South Asia Citizens Web

(11 Feb. 2017) As a Senate committee mulls Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, thousands visit shrine to Mumtaz Qadri, killer of Salman Taseer

what exactly the authorities think as being the role of universities? To create new knowledge and critically analyse ideas, even if they may be uncomfortable? Or is intellectual thought subservient to dominant ideologies or pressure? If questioning and engaging in debate about the politics of sexuality is considered taboo or obscene, then why even keep any of the liberal arts subjects in our universities?

Just as there was no uniform, un-variegated, one-dimensional reflection in contemporary Urdu literature to the First War of Independence of 1857, there is no generalised or undifferentiated response to the partition among the Muslim intelligentsia. The Urdu literature of the Partition years – which, it must be stressed, was written by both Muslim and non-Muslim writers – reflects a bewildering and often contradictory array of opinions.

These provisions, if enacted, allow for a situation were the Officer in Charge of a Police Station can deny lawyers from accessing detainees and even police stations if such access would “impede ongoing investigations”. . . . As such the Bill would curtail existing constitutional and administrative protections for detainees

Perween Rahman, Director of the Orangi Pilot Project [in Karachi], was killed on this day in 2013. Aquila Ismail is Perween Rahman’s older sister. At present she is pursuing justice for her sister’s murder in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.