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Browsing All Posts filed under »Reformation«
Contrary evidence on Secularism
By Pervez Hoodbhoy First published in The News on Sunday. November 7, 2010. Though some Muslim scholars see no contradiction between secularism and Islam, a secular state is possible only if there are enough thoughtful people who can make it happen Decades from now Pakistan will cease to discriminate between citizens of different religious faiths; […]
Taliban, Jamaat-i-Islami and post-Islamism
By Ali Arqam The killing spree of the Taliban in Pakistan is not limited to combatants, notwithstanding the propaganda of their Pakistani apologists. It extends to non-combatant civilians, minority sects, tribal elders, journalists, educationists, members of parliament, clergy and intellectuals. Even shrines and mosques have not been spared. The Taliban feel that by stifling every […]
Case for a Secular Pakistan and The price paid by Pakistan for rejecting secularism
By I. A. Rehman First published in The News on Sunday, August 29, 2010 Perhaps the greatest injustice done to the Quaid-e-Azam in the state founded under his leadership is that his August 11, 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly is treated as a charter of non-Muslim citizens’ rights only, whereas in reality it lays […]
Effect of Qisas and Diyat Laws on Criminal Justice
by Shahid Saeed Published first in the Daily Times with minor changes After the violent mob lynching in Sialkot, much has been written on inherent violence in our society, breakdown of the rule of law, police and judicial corruption and acceptance of mob justice. However, one factor that remains to be highlighted is how the […]
Why Muslims reject modernity- by Khaled Ahmed
It is often said that Muslims in the 21st century have rejected modernity. What they are in fact rejecting is the process of suiting themselves to changing circumstances. There are two kinds of thinking: one that seeks to change in order to relate to times and one that seeks to change the world to suit […]
Learning Secularism from Bangladesh
By Yasser Latif Hamdani First published in the Daily Times, August 2, 2010 Bravo. Bangladesh has done it. It has successfully reversed the cynical Islamisation of its local General Zia. Not only is one fortified by their action that a Muslim majority nation state is capable of rolling back the Islamist project but as a […]
Contestations of Ijtihad: The Need For Debate
by A.A Khalid In liberal circles of religious scholarship there is a contention that ‘’ijtihad’’ is the epistemic tool which will solve all our grapples and puzzles of establishing a suitable religiosity for our time. Ijtihad is elevated from its formal place as a mere tool of legal reasoning restricted in the classical tradition to […]
Religious Basis of the Enlightenment?
by A.A Khalid The calls of liberals and progressives in Pakistan in constructing a model of epistemology suitable for a modern nation state predicated on the notion of a reduced religiosity and a public conscience which adopts a minimalist understanding of religion is false. Historically it is false and from a positivistic point of view […]
Religious Liberalism – Our Greatest Hope?
by A.A Khalid Is religious liberalism an oxymoron, or is it something long established? More to the point is there something known as Islamic Liberalism, or Liberal Islam? Surprisingly, there is indeed something, a discourse known as Liberal Islam. And contrary to popular perception it is not a contradiction in terms. Charles Kurzman a Professor […]
Challenging ourselves
By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar The News, Sunday, May 6, 2010 150 years ago the French thinker Alexis deTocqueville wrote about the perils of majoritarian democracy. His reference point was white America, a society without a past to burden it, a land riven by ambition and the cult of the individual. DeTocqueville emphasised the inherent tension […]
Is the Koran a constitution?
By Dr. Abbas Zaidi Now that Fauzia Wahab has apologized in the face of Islamofascism at its worst (or best, if you may), it is only appropriate that someone should try to put her remark in its context. Unfortunately, no one—either liberals or the PPP leadership—has come to support her claim that during the time […]
Terrorism, Shameless Religious Bigotry and Pakistan
by Raza Habib Raja First published at the Pak Tea House As I write these sentences, the details of the most shameful attack on the religious sites of Ahmedis in Lahore are unfolding. However, this is not new as Pakistan has been the victim of this brazen behavior repeatedly. The thirty years of state sponsored […]
Pakistan attacked again – Ahmedis targeted – Will we stop discriminating?
I have had my fair share of accusations of apostasy and qadiyaniat for being a secular Pakistani citizen and demanding that there should be no further discrimination against our fellow patriotic countrymen, the Ahmedis. The anti-Ahmediyya movement of ’53 was perhaps an attempt by the JI to gain political ground in Pakistan, for it did […]
Allama Iqbal in Favour of Ataturk’s Secularism
By Tarek Fatah Excerpted with gratitude from his book Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic lllusion of an Islamic State’. Available for download at Let Us Build Pakistan The movement to restore the Ottoman caliphate was strong in India, under the leadership of none other than Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi. As in Egypt, Muslims in India […]
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy: “Islam and Science Have Parted Ways”
Middle East Quarterly Winter 2010, pp. 69-74 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (b. 1950) is one of South Asia’s leading nuclear physicists and perhaps Pakistan’s preeminent intellectual. Bearer of a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he is chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad where, as a high-energy physicist, he […]
Paradise Lost
By Nusrat Pasha Europe drew wisdom from pragmatism, and eventually separated the Church from the State. Ataturk had to struggle ardently to emancipate Turkey from its theocratic past and lead it to a secular and secure future. Secularism, as some people misleadingly propose, does not at all imply being anti-God, anti-Religion or atheistic or even agnostic; it only […]
Maududi’s Children
How the intellectuality of Political Islam turned into the brutality of faithful fascism by Nadeem F. Paracha Source: DAWN Blogs In Pakistan even the traditional Muslim practice of reasoning in matters of religion – originally introduced by the 9th century Mutazilites – is at times treated like some kind of an abomination to be feared, […]
Roots of Fundamentalism
by Karen Armstrong Excerpt from The Battle for God (published 2000) by Karen Armstrong. There have always been people, in every age and in each tradition, who have fought the modernity of their day. But the fundamentalism that we shall be considering is an essentially twentieth-century movement. It is a reaction against the scientific and […]
Reform and Rent-Seeking
The News – Sunday, May 24, 2009 Nadeem Ul Haque The elite — beneficiaries of government largesse, power-brokers, in other words rent-seekers- all do not see any reason for change. They are begging for money to forestall change. With dollar assets held abroad, rupee liabilities at home, and foreign passports conveniently hidden, they have no […]
No-woman’s land
By Syed Moazzam Hai DAWN – Sunday, 17 May, 2009 On an oppressive August afternoon, I was chattering away with a farmer while trudging through a rice crop to a humble dera nestled quietly under the calm shadows of a cluster of trees at the far end of the fields. I was in Sheikhupura area […]
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Secular Pakistan 
November 7, 2010 by Shahid
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