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...
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,...
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...
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...