I was a married woman now. Things sank in. I was married with children and Lahore was my home. I had inherited everything that was my husband’s – his seven dogs, his weird pheasants and his senseless chickens, all crammed into the backyard.
Red Birds is about the destruction that inevitably follows love. Many say this Mohammed Hanif novel is an anatomy of the wars men wage and the carcasses of pain women and their children must sweep up, each with their own indignities, but I don’t.
Aisha Sarwari is the co-founder of the Women’s Advancement Hub, a grassroots platform for women to amplify their voices. She has been working on women’s rights in Pakistan
Address: Islmabad, Pakistan
Mail: info@asarwari.com
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I was a married woman now. Things sank in. I was married with children and Lahore was my home. I had inherited everything that was my husband’s – his seven dogs, his weird pheasants and his senseless chickens, all crammed into the backyard. I had...
Red Birds is about the destruction that inevitably follows love. Many say this Mohammed Hanif novel is an anatomy of the wars men wage and the carcasses of pain women and their children must sweep up, each with their own indignities, but I don’t. I am sure it...
Most of this month, Pakistan, its legislators, media pundits, policymakers and intellectuals are in feisty debates surrounding cookies, helicopter per km rates and the banning of cheese imports to Pakistan. I would like to insist that this is a great strategy that works in favor...
I was invited to speak at an event in a 5-star hotel on the inclusivity of women in public space. My co-panelist was a disability rights activist, a young woman in an electric wheelchair. When she arrived to speak she had to be lifted by...
I thought I had seen it all in my decade-long work on gender equity in Pakistan. Then I was asked to be the lead communications consultant in the USAID Pathways to Success program for the KP province. It is only now, that I really feel...
Last month Pakistan held its largest women’s march – a collective feminist movement to bring women’s status closer to a human being and less close to a pet. Since then, there have been even more strides in the civil society – our films contain more...
Ramadan of 2018 came to a close two weeks ago and this holy month reminded me of a tragedy—a wholly preventable one—that took place during Ramadan of 2015. Three years ago about 1,000 Pakistanis died during Ramadan. They died because piety was thrust upon these impoverished day-wage...
Schools are not places to develop learning outcomes in Pakistan. Rather, they are political tools. There is graft during teacher induction, neglect during knowledge transfer; pedagogical understanding is non-existent and a whole lot of misspending happens by the provincial governments. Public school children suffer the...
When the sun rises on the 2018 International Women’s Day, Pakistan would do well to bow her head in shame. Politicians, populists, policymakers, development consultants and the financial sectors have all collectively and individually erased women in the country – diminished them to the edges....
A lot of men in conservative societies often say feminist social media movements are not suitable. They say societies like Pakistan cannot live out these online movements because they propel foreign notions of gender equality. That these #metoo-esque efforts are for women who are unhinged,...
Indian actress, Swara Bhaskar, called Pakistan a “failing state” on an Indian talk show while promoting her film that was banned in Pakistan for nudity and obscenity. States cannot fail for banning films merely, they fail for something much more insidious – the policing of...
When most working women in Pakistan return home from a long often-humiliating workday, the first thing they do is make tea. They serve it eagerly. Just the right color and texture, otherwise it could be splattered across a wall by an angry father, brother or...
Someone asked feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, what she would say to the concerns that the #MeToo is worrying men that women have too much power that they are now abusing. The #MeToo campaign was launched to call out sexual misconduct in the US. Her response...
There was a newspaper cartoon that depicted a woman in a burkah in the driver’s seat, except that the car she was in was remote-operated. The remote control was firmly in a snarky man’s hands. Muslim majority countries run by men, fueled by a toxic...
Justice Nasira Javaid is now retired as an icon of women rebels. She had a mother who was a legendary philanthropist and a force in the Pakistan independence movement. It was going to be unlikely that a woman with a women role model like her...
The ‘One size fits all’ model doesn’t always lead to happiness, success, economic progress or even environmental sustainability. Yet it is proposed, enforced and demanded over and over. Lately, this has been a focus on the defense of the good old values and our culture....
I returned from a polling station in the G8 sector of Islamabad. It seems as though Imran Khan is set to become the prime minister of Pakistan. This line sounds like an alarm bell; a shrieking of a car right before a bang; nails on...
1976 film actress Shubnum Ghosh’s house was broken and entered into and a “dacoity” took place. This is a euphemism for rape. In that pre #metoo era this popular Bangladeshi film actress who made Lahore her home and Lollywood her profession lived on in Lahore....
What would it take for a modern Sufi to lose his optimism? A lot, it seems. Raza Rumi has published yet another book called, Being Pakistani, and it has three things that will come in handy this post-election season: the effortlessness and readability with which...
Review of Red Birds Author: Mohammad Hanif Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2018 Red Birds is about the destruction that inevitably follows love. Many say this Mohammad Hanif novel is an anatomy of the wars men wage and the carcasses of pain women and their children must sweep...
What is it about a woman that makes her jeer worthy? I wonder because the Chief Justice of Pakistan decided to open his speech last week with a statement that compared the length of an ideal speech to that of a woman’s skirt length. Winston...
Tharparker is a forgotten speck in southern Pakistan. It is defined by grass thatched roofs and a dysfunctional feudal-electoral system that has always undermined 1.6 million of its residents. Then, of course, there is the fact that half of its population is Hindu in Muslim...
Camels replaced cars, but in Saudi Arabia, women who once rode these animals ended up getting pushed into the seclusion of their homes. The region in 7th century was somewhat matriarchal. Rich women led caravans at that time and yet today in 2018, it is...
It’s hard to believe, but there is actually something worse than being a woman in Pakistan. Being a woman in The Federally Administered Tribal Areas is worse – The abysmal rock bottom. FATA is the notorious tribal belt designed to be outside the fold of...
Asma Jehangir was no short of a superhero for Pakistani women who wanted someone with grit to show it to The Man. Be it the military’s overstepping, the popular autocrat’s absolute power or the sitting Democrat government’s chest thumping. She was ready to push them...
In Larkana, boys will be boys. This feudal town, where oppression is linked to how landed you are, festers a super-bug kind of misogyny, one that no feminism can antidote. In Larkana, boys will be misogynists because they invariably get away with it. In Larkana,...
