Category Archives: Islamisation

Hudood laws must go

Islamisation, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

LAST Tuesday was women’s day in the National Assembly. Four bills directly relating to them were introduced in the house. The most important of these was the one moved by the PPP (Parliamentarians) simply titled the Hudood Laws (Repeal) Bill 2005. The Hudood Ordinances, the most anti-women and anti-social of laws to be placed on the statute book in Pakistan, were never brought before the Assembly.

They were promulgated as ordinances by a military dictator and have from their inception remained anathema to most women and human rights activists in the country. Once the implications of the Zina Ordinance came to the forefront, women rallied round the Women’s Action Forum, which was created in September 1981, to fight this evil law.
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Religion has nothing to do with it

International Politics, Islamisation, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

‘Even the Crusades that have been projected for centuries as religious wars between Christianity and Islam were basically a struggle for the control of trade and territory, financed by the merchants of Venice,’ says Hamza Alavi

AS the active conflict in Iraq draws to a sanguinary close, there is much speculation about the future scenario in the region. Although it is generally accepted that the Americans, with their overwhelming military might, will succeed in subduing Iraq, no one doubts that the country is still nowhere close to peace and stability.
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Hamza Alavi: The activist academic

Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Islamisation, Social Issues

 

By Zubeida Mustafa

Thirty-six years ago Hamza Alavi shot into fame in the academia when he wrote an article in the newly-founded The Socialist Register. He propounded the thesis that the middle peasants were initially the most militant elements of the peasantry and could therefore be a powerful ally of the proletariat movement in the countryside. Since this hypothesis reversed the sequence suggested in Marxist texts — that poor peasants are the main force of the peasant revolution — Alavi became quite controversial.

That is how he has always been — controversial. His thesis labelled the Alavi-Wolf thesis (as it was reiterated by Eric Wolf four years later) is “still alive and kicking and refuses to die”, to use Alavi’s own words. It was still being debated in 1995. “I made a distinction between the Marxist theory and the practical Mao,” Alavi says reminiscently today. Continue reading Hamza Alavi: The activist academic →

How the laws treat the second half

Archive Edition, Human Rights, Islamisation, Law & Order, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

The role of legislation in the emancipation and empowerment of women has been the subject of much debate in discourses on women’s rights. Can laws reform the status of women when society is not prepared to introduce changes? In other words can transformation in the condition of women in a society be brought about through law making rather than the social process? Continue reading How the laws treat the second half →

A scholar and a gentleman

Administration, Archive Edition, Constitution, History, Information, International Politics, Islamisation, Media, Notable Personalities

By Zubeida Mustafa

Has Pakistan been reduced to such a hopeless state that even the most creative and prolific of intellectuals have run out of ideas on how the country can be redeemed? Hopefully not. But a meeting with Professor Khalid Bin Sayeed provided no reassuring answers. It left me wondering how Pakistan will be saved from certain disaster and who will play the role of the savior. Continue reading A scholar and a gentleman →