Wellesley in Politics: Interview with Farahnaz Ispahani ‘85 (@fispahani) Farahnaz Ispahani ‘85 has been a leading voice for women and religious minorities in Pakistan for over two decades, working as a journalist, member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, and most recently as a United States-based scholar. An advocate of Pakistan’s return to democracy during the military regime of Pervez Musharraf, she served …
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 …
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 …
By 2050 there will be 2.8 billion Muslims in the world, of whom almost half will be women. If women are integrated in efforts to confront violent extremist ideology, through equal opportunities and participation in social, political, and economic life, this demographic could positively alter the future of the Muslim world. Currently, traditional, conservative, and patriarchal societies in most Muslim-majority …
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 …
Published on Wednesday, July 31, 2013 Pakistan’s religious minorities are widely viewed as embattled or under attack. This paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of Pakistan’s policies towards its religious minority populations, both Muslim as well as non-Muslim. It is not only Pakistan where Muslim as well as non-Muslim minorities are under attack. Rather, this is a phenomenon which is …
The leaked report of the panel set up to look into the 2011 Osama bin Laden incident in Pakistan skips many hard questions including how the nation came to acquire a jihadi mindset Hours after U.S. Navy SEALs found and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011, the Pakistan President, Asif Ali Zardari, held a meeting with the …