There is very little difference between Pakistani women and women who are crippled. Going by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a “cripple” can’t move because they can’t but “an able bodied person who doesn’t move” will also remain “exactly where they are.” Just like the person...
I recently critiqued a political party called PTI for giving a known rapist a party seat and celebrating it with garlands, handshakes and photo-ops. A believer in PTI was offended by this take on a party that, after all, promises an end to status quo....
Pakistan, they say, is having its #metoo moment. I think Pakistan is only having a shadow #metoo moment. A real #metoo moment is a solidarity moment with a woman who comes forward with a harassment or abuse claim. A real #metoo moment is one where...
Quote in Japan Times: “It’s an honor-based system, and there’s nothing more dishonorable than the rape of a woman within your family,” explained women’s rights activist Aisha Sarwari. The men of the aggressor’s family must be shamed through the loss of their women’s dignity, Sarwari...
I got a job in Peshawar and moved here from Islamabad. As a workingwoman, I’ve scaled it all across Pakistan – Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. When headhunters used to suggest a job in Peshawar though, I’d say, no way in hell. Peshawar was an hour...
In a BBC interview Pakistan’s favorite actress, Mahira Khan made a profound statement when she was asked what type of conduct on her part led her to not be harassed in the film industry in Pakistan and elsewhere. She said that her conduct had nothing...
I have two reasons to believe Aga Khan Hospital is our nation’s foremost hospital in terms of quality of service and standards. First reason being that my husband got his brain tumor removed last week from there and is on his way to recovery. The...
When a woman in Pakistan gets into politics it is like she’s consciously decided to walk onto a bloody battlefield. There are only two outcomes. She will either be marred to oblivion or have to live with the ensuing media riot aimed to defame her...
I’ve been writing about the inclusion of women for over a decade with some of my fellow activists and now it seems like we have to pause, because we’ve perhaps preached to an unwanted foe – the Taliban. In producing a glossy glamouresque magazine called...
Aisha Sarwari, Co-founder of Women’s Advancement Hub (WAH) talks to BBC World about women in Pakistan balancing family and work. The challenge remains for working women that as they feel financially strained, they have few safeguards from employers. Whereas the law mandates 3 months...
“It’s an honour-based system and there’s nothing more dishonourable than the rape of a woman within your family,” explained women’s rights activist Aisha Sarwari. The men of the aggressor’s family must be shamed through the loss of their women’s dignity, Sarwari explained. “That’s the balance...
Jirgas are 400-year old patriarchal systems that punish women routinely.
PAKISTAN’S POPULATION BOOM Giving women more of a choice in the matter could help, argues Aisha Sarwari, a feminist activist who has previously written on population and women’s rights. “Access to birth control for women can be a game changer,” she told AFP. “Ultimately the...
A 400-year-old panchayat system is meant to protect only men. Men alone reap benefits from this system that operate out of the formal legal system of Pakistan. This is a system that proliferates male privilege. The same system made up of all-male village or tribe...
The rishta aunty is the biggest omen of patriarchy. She reinforces the segregation of sexes and takes the agency of young women into her own hands by choosing who young women will spend the rest of their lives with. Probably pushed to the sidelines of...
I grew up in a school where corporal punishment was the norm. Another norm was I being on the receiving end of it. Teachers were almost always displeased at my reading and writing ability. It took me longer than my classmates to read a passage....
Misogyny, in Pakistan is largely a bipartisan exercise. However, with Khwaja Asif’s recent tweet about Firdous Ashiq Awan joining PTI and insinuating that she is a “newly acquired dumper,” he made PML N take the cake for misogyny. I won’t be surprised if secretly, he’s...
“I can’t fade.” Tanzeela Mazhar is the woman who took a man down on charges of harassment in the workplace. She has so much of what young people today call swag. When she walked in to meet with me this is the last thing I...
A tragedy always has a greater one lurking behind it. Waiting to descend like a slow mist over the aftermath of what is the first strike. Pakistan however has had a series of them. When Mashal Khan was dragged through the corridor of Abdul Wali...
Over a thousand women are killed for honor in Pakistan every year. At the Women of the World Summit in New York this month, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker from Pakistan spoke about honor in Pakistani society. She said her films on the...
As if it wasn’t already difficult enough for a woman in Pakistan, there is this bile-inducing custom to have a woman weighed in against what material and monies she brings into a marriage. Dowry determines a woman’s worth in this culture. About 95% marriages are...
Where did Syed Raza Ali Gillani’s toxic masculinity come from? His all-boys education that can only breed contempt and bone-chilling fear of female sexuality; his feudal roots or his deep-rooted sense of insecurity about being a pious devout. Wherever it came from, it was rewarded...
Antara Ganguli’s Tanya Tania is like being in Karachi and Bombay at the same time. It is like being there at a time when these two cities were both ugly and beautiful. Reading it you have that same feeling you have when you butter your...
On @BBCWorld Facebook live on why Valentine’s Day is not the states business. The ban on valentines is an attempt to control and repress women’s sexuality. https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/10154398657882217/
Aisha Sarwari speaks on BBC Urdu for a special series on honour killing called #Qatloghairat https://business.facebook.com/bbcurdu/videos/1367506823290947/
I come on at 7:30 minutes on the anti-honour killing bill. @BBCUrdu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17fa0fU6SgY
Divulging in to the state of affairs for women in Pakistan is an unsettling activity. Currently ranked at 143rd in the Gender Gap index among 144 countries, Pakistan is among the worst countries to live a life as a woman. Conditions here are worse than...
I was in a hotel in Islamabad invited by a friend whose friend had a farewell. It was Ramzan of last year. We were opening our fasts at the sit-down dinner so I chatted to the person next to me who turned out to be...
A woman in Bengaluru, India was walking home one night when she entered a secluded street. Two men on motorbikes turned onto the street. One got off and grabbed her, molested her and then both of them attempted to carry her off. When she resisted,...
Our national carrier brought a goat to the airport and slaughtered it next to the ATR due to fly to Multan to ward off evil spirits. The sacrificial black goat’s blood drained on the tarmac, behind it, the wheel of the carrier. This is not...
Cooking is not a moral act. In fact it is the least bit fun when it is mandatory. Therefore, the fact that women in Pakistan are presumptuously handed this task is an abomination. No one likes to stare at a sink full of dirty dishes...
