Entries Tagged as ‘Law’

April 27, 2008

Was it like this for the Irish?

posted by kinkminos
In a recent piece in the London Review of Books, Gareth Peirce, a celebrated civil rights lawyer in Britain, compares the current plight of British Muslim “terror” suspects with that of their Irish counterparts during the latter part of the last century. In it she recounts a number of high and low profile [...]

April 19, 2008

HRCP report on the Karachi carnage of May 12

HRCP’s report on May 12, 2007 violence in Karachi
The aftermath of the events of May 12 has been filled with recrimination and bitterness. There were mutually conflicting claims about responsibility and culpability, and attempts at initiating processes of legal and political accountability. This report does not presume to pre-empt or anticipate the outcomes of the [...]

April 18, 2008

HRCP welcomes the ratification and signatures of three core UN human rights instruments by Pakistan

April 18, 2008
 
Karachi: In a statement issued to the press, Iqbal Haider, Co-Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan welcomes the ratification and signatures of three core UN human rights instruments by Pakistan.

April 17, 2008

Monkey see, monkey no like

by Feisal Naqvi
Imagine you are a monkey being offered a grape in exchange for pressing a lever. I imagine you would be a happy monkey.

Now imagine you see another monkey who is also being offered goodies in exchange for pressing a lever. Except, that the other monkey gets two grapes for doing what you did.
Back [...]

April 11, 2008

Protecting Pakistan’s Hindus

This is an engaging piece by Ali Eteraz who writes with much intellectual energy and passion. The views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily subscribed by the Pak Tea House.
Hindus in Pakistan have suffered grievously since the founding of the nation in 1947. Recently, in the southern province of Sindh, a Hindu man [...]

March 26, 2008

Those are fighting words in Pakistan

Email Picture

K.M. Chaudary / Associated Press
Prominent Pakistani opposition lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, center, is greeted by lawyers at a rally against President Pervez Musharraf in Lahore. While under house arrest, he did what many of his compatriots do in times of personal and political crisis: He wrote a poem. When restrictions on his [...]

March 20, 2008

No Country for Old Men

by Yasser Hamdani
The great irony for Pakistan, as the country founded by Jinnah, who
was rightly described as one of the greatest constitutional lawyers of
the British Empire by many including former US President Bill Clinton,
himself a lawyer, is that it is still struggling to find its
constitutional heart and soul.  Yet it is fitting that today that [...]

January 9, 2008

Dynamics of Change in Islamic Law (II): Iftaa, Ijtihad and Social Customs

The “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium.
[Marshall McLuhan]
In 1913, Mawlana Ashraf Ali Thanawi gave his famous juridical response to a British court in India. The seeker was a claimant who wanted to re-establish conjugal rights with his wife but his in-laws refused to let her join on the [...]

December 24, 2007

Dynamics of Change in Islamic Law (I): Normative Pluralism

by Aasem Bakhshi
In my view, the most important crisis that Muslim society miserably failed to handle during Islam’s sojourn into modernity is diversity. By diversity, I mean religious heterogeneity in any form, may it be the pronouncement of legal injunctions, opinions regarding societal norms or something as personal as individual religious practices.
Therefore, whether it is [...]

December 7, 2007

Hussein Hallaj: dissent within Islam and the birth of mysticism (part I)

by Shaheryar Ali
I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I.
We are two spirits dwelling in one body.
If thou seest me, thou seest Him
And if thou seest Him thou seest us both
Mansur Al-Hallaj
Two Hussein’s [...]

November 8, 2007

Asma Jahangir’s Appeal

Asma Jahangir, the brave fighter, has sent this message from house arrest in Lahore
Appeal for support to lawyers and judges in Pakistan
I am fortunate to be under house arrest while my colleagues are suffering. The Musharaf government has declared martial law to settle scores with lawyers and judges. Full entry here >>