of 1999, Sultan Shahin found himself being hectored by an earnest young man outside London’s Finsbury Park mosque.

“You Indian Muslims are cowards,” Shahin was told “but soon you will have just two choices: either to become a true Muslim like us, or to perish.”

For Shahin, the experience was transformative. “It became clear to me that the Islam that I believe in was under serious threat,” he says, “and that I would have to do something if the religion I loved was not to be demeaned by the evil that was being spoken in its name.”

Last year, Shahin set up a website that has taken on the religious right head-on. Though run on a shoestring budget and without the help of full-time staff, New Age Islam (http://www.newageislam.com/) is visited by hundreds of readers every day. Its electronic newsletter has over 29,000 subscribers.

New Age Islam provides its audience to a wide range of original theological and political writing that does not figure in the mainstream media. In recent weeks, New Age Islam has seen debates on Niyaz Fatehpuri, a twentieth-century literary figure with unconventional ideas on the concept of divine revelation, as well as the neo-conservative televangelist Zakir Naik. Continue reading New Age Islam in the Digital Age →

Towards Theocracy?

Development, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Pakistan


Women in burqas and children from the Bajaur and Mohmand agency areas wait to be registered at a refugee camp near Peshawar in January. Today a full-scale war is being fought in FATA, Swat and other “wild” areas of Pakistan, with thousands dying and hundreds of thousands of displaced people streaming into cities and towns. Photo by Emilio Morenatti/AP.


Towards Theocracy? State and society in Pakistan today.

by PERVEZ AMIRALI HOODBHOY, Frontline, March 14-27, 2009

FOR 20 years or more, a few of us in Pakistan have been desperately sending out SOS messages, warning of terrible times to come. Nevertheless, none anticipated how quickly and accurately our dire predictions would come true. It is a small matter that the flames of terrorism set Mumbai on fire and, more recently, destroyed Pakistan’s cricketing future. A much more important and brutal fight lies ahead as Pakistan, a nation of 175 million, struggles for its very survival. The implications for the future of South Asia are enormous. Continue reading Towards Theocracy? →

Excommunicating Dead Terrorists

India, Islamic Rituals, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue


A lithographic painting depicting a Muslim funeral procession in India, circa 1888.

Excommunicating Dead Terrorists
by Leor Halevi, On Faith, Washington Post, December 29, 2008

Recently the Muslim Council of India sent an important message to the world’s Muslims. It asked one of the country’s largest Muslim graveyards, Marine Lines Bada Qabrastan, where unclaimed bodies are often interred, to deny burial rites to the nine men who died after terrorizing Mumbai. Refusal to bury the terrorists in a Muslim cemetery signifies not just that terrorist attacks are un-Islamic, a contention often heard, but that their perpetrators become, by carrying these acts, non-Muslim. “They cannot be Muslims or followers of Islam,” declared Muslim Council president Ibrahim Tai, “so they cannot have a final resting place anywhere
on sacred Mother India.”

The question then arises, what should India do with the dead bodies? Continue reading Excommunicating Dead Terrorists →

The Mothers Of The Lashkar

Gender and Sexuality, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue

The Mothers Of The Lashkar

by C.M. Naim, Outlook India, Dec 15, 2008

The book is titled Ham Ma’en Lashkar-e-Taiba Ki (‘We, the Mothers of Lashkar-e-Taiba’); its compiler styles herself Umm-e-Hammad; and it is published by Dar-al-Andulus, Lahore. Its three volumes have the same garish cover, showing a large pink rose, blood dripping from it, superimposed on a landscape of mountains and pine trees The first volume, running to 381 pages, originally came out in November 1998, and was reprinted in April 2001. The second and third volumes, with 377 and 262 pages, respectively, came out in October 2003. Each printing consisted of 1100 copies. Portions of the book—perhaps much of it—also appeared in the Lashkar’s journal, Mujalla Al-Da’wa.

Here is how the publisher, Muhammad Ramzan Asari, describes the book’s contents and purpose. Continue reading The Mothers Of The Lashkar →

Tariq Ali, Pashtun Nationalism, and Taliban

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


By Naeem Wardag, Indus Asia Online Journal, December 3, 2008

Since the Afghan War, important power quarters in Pakistan have been propagating a particular interpretation of the security situation in Afghanistan through a variety of means ranging from the vociferous propaganda of the religious right to the more subtle works and ways of the allied experts strategically deployed here and there. Joined the campaign lately have also some ideologues of the liberal left-in particular from Punjab – whose paradigm of the class-struggle fully converge with the “cosmic struggle metaphysics” of the extreme religious right at this point of time as far as their analysis of the problem is concerned. Continue reading Tariq Ali, Pashtun Nationalism, and Taliban →

Terrorism That’s Personal

Gender and Sexuality, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue


Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies. Naeema Azar, above, was attacked by her husband after they divorced. Her 12-year-old son, Ahmed Shah, looks after her.

Terrorism That’s Personal

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, November 30, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Terrorism in this part of the world usually means bombs exploding or hotels burning, as the latest horrific scenes from Mumbai attest. Yet alongside the brutal public terrorism that fills the television screens, there is an equally cruel form of terrorism that gets almost no attention and thrives as a result: flinging acid on a woman’s face to leave her hideously deformed.

Here in Pakistan, I’ve been investigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize and subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan through Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Because women usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackers are rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a kind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noise in the region. Continue reading Terrorism That’s Personal →