Posts Tagged women

Without civil service reform, devolution of policy setting will be unachievable and the current reform may just not achieve its intended purposes

On July 1, 2011, the third phase of redistribution of federal powers and functions was completed whereby 7 federal ministries now stand devolved. These include Ministries of Health, Food and Agriculture, Labour and Manpower, Environment, Women Development, Sports and Minorities affairs. Earlier, ten ministries were devolved to the provinces with the abolition of concurrent list under the 18th Amendment.

Implementing the 18th Amendment: The process has been fraught with political bickering between the Centre and the Provinces and resistance by powerful groups, which are beneficiaries of a centralised Pakistan. However, these political and administrative contests have not undermined the process of devolution. A major factor in negotiating this transition has been the role of Mian Raza Rabbani who heads the Implementation Commission for the 18th Amendment to the Constitution.

Most significantly, the political parties have shown their willingness to work together in achieving the intended results of provincial autonomy related clauses. Having said that, the real test of the elected civilian governments has just begun. Large scale restructuring of the federal government and transfer of new functions to the provinces implies that there is much more needed than executive notifications and political rhetoric.

Beyond executive notifications: Four challenges are of urgent importance. First, to ensure that devolution process is completed and not truncated or manipulated to suit the ends of the political parties. At the same time the regulatory capacity of the state, already weakened over decades, must not be diluted during the transition. Secondly, the corresponding institutional capacities are also devolved to the provinces and where missing, the Centre should advise and facilitate institutional strengthening. Thirdly, a civil service reform is required to achieve the responsive and citizen-oriented governance — the larger goal of the 18th Amendment. Finally, decentralisation of provincial powers is also needed and the local government system should be reintroduced. Unpacking and addressing these four imperatives is now an urgent responsibility, which the federal and provincial governments cannot absolve themselves of. (more…)

By Raza Rumi

Pakistan’s existentialist crisis is no longer a strictly Pakistani issue. Its potential repercussions have emerged as a cornerstone of global debates on regional stability and international concerns on terrorism and nuclear proliferation. The clichés on Pakistan’s disintegration and meltdown have also been done to death in the international media and policy brigades across the world. Perhaps, what the world has not yet fully comprehended is that Pakistan is essentially a transitional country where the old order is crumbling, giving way to a newer society that is grappling with geostrategic compulsions, domestic violence and a post-colonial state which refuses to realign its structures and priorities to a ‘new’ Pakistan.

To begin with, never in Pakistan’s history have so many women been active in the public spheres: from higher education to the workforce and from subaltern resistance movements to national politics. The two leading public sector universities i.e. the Karachi and Punjab Universities respectively, cater to a majority of female students. It is no coincidence that women parliamentarians are far more active in the national assembly and senate and not even shy of resisting patriarchy and clergy in their public roles. Increasingly, urban Pakistan is shedding its traditional conservatism by creating space for women’s inclusion in the media, and other segments of the services sector (also the largest contributing chunk of the GDP). (more…)

Came across this interesting abstract of a paper entitled Beyond division: Women, pilgrimage and nation building in South Asian Sufism authored by Pnina Werbner. Can’t wait to read it.
Unlike other religious movements, Sufi orders rarely preach ideologies of either nationalism or religious nationalism. Sufi annual pilgrimages and festivals are open and inclusive: they cut across provincial and even national borders. They gather followers traversing vast distances across the entire country to the order’s centre. This feature of movement in and across space, and of gendered, ethnic, regional and caste mixing, the paper argues, creates networks of devotees criss-crossing Pakistan, connecting villages, workplaces and large organisations. Pilgrims come together in amity, and in doing so create the grounds for nation building. Women take an active part in these pilgrimages and celebrations, and visit the lodge as supplicants seeking help for a variety of afflictions. In connecting people and spaces across the whole of Pakistan, rich and poor, men and women, Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans, Baluchis and Muhajirs, Sufi orders thus reach out beyond the local to create the performative and embodied experience of moral relations between strangers, arguably the essential pre-condition and grounds of nationhood, without explicitly articulating ideologies of nationalism or of a global.

Fearless and a formidable fighter, Asma Jahangir personifies the struggles Pakistanis have initiated against shameful cultural practices, discriminatory legislation and executive excess. A frail woman has kept the torch of public liberties, freedom and democracy alive for decades. Born on January 27, 1952, in Karachi, Asma Jahangir during the last forty years has become a champion of women, child and minority rights and in many ways the conscience of Pakistan.

A leading Pakistani lawyer and an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Jahangir is most renowned for her role as a human rights activist, a role which has made her confront military dictatorships of General Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf and the civilian autocrats. In 1972, Asma Jahangir was only 18 when she filed her first petition to have her father — who had been arrested for denouncing the genocide in Bangladesh — released from prison. In a landmark judgment ten years later, she won the case. In fact, the earliest and perhaps the only judgment against a military coup is now attributed to her name. Her resistance to army’s role in politics (more…)

Yasmin Qureshi, a barrister in the UK, is one of the few Muslim women of Pakistani origin to have entered the British Parliament. Despite the overall inconclusive results of the election, Qureshi’s election is most delightful.

