Pakistani campaigners against the country’s blasphemy laws are pointing out that out of 54 Muslim-majority countries in the world, at most 5 permit capital punishment for blasphemy. They are Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and possibly Afghanistan (the new Afghan constitution incorporates human rights norms that could affect statutes treating blasphemy as […]
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Pakistan
Death of Pakistani Secularism Much Exaggerated
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about religious extremism in Pakistan in the wake of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer. On Sunday the fundamentalist religious parties held a rally some 40,000 strong in the southern port city of Karachi against repealing Pakistan’s blasphemy law, as the Pakistan People’s Party MP Sherry Rahman […]
Wainwright: Taseer’s Assassination Lays Bare Contradictions in Pakistani Islam
Aadil Wainwright writes from Pakistan in a guest column for Informed Comment: The assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer has laid bare a crucial debate within the Pakistani public over the nature of Islam and the place of Islamic law in national affairs. That it is a debate among Muslims with more than one side […]
Death of Pakistani Progressivism?
Salman Tasir, the governor of Punjab Province in Pakistan, was assassinated by one of his own guards Tuesday, allegedly for his desire to repeal Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which has been increasingly misused by the religious right to target Christians, Ahmadis and secularists. The guard who killed him was not a Deobandi fundamentalist but an adherent […]
Top Ten Middle East Challenges for U.S. Policy, 2011
10. The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will attempt to stampede Obama into keeping troops in Iraq, delaying any withdrawals from Afghanistan, and launching a military strike on Iran. Just last week, Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, and other members of the Permanent War Party flew to Paris to lobby on behalf of […]
Collateral Damage in Pakistan: Cloughley
Brian Cloughley writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: I started thinking about the phrase after a recent, disturbing trip to Pakistan. ‘Collateral damage’ is a seemingly bland phrase, but it indicates stomach-churning contempt for human life. It was fashionable during the Vietnam war, when countless thousands of civilians were blown to bits, burned […]
80 Killed in Bombing, Military Strikes in Pakistan
On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeted a food aid center in Khar in Bajaur, one of Pakistan’s northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas, killing 43 and wounding 100. The development has implications for US troops in Afghanistan, since Bajaur abuts the strategic and troubled Kunar Province in Afghanistan and Taliban based there and in Mohmand raid […]
Lawsuit over Drones in Pakistan forces CIA Station Chief to Flee
The Guardian reports that a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani journalist over wrongful deaths in drone strikes has forced the CIA station chief in Islamabad to flee the country. The official’s identity was discovered by the journalist, Karim Khan of North Waziristan from other journalists or possibly from disgruntled elements in the Pakistani military. It […]
Horrific Taliban Bombing of Would-Be Pashtun Militiamen
The administrative offices of Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal agency were hit by two suicide bombers on motorcycles on Monday, killing as many as 51 persons and wounding 120. The Taliban Movement of Pakistan [Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or TTP] took responsibility for the attack, which appears to have been intended to disrupt the planned formation of a […]
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