The UN Women Pakistan have done something laudable. They have launched a campaign against violence against women by naming the devil and spelling out that men beat women, pretty often and pretty viciously. When the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), a body better left to...
If someone told me that life is going to be tough for a man who insulted, debased and demeaned women; that a man with who had sexual assault charges against him would pay through his teeth, I’d be very confused right now. With Donald Trump...
A few years ago, I went to a restaurant where the waiter turned the deepest beetroot shade of red when I requested for a grilled chicken breast. I’d said the word breast and this had sent him shuddering. Unluckily for many chicken around this country...
They say justice delayed is justice denied. In Asia Bibi’s case perhaps delaying of a sentence may turn out to be a better deal for her. She was arrested for her faith. We all know the story by now — how she stood her ground...
When I heard the UNGA speeches from tier-two leadership of both India and Pakistan, it struck me how the rhetoric on both sides has remained unchanged since the early 2000s. Back then, I was a vehement activist on the Kashmir issue and had as a...
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have split and made front line news amongst the UNGA and the India-Pakistan tiff. They were a power couple; no financial woes; a joint love for adopting babies and helping the less fortunate and no shortage of phenotypic symmetry called...
I am not ashamed of taking some of my inspiration from Facebook memes. They are no New Yorker Magazine cartoons, granted, but they sometimes can be pretty astute. This particular one said: Women belong in the kitchen; men belong in the kitchen, we all belong...
Remember that dream where you wake up in a cold sweat because you are naked in public? It is just as horrific when someone is trying to cloak you with so many clothes that you are invisible. You are so sexualized that the mere show...
In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, women’s fingers were cut off if they wore nail colour. There was a ban on women riding motorbikes. They were publicly whipped if anyone could spot their ankles. In Pakistan, most Jumma khutbas (Friday sermons) may not outright call for women’s public...
A suicide bomber in the city of Quetta in western Pakistan has killed at least 63 people and injured more than 100 others. Steve Inskeep talks to columnist and blogger Aisha Sarwari.
The murder of Samia Shahid, a Bradford resident who had a second marriage against her family’s will, is like being in a repetitive nightmare. It seems so familiarly eerie and without escape. Punjab Police, lead by a watchful committee summoned by the Chief Minister, now...
I feel the same way about Pakistani society failing its women as I feel about land mines – someone is bound to get maimed, pretty regularly. When Qandeel Balooch was drugged and strangled by her brother, I was abroad. What is worse than Pakistan failing...
After a referendum in Britain where it chose to exit the EU, Theresa May, was swiftly the Prime Minister. David Cameron exited and she constitutionally took his place. Britain has a woman Prime Minister and simultaneously a Muslim of Pakistani heritage Mayor of London. A win...
Everyday sexism is much tougher to decipher. It’s difficult to call it out because it is cloaked under cultural subtext of humor, satire or plain smart-Alec talk. When women world over are trying to be nuanced about how to put an end to it, here...
Of all the reasons why women should be included at all levels of policy-making, the fact that 800,000 children die in a year in Pakistan is the most critical one. This country thrives on knee-jerk reactions but has glacial speed when responding to catastrophes. Our...
Just yesterday I had to go to Islamabad’s largest private hospital to get a vaccination for a tropical country I’ll be travelling to. I went straight from office in my dress pants and an airy orange blouse that flowed below my waist. When I walked...
A teacher was honor killed for refusing a suitor.
When transgener rights activist Alesha was gunned down in KP and she died because of negligence at the hospital – they couldn’t treat her at neither the male nor the female ward. http://aaj.tv/2016/05/spot-light-28th-may-2016/
Extortionists and haters alike harass the trans-gender community in Pakistan. Mafias try to exploit them for sex, porn or panhandling. Not only do they go through life with an identity crisis, they are continuously segregated by mainstream society and find themselves out of jobs and...
Everyday sexism is much tougher to decipher. It’s difficult to call it out because it is cloaked under cultural subtext of humor, satire or plain smart-Alec talk. When women world over are trying to be nuanced about how to put an end to it, here...
It used to be that only a limited number of things would get you honor killed. Like dressing provocatively; having sex outside marriage, being gay, getting raped or renouncing your religion. Now you can get honor killed for helping a friend escape a village to...
The fear of public spaces is called Agoraphobia, but when you have this fear on behalf of a group of women, its called misogyny. Called by another name it is abuse of power; oppression and downright cruel. The Saudis have this fear on behalf of...
Aisha Sarwari’s comments at the Stockholm Internet Conference 2015 on How women can be empowered using the internet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1916ipzIVQ
Published in Dawn here ISLAMABAD: Huma Siddiqui, 47, an electrical engineer by profession, has been looking for a job since 2008 with little luck. It’s not that Ms Siddiqui is incompetent. She graduated from the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore in 1997 and then...
Book review of Navigating Pakistan Feminism – Fight by Fight written by Aisha Sarwari was published in The News on Sunday here Arshed Bhatti March 6, 2016 Real life stories of women who got perished, who were triumphant, and who still are holding the fort...
Featuring Moneeza Hashmi, veteran Pakistani feminist and women’s rights activist; Rakhshanda Naz, Lawyer and Activist for women’s rights in FATA; Marvi Memon, polititian and leading women’s rights legislator. All there to support Aisha Sarwari’s book: Navigating Pakistani Feminism – Fight by Fight
Published in Tribune here ISLAMABAD: The cause of feminism in the country is a fight because when women are being killed, raped, being led out of school, subjected to domestic violence and discrimination at work, it is indeed a fight. This was stressed by author Aisha...
Published by the News on Sunday here With the premise that resolving the big questions on women’s rights, the Pakistani society will be on a progressive trajectory, leading women feminists gathered here at a book launch on Saturday. Aisha Sarwari’s book, ‘Navigating Pakistani Feminism: Fight...
Publius Flavius cautioned us to prepare for war at a time of peace. The attack on Army Public School on December 16, 2014 is perhaps war for us as a daily presence, but how prepared are we against the thinking that perpetrates violence against children...
The average age of a class four child is 10, right when there can be an early onset of puberty. In Larkana, a girl child who was repeatedly raped by her male teacher got her pregnant. These are the facts of the case. Other details...
