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Women Participation in political rallies: Objections and Response

"Say: "Who is there to forbid the beauty which God has brought forth for His creatures, and the good things from among the means of sustenance?" Say: "They are [lawful] in the life of this world unto all who have attained to faith - to be theirs alone on Resurrection Day." Thus clearly do We spell out these messages unto people of [innate] knowledge! Say: "Verily, my Sustainer has forbidden only shameful deeds, be they open or secret, and [every kind of] sinning, and unjustified envy, and the ascribing of divinity to aught beside Him - since He has never bestowed any warrant therefore from on high and the attributing unto God of aught of which you have no knowledge." And for all people a term has been set and when [the end of] their term approaches, they can neither delay it by a single moment,   nor can they hasten it"[Quran; 7:32 -33] Also read: Islamic Society & Culture Women in Islam Imran Khan reply to Molana Fazal ur Rehma

Aberration is the norm

THE twists in the case of Farzana who was bludgeoned to death outside the Lahore High Court increasingly feel like film noir. Her husband killed his first wife and was forgiven by his son. She was killed by her relatives, who had earlier killed her other sister and were forgiven by her son. Money involved, compromises involved, betrayals involved, moral questions involved, and now, belatedly, outrage involved. The act of Farzana’s murder was met with shock based on three perceived aberrations. First, the instruments of death were bricks, evoking the image of the medieval punishment of stoning to death for adultery. The second was that it happened just outside the premises of a court — the place for dispensation of justice, presumably a secure zone. And the third is there were witnesses who did not try to prevent the crime. Barring these, it was just another routine honour killing that we now take in our stride. However, all three are not aberrations. There are four p

Criminal Advances

Ask any Pakistani woman, and she’ll tell you it doesn’t take much to cross the line between banter and lewdness: an inappropriate touch, an unwanted remark, or even indecent flirtation. With women often advised to stay mum in the face of abuse, sexual harassment is reaching epidemic proportions in Pakistan. Noman Ansari It started with what seemed like harmless office pranks. Six months into a new job in Karachi; Saima started noticing strange happenings at her place of work — sabotaged equipment and missing property. She grew concerned when one day, she stepped out of her office to discover some missing documents appear suddenly outside her office door, neatly cut up and displayed, like some horrific scene out of an Alfred Hitchcock flick. Crouched on the edge of her bed, she scrolled the touch screen of her mobile phone as her hands trembled. She read and re-read the text messages arriving seemingly every second from an unknown number. She knew who this was and wis