The decision to award Malala Yousafzai the Nobel Peace Prize last week was a good one. After all, the 17 year-old, who was named a joint winner with along with Kailash Satyarthi, personifies the struggle for modernity, women’s equality and individual rights to religious freedom against the threat of Islamic extremism. But while Malala’s award is a triumph for her …
Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which turns 30 this year, has become only more deadly with age. Since blasphemy was made a capital crime under the nation’s secular penal code, the effect has been to suppress moderate influences, pushing “Pakistani society further out on the slippery slope of extremism,” said Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, senior advocate at the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in Washington last …
Farahnaz Ispahani:– Many scholars and women’s rights activists and advocates in the West do not grasp the essential importance of quotas, or reserved seats, for women in parliament, especially in Muslim-majority countries. The presence of female bodies and voices in any parliament changes the dynamic of the body in essential ways. Critics often point to the fact that many upper …
MUMBAI, August 6, 2014 — Asia Society and Bloomberg hosted Farahnaz Ispahani, politician, writer, women and minority rights advocate and Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center as part of its Women of Asia series. In a private, off-the-record roundtable discussion, Ispahani opened the conversation with a brief about her new book, in which she spoke about the country’s …
The desire of Islamist extremists to ‘purify’ Pakistan has resulted in a major catastrophe for the minorities. The country cannot emerge as a modern pluralist state until the reversal of this culture of intolerance The murder in Gujranwala of an elderly woman, a seven-year-old girl and an infant in a mob attack on members of the Ahmadi community highlights the …
Husain Haqqani tells it like it is. Husain Haqqani, Islamabad’s former ambassador to Washington, is making waves with his latest book, Magnificent Delusions, which speaks hard truths about the arrant alliance between Pakistan and the United States. In 2011, Haqqani was forced to resign as envoy under Army pressure, and the Iftikhar Chaudhry-led Supreme Court, champion of the hypernationalist narrative, …
Ms Farahnaz Ispahani, the former Pakistani parliamentarian of PPP and presidential adviser and author of forthcoming book ” Waiting to die: Pakistan’s Religious minorities” has warmly greeted the Christian community on the auspicious occasion of Easter and Lenten. In a message she said that Easter and Lenten are important religious events in the history of Christianity that convey the message …
MENA Women in the Reformist Process: A Retrospective On October 18, the Middle East Program and the Global Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted a two-panel discussion on “MENA Women in the Reformist Process: A Retrospective,” the first of which focused on women’s political participation and the second focusing on economic reforms and social change. Participants on …
The Taliban attack on the Peshawar church that killed scores of people was an opportunity for Pakistan’s leaders to rally the nation against Islamist extremism but they squandered it Pakistan’s leaders have squandered another opportunity to rally the nation against religious extremism. The terrorist attack on one of the oldest churches in the country, Peshawar’s All Saints Church, stunned all. …
On Sunday, September 8, 2013, Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) stepped down as the president of Pakistan. Many will write about this historic day as it represents the first time a democratically elected president completed a five-year term, followed by a peaceful transition to another democratically elected government. Most of Pakistan’s leaders have been …