South Asia

Articles

• Women’s Call to declare Pakistan a secular state
  9 March 2013, by siawi3

  Aurat Foundation has given a suggestion to all political parties of the country to declare Pakistan a secular state besides banning props, campaigns, speeches, laws and policies based on religion to serve their own political ends.

• Bangladesh: ’Why I support Shahbag’
  7 March 2013, by siawi3

  Every sane person should support the Shahbagh movement since it is a rare and difficult movement in an Islamised country.

• The ownership of history is being recovered in Bangladesh
  7 March 2013, by siawi3

  The origins of the present explosion of public sentiment lie in the inadequacy of the steps taken by the post-liberation government against those who had collaborated with the Pakistan army. In the years that followed, military rule saw the whole-sale induction of these elements into the politics of Bangladesh. The Jamaat was allowed to gain in influence and both the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League found it expedient, at different times, to defer to their ‘Islamic’ pretensions. To the dismay of many, people with blood on their hands from 1971 were allowed to fly the red-and-green flag of Bangladesh as central ministers in the BNP-Jamaat coalition from 2001-2006. This was the period when government indifference, if not collusion, brought Bangladesh to the brink of the abyss of Islamic fundamentalism.

• Pakistan: Call for celebrating diversity to promote tolerance
  11 March 2013, by siawi3

  Now, around 300 religious outfits were operating in the country which had militant wings. The KU professor asked whether the state, the government or its institutions were not aware of the activities of these groups.
  “One of the major factors behind growing extremism is decline of the institutions.”

• Int’l Forum for Secular Bangladesh - Pakistan chapter launched to promote peace
  11 March 2013, by siawi3

  Secular humanists of the world should come forward and unite to resist terrorism in the name of religion to ensure peace, justice and humane values.

• Forum for Secular Pakistan launched
  11 March 2013, by siawi3

  Amid relentless chants of Allah-hu-Akbar coming from just yards away, a group of progressive lawyers and social activists launched ‘The Forum for Secular Pakistan’ (TFSP) at the Karachi Press Club. As the conscientious citizens set out their alternative vision for Pakistan in the front-yard of the Karachi Press Club, just outside, a group of protestors had gathered holding posters of Aafia Siddiqui and chanting religious slogans

• An Unthinkable Has Happened in Pakistan: A secular Website has Appeared!!!
  11 March 2013, by siawi3

  Some may want to associate themselves with Islamic culture rather than the religion of Islam.
  “From the age of five or six I was an agnostic, At twelve I became a staunch atheist.... But [Muslim culture] has enriched my life. ... The historian Isaac Deutscher used to refer to himself as a non-Jewish Jew, identifying himself with a long tradition of intellectual scepticism, symbolized by Spinoza, Freud, and Marx. I have ... on occasion describe myself as non-Muslim Muslim.” Tariq Ali.

• Pakistan: Bangladesh’s example: Give secularism, tolerance a chance
  11 March 2013, by siawi3

  Launch of the Pakistan chapter of the “International forum for secular Bangladesh”. Each chapter works with the aim to unite likeminded secular and liberal people in creating a global pressure group to eradicate the menace of religious intolerance and extremism.. While militants and ultra-right wing terrorists around the world are connected to each other, liberal and secular proponents of society remain unaware of each other’s presence and work.

• The practical case for a secular state in Pakistan
  11 March 2013, by siawi3

  The state may enable Muslims to live according to Islamic ideals according to their own interpretation but the state has no business forcing Muslims to live according to Islamic ideals of any interpretation.

• How our generation sees Shahbagh - Khushi Kabir
  11 March 2013, by siawi3

  One of the biggest crimes committed were the rapes, but that has not been given the priority neither by the prosecutors, in the trial, nor the media. The ‘victimisation’ of women during war is a deliberate and patriarchal ‘weapon’ used against those being subjugated. Since this is happening, we don’t know if we will ever witness such a happening again, let us join the movement, raise our slogans, our voices, our demands and this is the time that we can bring feminist and secular demands to a mass uprising.

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