YQ has been an old friend and colleague in the United Nations. Her integrity and competence were well-recognised across . This time the constituents of Bolton East have noted that by voting her in as their representative. I remember that YQ was also outspoken, confident and quite passionate about her beliefs.

Well done YQ and viva democracy – even in times of terror and Islamophobia, democratic process has the ability to undo and trash the media cultivated myths.

This is why we need more democracy in Pakistan to correct the ills of the current electoral system.

Thanks to Isa Daudpota  who sent me the text and the translated poems after he had heard Kamila Shamsie talk about her..

Fahmida Raiz, who graduated from Sindh University and married in 1965, has published several volumes of poetry. During the Martial Law regime she was editor and publisher of the magazine, Awaaz. In all, fourteen court cases of sedition were filed against the magazine, one of which (under section 114A) carried a death penalty. She escaped to India whilst on bail, with her husband and tow children, where she lived for seven years. She worked as Poet-in-Residence at Jamia Millia, an Indian university, during this period.

She has translated Erich Fromme’s Fear of Freedom and Sheikh Ayaz’s poetry, from Sindhi into Urdu. Since the restoration of democracy she has returned to live in Pakistan and served as Director General of Pakistan’s National Book Council in Islamabad when Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party was in power. (more…)

On Khalwat, Misyar & Mutaah

By Syed Akbar Ali

In Malaysia we frequently read reports of Muslim couples being arrested for the offense of committing ‘khalwat’ or being in ‘close proximity’ to each other. For the benefit of all thinking humans it is best that we explain a little what is meant by ‘Muslim couples’ and what is meant by ‘khalwat’ or close proximity.

For the purposes of  khalwat a ‘couple’ refers to  a man and a woman who can lawfully get married to each other. The word used to describe such a couple is ‘not muhreem’.  ‘Muhreem’ is derived from the Arabic word ‘raheem’ which means womb. (more…)

Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand

Muslim family laws have for long been—and continue to be—a hugely controversial subject. Critics contend that these laws seriously militate against basic human rights, especially of women. On the other hand, conservative ulema and Islamist ideologues hail these laws as the epitome of divine justice and refuse to consider any changes therein. (more…)

Much has been made of this NYT article on the class inequalities in NWFP that are fuelling the Taliban movement. However, I would like to ask where in Pakistan class inequalities do NOT exist. They are everywhere. By using this argument then the Taliban takeover becomes a natural conclusion as a social revolution is required everywhere to correct the exploitative structures and provide ‘speedy justice’. Therefore, our political class has to rise to the occasion and provide the kind of leadership, delivery against their manifestos and restore the fading writ of the state. (more…)

I have been quoted in this brave piece of reporting:

Girl’s flogging exposes Pakistani rift

Salman Masood (writing for The National)

ISLAMABAD // The video of a teenage girl being whipped in public by the Pakistani Taliban has riveted the country and has highlighted an ideologically strained and divided society faced with the growing threats of Talibanisation and extremism, analysts say.
The video, broadcast last week on Pakistani television and widely posted on the internet, showed a 17-year-old from the Kabal area of the restive Swat district. The Taliban publicly flogged her after she was accused of having an illicit relationship with a neighbour. (more…)

My piece published in The Friday Times

The bombing of Rehman Baba’s shrine is more proof that we are slipping, inch by inch, into an abyss. It is as if the soul of Peshawar, and by extension that of the whole of Pakistan has been scarred by those barbaric bombs and grenades. Among other ironies of the situation, this one stands out: the late Baba was instrumental in disseminating the message of Islam in the Khyber valley and beyond. And today the zealots destroy his shrine for being un-Islamic! A poet of love and tolerance, of amity and forgiveness to be treated in this manner displays how brutal we have become as a society and how fissured our state is. Otherwise a successor of a mighty steel frame, the indigenised state has surely given up to the hordes that are now hell bent on destroying Pakistan.

Rahman Baba was born in 1632 A.D. at Bahadur Kala, a village close to Peshawar. The Pashtuns hold his work in high esteem and his rank in Pashto poetry matches that of Hafiz Shirazi in Persian literature. The simple, down to earth and universal messages of his poetry have been revered by the Pashtuns as well as many adherents of the Sufi creed in South Asia and elsewhere.

In Afghanistan too, Rehman Baba was an icon and his muse was referred to as the ‘heart-beat’ of every Afghan. A friend told me how Saidu Baba, the famed saint of the now destroyed Swat valley, remarked that if the Pashtuns were to pray from a book other than the Holy Quran it would definitely be Rahman Baba’s work. But nothing describes Baba better than what Janes Enveldson had named him: the “Nightingale of Peshawar.” Alas, nightingales do not sing in gardens that have been ruined by long, harsh winters or other cataclysms such as hatred and violence. (more…)

While the ‘easy-white-woman’ stereotype is being reinforced, how can Pakistan become a tourist destination?

Conversing with Charlotte is always a pleasure. She’s original and witty; each encounter with her is memorable – regrettably, the last one for all the wrong reasons. She told me some stories about her visits to Pakistan that left me uneasy, even embarrassed. Charlotte, or CV as I call her, is an international development worker who remains committed to her work in the much-maligned world of development assistance. She has worked through the horrors of east African genocides and actually does something about the poverty and discrimination that we all love to talk about but often ignore. (more…)