When it becomes a crime to attack a woman – sticks, stones or even punches – people call it a landmark law. Perhaps we will award the same grandiosity to outlawing sticking pikes in the eyes of defenseless children. The Punjab Protection of Women...
The caged bird was banned by the Taliban back in the day because probably its chirps would awaken life and the desire of life among men who should be only thinking of the fire of hell in the afterlife. Now President Mamnoon Hussain, in what...
Macheavelli said it is better to be feared than loved. The current government must have made this a mantra. First it threatened to imprison any of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) employees who participated in any of the planned strikes against the ongoing push...
Even in the most elite hotels and accommodations where politicians and intellectual royalty are in attendance the security protocols are laughable. I know exactly when the personnel are at their least effective: who takes off for long prayer breaks and who is really slow in...
Mumtaz Qadri is now very scared. He appealed the courts to spare his life for taking the life of Punjab’s sitting Governor, Salman Taseer in 2011. He is missing spine because he claimed that by killing Taseer he was serving God who would obviously keep...
If I had a magic wand, I would wave it over the hard working women of Pakistan so they walk the earth with the confidence of the mediocre Pakistani man. It’s endemic: women’s constant addiction to underselling themselves. Women at a performance of 99% will...
We were never good at taking rejection as a people, but as men, Pakistanis don’t even make it passably human. They retaliate with counter accusations and if that does not match the insult their deified egos faced, they resort to violence. Sometimes even violence is...
There is a lot of talk at the Stockholm Internet Forum 2015 (SIF15) about how Internet rights are synonymous with human rights. It may sound like a #FirstWorldProblem but here why it is not. The Internet is this one unique opportunity where the developing world...
When life takes you down, as it sometimes does, the two things that have brought me back to the light are classical music and knowing I live in the age of Margaret Atwood. Music, because well, there is this glorious instrument called the piano...
Somewhere in Sahiwal when a woman would now jog at the Ladies and Children Park in Farid Town it would be an act of revolt and bravery. It would be this woman vs. patriarchy, vs. subjugation and vs. the culture of associating women claiming public...
On a TV show discussing if child marriages are kosher, I realized I should not have been there in the first place. It was like discussing if waterboarding, maiming or beheadings were a laudable method of bringing societal change. There can be no discussion when...
It is sometimes the clearest of accusations that one must be most weary of. These accusations, like the one Christine Fair levelled on Pakistan – You are the enemy of the US – that imprisons Pakistan within its own narrowest allegiances. We take on the...
For women, taking back the wheel has always been a herculean task. In neighbouring India for instance a recent International Labor Organization (ILO) report outlines that despite the economy growing significantly, the female labor force participation has fallen by seven percentage points, to 24 percent...
There is a positive, mutually beneficial way of maintaining investments that come in. Then there is the Pakistan way. Part of my work involves advising an UNCTAD-affiliated international Investment promotion agency, and when collating some of the most active investment promotion fronts, India keeps popping...
Its murky business when a country where marital rape has barely become punishable tries to prosecute rape generally – because the concept of consent is practically non-existent. Where would one begin to explain it to men that if someone doesn’t want a cup of tea...
The strange thing about the cloak of overt religiosity is that it squeezes its victims with laws – like a boa constrictor – with such mercilessness, that the victim in its crackling grip has no choice than to feel regretful. In the same way as...
No one can get away with saying that Ramzan is anything but a blessed month without getting into an argument that it is Ramadan not Ramzan. It is kind of like that food served to you as a kid at an aunt’s that you can’t...
It’s happening again. The slogans of national interest are rising like smoke signals and a war-hungry people are sharpening their daggers and spikes for the showdown. Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar declared that NGOs working against national interest will be shown the door. This has...
In early 2013 I ended up in a situation rather naively which didn’t go so well. I was assisting an expert on Gender who was called in to propose a policy to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as it self-assuredly prepared to run the nation. After a presentation...
Three things can encompass the state of education in Pakistan and the respect it gets: Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate, Abdus Salam’s persecution; the bullet that was fired at child education activist, Malala’s head and consequent attempts to discredit her, and lastly the Army Public...
It goes without saying that when a guest comes to your house you don’t ask difficult questions. This is perhaps why Imam Kaaba Sheikh Al-Ghamdi was so overwhelmed by the love and support he got from Pakistanis during his visit here. This is actually supported...
The frequency with which you get to know how phenomenal a person was by reading their eulogy is increasing. First it was the marketing director of a popular English daily, Masood Hamid, for whom there were only words of admiration: the people he mentored and...
For a country that shuns sex education on the basis that it erodes moral values, the number of unwanted pregnancies in Pakistan are staggering. According to a 2012 figure by the Population Council, 4.2 million of the nine million pregnancies were unwanted. As much as...
Just like Edward Said in his work Orientalism talked about a distance and patronisation with which the west referred to the east as servile to power, German anthropologist Johannes Fabian penned the concept of the “denial of coevalness”. This is when anthropologists defined people they...
In the four minutes that the Vogue #MyChoice video was played online, many critics missed the 3.8 or so minutes that talked about various options women exercise over their bodies: to have children, to travel, to love or to eat in quantities they like, and...
Pakistanis turn vicious when forced to conform to the diktat of the US. They call any such attempt to alter Pakistan’s foreign or domestic policy imperialist and hegemonic. Yet strangely, replace the US with Saudi Arabia and it almost reads like it is supremely ordained...
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar called the lynching of two Muslims by Christians in Lahore “the worst kind of terrorism”. This is binary thinking: Muslims lynching innocent victims being a lesser form of terrorism versus Christians lynching innocent victims being an insult to our intellect and...
It was in 1787 that British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft published a strong case for women’s education in her book: Thoughts On The Education of Daughters. Two and a quarter centuries later in Pakistan, a girl child is shot in the head for advocating for the...
It is odd that the protection this country provides its citizenry is directly proportional to their power. The most vulnerable are left to the mercy of chaos: the Ahmedis, Shias, Christians and those random trespassers who are falsely accused of blasphemy either because they did...
The modifications outside my children’s school are seemingly significant: fortified walls, concrete barriers, barbed wire and the ageing sniper who is often caught scratching his ear, but the reality is different — the walls are just as penetrable and the children just as susceptible to...
