Afrah Jamal

Published Jan 2018? CPEC, doomed to failure, – Kashmir, a raging hotbed of terrorists; the spy caught red handed - a kidnap victim and Islamabad - one step shy of earning the state sponsor of terrorism label. While Pakistan, viewed from the Indian perspective appears to fulfill all the criteria for a rogue nation, India, in the Western eyes looks benign – a paragon of democracy and a champion of human rights. It is anything but. A look at major headlines from both sides’ attempts to reconcile the Indian states’ carefully crafted image of objectivity with reality and debunk the myths peddled ad-nauseum. As the process examines Indian biases that are determined to seek out chinks in the Pak- China relationship and represent CPEC as a threat – that conflate the struggle in Kashmir with global terrorism while projecting failed attempts at cross-border intrusions from their end as successful surgical strikes on Pakistan and goes on to dress the Indian spymaster’s predicament in humani...

First Published in Daily Times / Saturday, August 11, 2012 Republished in AhmadiyyaTimes There was some chatter about a certain coffeehouse this Ramzan on both twitter and facebook. The random post that triggered the wrath had alleged that a posse of females were refused a place to pray en-masse inside the premises. Many agree that little cafes that serve coffee in cramped quarters are not obligated to patronise requests that will inconvenience other customers. Others gleefully scream ‘blue murder’ scrambling to retrieve the Islamic Republic part of Pakistan to bolster their case. Since religion is a contact sport, the new arena was readied for some fireworks. The social media resounded with ‘Down with aforementioned coffee house’ for a few days, offset by a ‘Chalo chalo coffee ke liye chalo’ (Let’s go for Coffee). Was the café in any real danger? Yes. No. It is hard to say. A few hundred irate consumers threatening to stage a sit-in appear harmless. But they cannot guarantee th...

First Published in Daily Times /Saturday, March 17, 2012 Elegiac laments for a fading film industry are interrupted midway with news that could give the documentary film medium at least a new lease of life . It owes its resurrection to a young filmmaker, who mined troubling sound-bytes overheard in theatres where war, injustice or social disparity reigns supreme. Clips aired at the third Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) held earlier this year provided glimpses of her work, including the internationally acclaimed ‘Saving Face’. At the time, she had an Emmy stacked away for one documentary and was just weeks away from winning an Academy Award for another. At the time, she had been relentlessly crusading to rid societies of those anachronistic practices (among other ills) that weigh them down in the modern world. And — despite these glittering credentials — her work was largely unknown amongst Pakistanis. The young Oscar nominee who took the stage that day would soon be the face o...

PUBLISHED IN MUSLIM WORLD TODAY(calif.) SEP 12, 2008 “Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander” Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC Somewhere in the remote region of Baluchistan, a few women are killed and buried, and not necessarily in that order. Their exact number is debatable and the manner of death is still under investigation. If the unofficial version is to be believed, they were buried alive on the whim of the elders, with perhaps just a little backing from some influential quarters. This chilling murder involves antiquated customs which unfortunately, have never gone out of style. To the bewilderment of the civilized world, this incident goes unnoticed for nearly two months. When the Parliaments Upper House finally asks why, Senator Israrullah Zehri, dismissively shrugs it off as ‘Tradition’ – one of the most powerful and disturbing words in tribal culture...

Published in Muslim World Today 14 Aug 09 On 1st August 2009, the illusion of inter-faith harmony was shattered in Gojra, Pakistan when a Muslim mob wreaked havoc on a Christian neighborhood. Lives were lost; property damaged, churches torched. The pretext, as always, was (unproven charges of) blasphemy. The magnitude of this attack and the subsequent notoriety forced the State, preoccupied with fending off a different, more sophisticated version of fanaticism, to finally confront an age old phenomenon - terrorism against minorities. If the timing of this incident is bad, the implication is far worse for a nation anxious to distance itself from the extreme brand of Taliban/Al-Qaeda philosophy, deeply engaged in a bloody battle to rid itself of this malaise. While the wave of violence sweeping through Pakistan indiscriminately claims lives, radicalism and sectarian violence have tainted the land for decades, which is why statements that claim otherwise must be challenged. Conside...