Adil Najam

Salman Taseer – Governor Punjab, businessman, media mogul, PPP leader – was gunned down outside a restaurant in Kohsar Market, Islamabad, by one of his own guards. The guard – reportedly, a Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri – was part of the security Elite Force depute assigned to keep Salman Taseer safe gunned down the Punjab Governor with as many as 27 bullets. Later the guard handed himself to the police and said that he had killed Salman Taseer because of his vocal opposition to the Blasphemy Law.

Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri may have pulled the trigger but let us all hang our head in shame today because Salman Taseer was killed by the intolerance, the hatred, the extremism, the vigilantism, the violence and the jahalat that now defines our society. He was killed by the unchecked abundance of false sanctimony where custodians of morality have been breathing fire and instigating violence. Each one of us, including his own party, should be ashamed today for having tolerated the pall of intolerance that has eventually gunned down this man. Today’s Pakistan is defined by Mumtaz Hussain Qadris. They exist all around us. And it is all of us who tolerate them and their intolerance. It is this tolerance of intolerance that kills.

Today, it claimed yet one more victim.

Adil Najam

I am reminded today of that great sher by that great sage, Jaun Elia:

koun is ghar ki dekh bhaal karey
roz ik cheez toot jati hai

The news is that the MQM has decided to sit in opposition at the Federal level (key word: “Federal level”). Supposedly the JUI is also sitting in the opposition now (although I am still not clear what has happened either with them or their Ministers; but, that, then, is the JUI!). On very rough math – and all math in Pakistan politics is always rough, as is Pakistan politics itself – this means that we now have a minority coalition in government (158 v. 173).

Political speculations and hawaii punditry is all ablaze (when is it not!) and all sorts of conspiracy theories float around. Some are even floating names on new Prime Ministers and at least one person in Mr. Zardari’s close circles seems to be already making a play for the job. Interestingly, no one is suggesting that Mr. Zardari’s job is in peril.

So, what is one to make of all of this. I, for one, make very little. I stand by my view that the government will stay. Certainly Mr. Zardari will, but I think that could still mean the entire government. It may very well and very soon heat up to be something more, but for right now I think these political shenanigans are exactly that. Political shenanigans.

Faris Islam

For too long, the Pakistani workforce – and most aspects of the public sphere in the country – have been male dominated. For those lower economic strata women daring to venture outside the house for work, employment has either been as domestic servants or hidden from the public eye in women-only workshops and businesses. That is now beginning to change.

A recent video and article by The New York Times suggests there are slow signs of change on this front, with more women leaving the confines of their house and taking on highly visible jobs in the service sector, as waitresses, shopkeepers and saleswomen. With inflation continuing to soar throughout the country, these women fight a daily battle against pressures at home, dangers on their commute, aggressive and harassing customers and even unwilling employers as they struggle to feed and provide for their families.