Summers in Pakistan are not as much fun as summers in other parts of the world. We have crippling heat, water shortages, electricity problems, and a kind of morbid boredom that sets in as soon as schools are over and the more fortunate amongst us fly away to vacations abroad or up north. We have to find reasons not to have nervous breakdowns, as we contend w […]

I see this as my act of subversion against the Western mainstream media trying to peddle its Caucasian ideal of female empowerment in a revisitation of Orientalist, colonialist violence against so-called oppressed women of "the other".Well, it certainly made me feel better.Or, it could just be the uncontrollable urge to draw a mustache on any celeb […]

I'd heard a couple of months ago about an event at UCL London sponsored by the Islamic group Islamic Education and Research Academy. The event was a debate on Islam and atheism, but what made the headlines was the fact that the audience was separated by gender: men and mixed couples in the front, women in the back. This wasn't forced - it was deeme […]

So last night I watched The Reluctant Fundamentalist at the cinema in Karachi (yes! we have cinemas!). I'd been looking forward to watching this for some time: the first feature film based on a contemporary Pakistani novel certainly deserved a viewing, to see how Mira Nair brought the whole story to life. What would she include, what would she leave out […]

Here are two essays for your enjoyment today:"The Slap" over at Muftah.org"Barring Women From Voting" at the Deutsche Welle blog Women Talk Online (a special series brought to you from Uks Islamabad and FES) […]

Here's a review of Karachi: Our Stories in Our Words, the OUP anthology which was launched at this year's Karachi Literature Festival.I was present at the launch of this book and read many of the stories before speaking at the launch. I particularly loved two of the initial stories, one about a young man who develops a friendship with an old man wh […]

Former Ambassador to the UK and Professor at American University Akbar Ahmed has published an op-ed in the New York Times about the US drone war in Pakistan. It's a brave stance, to oppose the drone war on moral grounds, especially when its proponents claim effectiveness in their campaign against insurgents and terrorists. Yesterday the second in comman […]

I've come across countless numbers of non-Muslims who take lines from the Quran and quote them, saying "But see, the Quran tells Muslims to kill Jews and Christians." They quiver with righteous indignation when finding lines like "smite the unbelievers" and "kill them" and so on and so forth, holding these lines up as proof […]

Uks is a Pakistani research center based in Islamabad which focuses on women and the media. Every year they put out a renowned diary that showcases important Pakistani women in different areas: entrepreneurship, art, the law, health care. This year, a new initiative to bring out a desk planner has been sponsored by DANIDA, the Danish development corporation, […]

Here is a blog post I wrote for the Independent on the subject of the Oxford sex ring gang. I'm not sure why certain sections of the British public are so heavily invested in seeing all Pakistanis as pedophiles... much the same way they demonized all Afro-Caribbeans as gang rapists in the 1980s. Is it so hard for them to accept people of different races […]