Someone once said that Heera Mandi was the least hypocritical place in Pakistan, as if they were referring to a taskforce or a think tank. Everyone has an opinion on Heera Mandi, the red light district of Lahore, and lately politicians too have brought the...
No other country is a better case study for society facing chronic terrorism and suicide attacks than Israel. And the study of Israeli society in the second intifada reveals that there was a counterintuitive trend: society did not become increasingly traumatised when terrorist attacks and...
There was another terror attack in Pakistan. The gods have forgotten to reshuffle our fate; week after week we are brought from a crawl to a standstill. This was possibly a suicide blast in Shikarpur, Sindh, a place that is known more for Sufi Islam,...
It does not inspire much confidence in the government to have the counterterrorism plan acronymed NAP; they should have at least rolled it on their tongue to make sure the name does not give terrorists a psychological advantage. This National Action Plan (NAP) claims the...
There was so much blood in Peshawar, the blood of children. It was painful, painful but apparently replaceable. Replaceable. The outrage of the Peshawar attack should spin the country into a vortex of mourning for years. Each of those 132 children could have held Pakistan’s...
Imran Khan has never has let a chance pass to flaunt religion, which he conveniently wore on his sleeve: the multiple prayer breaks from the dharna (sit-in) stage, the excessive call for religion in politics, the statement about the Taliban being our brothers, the same...
Pakistan’s foreign office has reacted to the hit US televison show Homeland rather negatively for calling the country a “hellhole”. It has also reacted to the atrocious killing of 100 and more of its children in Peshawar by asking the national media to show more...
An 84-year-old woman and her daughter are considering returning home to Iraq because the Australian Immigration Authority is delaying their asylum visa grant. This is after the wave of obsessive concern Australians have after Haron Monis killed two Australians in the Sydney hostage crisis on...
“The common thing between the reactions to these events is our humanity,” Naela Chohan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Australia, said this in Canberra. A few feet away, hidden behind a small crowd of residents of this city and their children, I stood holding a candle,...
Although twice as more men commit suicide in Pakistan than women, it is almost with certainty that one can say the women that do are married. This is according to the ‘The pattern of suicide in Pakistan’ by Murad Moosa Khan and Hashim Reza in...
Junaid Jamshed has been left very confused. On the one hand, being part of the Tableeghi Jamaat and being an evangelist is about being as misogynistic as possible, in fact it is the cannon fodder for all talks, moots and sermons: the status of women...
If you have not been slapped, punched, shoved or physically threatened by a male relative or even a stranger, you are one of those one in 10 women who just escaped being part of a harrowing epidemic in Pakistan. Go celebrate. Go celebrate that you...
When a report comes out naming the worst perpetrators of oppression of any sort, expect Pakistan to take a sizable share of the cake. Picture this: 2,058,200 has been the number revealed by the 2014 Global Slavery Index of Pakistanis under modern slavery. Can we...
Some 150,000 schools across Pakistan commemorated I Am Not Malala Day. Walks and press conferences lit up the educational landscape of this country. It blacked everything else out though. It darkened everything that Malala stands for: education of the girl child, education for all, books...
Walking the streets in Georgetown, DC and looking at the immaculate taste in shop fronts, the energy of young students and the general order, I feel so far removed from its grandeur because of what recently happened back home: brick kin workers Shyman Bibi Urf Shamar,...
As if it were not bad enough that Pakistan has always shown a dismal performance when it comes to the gender gap, there is more bad news: it is getting worse, not better, over the years. Either these indicators are being ignored by the people...
Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Ice Candy Man had a young girl in it called Lenny as its central character. The only one good thing that came out of this girl contracting polio was that she got to stay home and listen in on all the grown up...
This is not a piece about finding justice for Aasia Bibi. God knows it would be very costly if that were so. Aasia Bibi has indirectly cost Pakistan a brilliant governor in Salmaan Taseer and a valorous minority’s minister in Shahbaz Bhatti. This is a...
When Hassan Nisar, social commentator and journalist, says that the most worthy thing the Muslims of the subcontinent invented was the charpoy (traditional, woven bed), he is not too far off the mark. The fact is that mainstream Muslims have even less to be known for:...
Anyone who is oblivious, callous or uninformed about how crucial Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is to Pakistan should be awarded the kind of treatment tribals reserve for adulterers. This delicate thing we call FDI has raised many countries from South Korea to Bangladesh out of the...
Pakistanis have the equivalent of a drug addict’s deviated septum when it comes to overdosing on simplicity. Recently, a graphic image has been designed and can be seen on social media that compares India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) to the metro bus project in Pakistan....
Forgive me for not sympathising with the passengers of the Karachi to Islamabad Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight that got delayed for hours because an ex-minister arrived late. In all the rejoicing going on about how VIP culture got a kick in the shin by...
It has been 13 years since the 9/11 attacks. Since then, many paths have been set upon their tangents. The event also established one key fact: nobody knows what is going on. From the US administration and its intelligence bodies to those of the rest of...
The politics of protest orchestrated by Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri have defined many chasms between the well-governed society of our dreams and that of the real facts on the ground. The worst thing about it is that it has disclosed this chilling absence of women...
As if we needed anything to be left to the imagination of what constitutes an Islamic state and what ultimate end it will have, ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has already had a couple of executions via beheading to...
For Imran Khan’s supporters, taking bravado, uncompromising positions is a virtue. For others not blinded by the cult of the ex-cricketer it is what has caused a loss of over 600 billion rupees to the brittle economy, weakened a frail democracy that had just begun...
When one’s voice is muted, it helps to be introspective. It helps to wonder if it was silenced by society and the general construct of what is acceptable speech or if you had given up on your beliefs voluntarily, the equivalent of slicing your tongue....
Step into the future. Here is a chip that you can place at the top of your spine in the base of your head and it will record, and perhaps even publish, your thoughts and your beliefs. The world would self-destruct. Civilisation would only exist...
One has to wait for the whole year to pass in order to see utter mayhem and madness on the streets. But one does see it eventually. The month of Ramzan brings with it a combination of general frustration and low blood sugar, ideally set...
