American Muslims, justifiably worried about increasing attacks on our community, must react strongly to the anti-Semitic sermons by two California Imams. Although one of them has since apologized, his call to “annihilate” Jews cannot be ignored just because of a statement of contrition.If Muslims want wider support for their concerns about threats to their community, they must also ostracize the …
Farahnaz Ispahani is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, DC and the author of the book Purifying The Land of The Pure: The History of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities (Oxford University Press, 2017). In 2015, she was a Reagan-Fascell Scholar at the National Endowment for Democracy, in Washington, DC. Ispahani was a Public …
The Egyptian cities of Alexandria and Tanta are still reeling from shock after Islamic State (ISIS) suicide bombers killed 45 people attending Palm Sunday services last week. Last Thursday, a frenzied mob lynched a student accused of blasphemy at a university in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Mardan. Thousands of miles apart, one was an act of well-planned terrorism and the …
Visit: Launching Ceremony of Ms. Farahnaz Ispahni Book in DC, USA
KLF German Peace Price Winners were announced by Ameena Saiyid Ali Nobil Ahmad awarded the 3rd KLF Peace Prize for Masculinity, sexuality and illegal migration. Farahnaz Ispahani’s “Purifying the Land of the Pure; Pakistan Religious Minorities” is slightly to win a German Peace Prize at the Karachi Literature Festival -2017 (KLF2017). Ms Farahnaz Ispahani has written a seminal book on …
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto took place on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, twice Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996) and then-leader of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, she was first woman Prime Minister of Muslim world. She had been campaigning ahead of elections scheduled for January 2008. Following the suicide attack in the Rawalpindi city of …
I felt I could breathe here, in America. I was born in Pakistan, but US citizenship freed me from the burdens of religious tests, dictatorship and the absence of human rights. As I went about my work, I never felt that I was a woman, a person of color, a Muslim or an immigrant. But more than a quarter-century after …
The country’s Supreme Court dodges a decision by adjourning a high-profile blasphemy case. The fate of an illiterate berry picker on death row for blasphemy has gripped Pakistan in a furor of religious fanaticism. Few examples better illustrate the misplaced priorities of the Pakistani government and the country’s Islamist ideologues. Asia Bibi was scheduled to appear before Pakistan’s Supreme Court …
When Muhammad Ali Jinnah stood before the Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947, he had no idea that his words as to the future of political identities informed by religion in the new state of Pakistan would come true, albeit in reverse. Hindus have ceased to be, and Muslims have also ceased to be, except the Sunnis. Jinnah in his …