We are all headed towards oblivion — there is a good chance that no one will ever know who we were and, therefore, some may choose to hasten the inevitable end. It makes no sense to do this though if you are 17, a girl...
Published in Daily Times on July 13 2014 Operation Zarb-e-Azb has cost Pakistan at least two billion dollars thus far. This, according to one of Pakistan’s most astute military commentators who is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army, Samson Simon Sharaf. The operation’s effectiveness is...
Published in Daily Times on July 6th 2014. Chances are that about 600,000 of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), also known as the internally ‘disowned’ people of North Waziristan, will need more than a few tonnes of wheat, which the army is supplying to them...
Published in Daily Times on June 29th 2014. The Punjab police’s brutality against Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) workers was unpardonable. It led to 11 killed and over 80 injured. With all the hunters of our people out there, the police being part of...
Published in Daily Times on June 22nd 2014. Now that the army, backed by the government, albeit hesitatingly, has waged war on the terrorists, one feels like there is some oxygen to fill one’s lungs with. The question is if Operation Zarb-e-Azb is merely a...
Published in The Guardian on May 29th 2014 On 27 May 2014, as Farzana Parveen lay dead on the uneven floor of the Lahore high court, it was not easy to ignore the blood-stained brick next to her. A chador she had worn that morning covered her...
D-Chowk is the protest spot of Islamabad. It looks like a place where the earth has churned up concrete barriers and barbed wires. On one of the barriers, someone had graffitid: ‘Stop Shia genocide’. A few days later, it was black charcoaled, later it faded and...
Published in Daily Times on June 8th 2014 Acid burned, honour killed and choked, the Pakistani women who make the headlines are literally out of a nightmare. Like Farzana Parveen who recently was murdered by her own family with bricks outside the Lahore High Court, there...
Published in The Daily Times on June 1st 2014 Persecution has existed since antiquity. You have to, however, be a special kind of unfortunate to be persecuted by Muslims. There will be no mercy. There will be no hope. No one in power will stand...
Published in Daily Times on May 17th 2014 I recently returned from Istanbul where the streets in Taxim were choked with protesters rallying against the mismanagement of the mining tragedy that killed hundreds in western Turkey. There erupted a Twitter campaign against a person close...
Published in Daily Times on May 18th 2014 I had the opportunity to meet Meena Menon at a close friend’s house in Islamabad many months back. She was sociable and inviting. We talked about The Hindu where she worked as its Pakistan correspondent. The paper...
Published in Daly Times on May 11th 2014 In 2011, I penned a column in this paper on Imran Khan: ‘Imran Khan: why I’m a believer’ (Daily Times, November 1, 2011), linking him to the greats like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Iqbal for giving us...
Published in Daily Times on May 4th 2014 There is an Urdu columnist whose content is oddly blinkered in its focus on historical revisionism, whipping the liberals for being immoral and chastising women who are not invisible. However, a few days back, he wrote about...
Pakistan will be the last place where polio and rabid right wing discourse will exist in the world. The rest of the world is fighting both while we are being overpowered by the forces that want to make them proliferate. In a bloody campaign to shoot...
Women’s status in Muslim societies creates a pulviscular cloud of religious discourse that surrounds it, but always results in shaking off the dusty image of an emancipated woman as a model. It is no surprise that Pakistan is making its women suffer so insidiously for being...
Published in Daily Times on April 14th 2014 Both Christine Lagarde, director of the International Monetary Fund and Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe believe there is one way of saving Japan from the slowing growth rate because of an aging population and shrinking labor force....
Published in Daily Times on April 6th 2014 Appeasement knows no bounds in Pakistan. The interior ministry has released Taliban prisoners in a “good will” gesture. As we have it, there is no uproar that these mass murderers will roam the streets our children play...
Published in Daily Times on March 30th 2014 I was at a social media event in 2011, in it an expert from the US was talking about how he follows news in Pakistan. “I just follow @razarumi and I know what is going on in...
The chaos, disorder and mayhem the country finds itself in is mostly because many did not attend a formal classroom, and those few that did were coached on curriculum that left the raison d’etre of our country to be interpreted by bigots and war addicts....
Fayyaz Ul Hassan Chohan from the party of our hopes, PTI went on television on March 13th 2014 and when asked to comment on polygamy answered by telling a ludicrous joke about a man and his two wives. These women bickered. They were first threatened...
When 2013 was ending, Obama effigies were burned in India, there were demonstrations by Indian Americans outside the New York consulate where Devyani Khobragade was deputy consul general for India and the Indian press was wild with accusation of racism by the Americans. Devyani Khobragade...
Jamshed Dasti, it seems does not have a degree, but that’s not the only education he lacks. The ilm of Bullay Shah, the one where you quit fighting with the devil and fight your nafs first, is also absent. You’d think as a son of...
This war could be lost, not because territory was seceded but because the Taliban would have taken over Pakistan’s air waves. A country of 180 million, many of whom are in the rural and under-served areas are accessing unregulated illegal radio stations run by the...
Pulished by Global Information Society Watch By Aisha Sarwari, Gul Bukhari and Shahzad Ahmad www.bytesforall.pk PAKISTAN Introduction This report seeks to provide a broad overview of the status of women’s rights in Pakistan, to identify unique areas peculiar to Pakistan, and to contextualise them in...
Published in The Daily Times on February 16, 2014 By Aisha F. Sarwari The cure to the exploitation and oppression of women is more freedom for them, not less. The Taliban do not agree. In fact, women factor in the equation as the ones to be...
Published in Daily Times on February 02, 2014 By Aisha F. Sarwari In 1878, the US passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, also known as the Third Force Act, to authorise President Ulysses S Grant to declare martial law, impose penalties against terrorist organisations and...
Published in The Express Tribune, December 12th, 2013. Underneath the fierce nationalism of some statesmen, a new narrative has emerged. It talks of the cultural repression of Muslim women, the drift towards bigotry and the wondrous architecture of buildings and language — this narrative says...
Published in the Daily Times on October 29th 2013. Any exposition on the murder of Salmaan Taseer points to the fact that the Pakistani media was squarely responsible. Not just that, the pundits made a hero out of the...
Interview on NPR on October 25, 2013: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/25/240749015/do-pakistanis-support-us-drone-attacks?ft=1&f=1014# Drone strikes in Pakistan are in the spotlight after that country’s Prime Minister visited the U.S., and a new report detailed hundreds of civilian casualties from American attacks. But how do people in Pakistan view drones? Host Michel...
Our message to young girls reads as: you can be shot in the head for fighting for your right to an education; you could be imprisoned if you are framed for blasphemy, and you could be gang-raped for being what 5-year-olds are: vulnerable. The stories...
Published in Daily Times on August 6th 2013. Picture shows total number of anti-Ahmedi stories run by the Urdu Pres since 2007. “That looks very biblical,” I said out loud while approaching the place Ahmedis call their sanctuary, Rabwa. Incidentally, the name of the city...
“There will never be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.” Susan B. Anthony – 50 Shades of Feminism Published at PakVotes on May 3rd 2013 Picture: Courtesy http://www.english.pakvotes.pk None of the key issues Pakistani women face will ever find the...
Published in The Friday Times on January 11th 2013 Pakistan has what you call an abusive relationship with its citizens. It isn’t a good provider: no electricity, no gas, no water. It is also not good at ensuring security, an essential in a stable relationship....
Published in The Friday Times on December 7th 2012 Amidst all the growing intolerance in Pakistan, culture has been one of the first to suffer. But it is also true that in dark times our souls seek to be stirred and our spirits lifted, often...
Delivered on November 4th 2012 at Avari Hotel I’d like to begin by thanking Faith Matters and its leadership, for inviting me to speak on this very important topic of interfaith harmony in Pakistan, and in particular between the Christian and Muslim communities. The work...
Published in Daily Times on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 It was wartime in Africa, Uganda. Idi Amin had just been removed and Milton Obote was in charge in 1985. I was five, sleeping soundlessly in my room when...
Published in Daily Time on August 28, 2012 The Holy Quran has zero references to the punishment of blasphemy. Hegemonic to the extent of being demonic, Pakistani Muslims are blasphemy-obsessed. Not a single voice from the Muslim clergy community has been raised on the issue...
Published in Daily Times on August 2nd 2012 Feminism ought to be a verb — to act out the notion that women are equal to men in their status, abilities and virtues. It is not a stagnant ideology that merely observes oppression and outright terror...
Published in the Daily Times on June 9th 2012 While the rest of the world fights for an equal payday for women and women empowerment principles in the corporate world, Pakistan remains, according to The Independent, the worst place for a woman. There are four...
Published in Daily times on May 12th 2012 Much has been said about Pakistan’s first Oscar for Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Saving Face and the subject of acid crime against women in Pakistan. It has been argued that the film...
Published in the Daily Times on April 30th In 2011, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said there were about 451,377 people, including 345,899 women, suffering from psychological problems in FATA. In this region, on a daily basis, people witness acts of war and trauma. Mothers...
Published in the Daily Times on April 10th 2012 There are many fellow travellers I am not proud of sharing my green Pakistani passport with but I am particularly not proud of sharing this passport with Hafiz Saeed. His...
Published in the Daily Times on March 119th 2012 The LUMS Abdus Salam Chair, once established, will be responsible to work in the spirit of everything that embodies Dr. Salam, who was inspired by the Quran for his ideas on the electro-weak theory and ‘Theory...
Published in The Friday Times on March 2nd 2012 Aisha Sarwari reviews Blue Dust, Ayesha Salman’s bold new novel about three generations of Pakistani women If you’re looking for prose of the level of Margaret Atwood or Joyce Carol Oates, Ayesha Salman’s Blue Dust will...
Published in the Daily Times on March 15th 2009 The Pakistani lawyers’ movement is on a collision course with the establishment. The country, entirely without stratification resonates its restlessness with this movement, and soon either the judiciary will get some semblance of fairness or...
A film by Deepa Mehta Any film on domestic violence is not an easy one to make; Deepa Metha is getting some vitriolic reviews from India for directing a film limited in technique, plot and dialogue. This barrage of misguided critique is in fact...
Published April 19th 2009 Mukhtar Mai, Glamour Magazine’s woman of the year 2005, ties the knot, for reasons she defines as “to support women’s rights.” I hope that this woman who has not backed down in the face of oppression in the name of culture,...
April 7th 2009 There are so many ways for Americans to find themselves if they are lost: They can read Eyewitness to America, an anthology of people who were there when the US was created; they could go to Gettysburg or heck, just rent the...
July 7th 2009. When an iconic figure like Michael Jackson stops breathing, it’s a sad moment. There are those attempting to make it less of a sad moment, recounting news flashes about others dying in wars and drones, hunger and disease. True, that happens every...
August 19th 2009. Vulgarity is vulgarity, no matter what mouth it comes out of – Maya Angelou Well then so is bullshit. Because that is what it would be called if someone asked President Obama in a public forum what his wife, Michalle Obama thought...
The Bell Jar “How was the fur show?” Esther Greenwood, a young woman from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts is not interested in the fur show. But that doesn’t stop her from going though the routine of asking an acquaintance about the event. The story...
Published in The Daily Times on November 10th 2010 Being elected to the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) has made Asma Jahangir the bearer of great expectations for all progressives and liberals in the country who, until now, were holding their breath, looking at events...
In 2001 I had the opportunity to Interview Sir Christopher Lee for a radio show I produced for Pakistan News Service in California. – Aisha Aisha Sarwari: Sir Christopher Lee, we are honored to have you here on the show (Previously Pakistan News Service), thank you...
Published in The Daily Times on June 5th 2010 Shackled by obscurantism dogging the masses with religious war and decrees, Pakistan is taking a sad turn away from its manifest destiny Historically, the latter-day self-styled champions of Islamic ideology in our country were almost entirely...
Published in The Friday Times on November 25th- December 1st 2011 JK Rowling began her 2008 commencement address at Harvard by saying that she will close her eyes and imagine she is at a Griffindor reunion. And there was something like that at the dastangoi...
John Kerry talks to Vibes Editor-in-Chief Aisha F. Sarwari about the Patriot Act, the change in policy his administration intends to enforce and his sentiments about the larger Muslim world. We will work with allies in Arab and Muslim countries and across the globe. Our...
Published on Chowk.com on January 14th 2011 In Pakistan the populous is still operating on a pre-partition colonial mindset. Psychologically Pakistanis are in a state of oppression even today. They are thankless for having achieved a nation state where the majority can freely practice their...
Published in The Daily Times on January 6th 2011 The execution of the Governor of Punjab in the capital has caused riot among the masses. The ruling party is upset, so are his opponents but there are those who are gladened. Vocal in their online...
Published in The Daily Times on January 6th 2012 The founding father’s secular ideals have been sacrificed for the penumbra imagined and read into his ambiguous and general appeals to Islam. Imran Khan has already said enough that is open to misinterpretation After the Karachi...
Published in The Daily Times on November 1st 2011 Poets like Allama Iqbal identified the pulse of the disenfranchised Muslims in South Asia. Faiz Ahmed Faiz took that spirit to define more progressive causes for Pakistanis. Though not a poet, Imran Khan has captured that...
Published in Daily Times and Pakteahouse.com on January 22nd 2011 Outside the window, a Pakistani flag flutters, inside, a teacher asks a group of 6th-grader girls and boys, “Who can make a food chain?” A girl comes up to the board and uses a...
Published in The Daily Times on March 11th 2011 Pakistan’s essence is derived from the self-determination of its people. If there is to be any restoration of national dignity, Pakistan must be led by the voices of Asiya Nasir, people who do not flee the...
Published in the Daily Times on November 24th 2010 An estimated 17 percent of all families in Pakistan are associated with polygamy in their primary relationships. This means that as many as one-fifth of our population lives in an arrangement of compromise, most likely to...
Published in The Daily Times on August 15th 2011 The reliance on a saviour mentality where Pakistan will be rescued by God will be the cause of an ultimate out-of-control Pakistan. The opposite was the philosophy given to us by Mohammed Ali Jinnah This year’s...
Published in The Daily Times on January 31st 2012 Given the unparalleled investment of national energy and resources in this case, it is only fair to ask why other daughters of Pakistan who languish in Pakistani jails while being routinely tortured and raped are not...
Published on Pakistaniat.com on January 12th 2011 The Faiz Foundation in collaboration with Bank Alfalah has just produced and will soon release a new CD of Tina SaniFaiz Ahmed Faiz singing . Along with Iqbal Bano and Nayyara Noor, Tina Sani is one of...
Published on pakistaniat.com on November 30th 2010 The Mard-e-Momin as a form of national identity is overrated. So is the concept of the collective morality and the religious honor that gets everyone keyed up, ready to take up arms against an aggressor. The biggest aggressor,...
Published on Chowk.com on March 2nd 2011 How you meet a book is important. I was in a leading Karachi bookstore browsing the new books session when an attendant stacked new plastic clad books of Moni Mohsin’s Tender Hooks. I was reading Faiz Ahmed Faiz at...
Published on Chowk.com on Dec 12th 2011 You don’t know till you are half way through the book that the protagonist in Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, is beautiful – and you don’t figure out till the end how symbolic her beauty is. The...
Published in Dawn Newspaper and Chowk.com on August 7th 2009 Prof. Ayaz Ahmad Khan recounts the horrors of his son’s death Capt. Jonaid Khan: Special Services Group in the Pakistan army was born in Quetta in 1983, with his primary education in Ankara, where his...
Published on August 5th 2010 Pakistan is looked at as a country on edge, a country where a fanatic is a breath away from detonating a nuclear device. The potential for that is not the debate here. What really indicates the direction the country...
Published on Chowk.com on May 31st 2010 Militants gunned down and attacked two Ahmedi mosques in Lahore and Pakistan has tied its panties in knots trying to figure out if the places of worship should be called mosques and if the terrorists were funded by...
Published on Chowk.com on March 8th 2010 The topography of women’s empowerment in Pakistan is a treacherous terrain, harsh on the eyes. It is often marked by subjugation, lack of education and basic literacy, utter neglect of health; for instance, Pakistan has among the...
Published on Chowk.com on May 29th 2007 “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you.”-Mohammad Ali Jinnah “This is why I am not in favor of working women.” Said the Colonel and security incharge of one of Lahore’s largest...
I went to see a play on new year’s eve in Lahore, Pakistan. While in the Arabian peninsula a country called Iraq cried for its leader of decades, sent to the gallows in what the defense called a “brutal assault on truth,” a “politically motivated judgment” and a...
I am buried in an Ahmedi graveyard. My tombstone doesn’t have the first pillar of Islam engraved on it, because the Pakistani government doesn’t think I am Muslim. I know I am, but there is absolutely no point fighting the state for it now. When...
Published on Chowk.com on May 9th 2008 What are the odds that I move into a house in the elite F/11 sector of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad and our land lord turns out to be a wife-beater – I in 4, according to the United Nations...
Published on Chowk.com and The Friday Times on November 25th 2005 Out of all the tragedies this earthquake has brought, the loss of an educated and inspiring Junaid Jamshed is very dehumanizing. Losing a national hero to a world of cynicismWe’re a society in scarcity...
Published on Chowk.com on October 4th 2005 He is known to the world as a leader of the independence movement of India. He’s known as a frail man who led thousands to fight the British using the original method of non-violence. He’s a great story,...
Published in Dawn Books and Authors on May 7, 2006 IN this anthology, a set of experts in the fields of population, sociology and other social sciences have superbly initiated the exploration and discovery of the often ignored topic of Muslim fertility. Why do most...
Published in Dawn Newspaper September 26, 2010 I recently attended a conference in Buenos Aires and I couldn`t help but be taken by the city`s grandeur, beauty and its `first world` feel as I commuted daily to the conference venue. Argentina`s struggle with democracy, international...
Published on December 11, 2005 by Dawn Books and Authors There were two types of Pakistani women that Americans got to see last month. One was empowered and educated, Asma Jehangir; the other was an illiterate victim who wanted due justice, Mukhtaran Mai. The stronger...
Aisha Sarwari is known for her exceptional kindness, always
Aisha goes beyond merely understanding others' feelings
Aisha is recognized for her generous spirit, always ready to lend a helping
Aisha Sarwari is a source of inspiration for those around her
women’s rights activist, co-founder of the NGO Women’s Advancement Hub, and author of two books on feminism. Her commentary has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian and The Express Tribune; on NPR and the BBC World Service. Based in Islamabad
