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Society
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 By Sonia Qadir
Clad in black, the darwaish twirls and twirls on his bare feet, so enthralled, so totally immersed as if he was about to whirl himself to a parallel dimension. A child in rags stands nearby, eyeing him gleefully. His eyes shine: he wants to join in.
A group of women gather around, clapping, singing, laughing, almost in a trance themselves. The shrine of their patron Saint lurks in the background: the perfect catharsis for the wretched, the refuge of the forsaken!
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Politics
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 By Daniel Elton
Claire Sambrook of the End Child Detention campaign has written a lengthy dossier raising concerns over the government’s policy on the detention of the children of asylum seekers. The coalition’s promise to end the practice is pivotal to its argument to represent the ‘progressive wing’ of British politics, but it is more important to the hundreds of children who risk being imprisoned and harmed psychologically and physically as the result of a policy that David Cameron has called a “scandal“.
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Society
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By Nawaz Hanif of Reprieve
On 22nd June 2004 Naheem Hussain and Rehan Zaman were arrested and taken to Dadyal police station, in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. They had been accused of committing two murders in their village – and the police were determined to get a confession.
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Politics
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 By Pervez Hoodbhoy
The Left has always been a marginal actor on Pakistan’s national scene. While this bald truth must be told, in no way do I wish to belittle the enormous sacrifices made by numerous progressive individuals, as well as small groups. They unionized industrial and railway workers, helped peasants organize against powerful landlords, inspired Pakistan’s minority provinces to demand their rights, set standards of writing and journalism, etc. But the Left has never had a national presence and, even at its peak during the 1970s, could not muster even a fraction of the street power of the Islamic or mainstream parties.
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Politics
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 By Murtaza Razvi
The assassination of the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer on Tuesday afternoon in Islamabad by an armed guard reportedly deputed for his security raises the fundamental issue once again: that religious indoctrination is feeding the fires of hatred and intolerance. Although details as to the motive of the crime have yet to emerge, by the very trappings it seems little else but a crime of hate.
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Society
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 By Murtaza Razvi
If it were the year 1947, would the advisor to the chief minister, Sindh, Ms Sharmila Faruqui have rushed to the police station in Clifton as she did two Mondays ago to meet a rape victim only to cast aspersions on the victim’s complaint that she was kidnapped and raped by her assailants?
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Politics
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 By Chris Dillow
These remarks by Jack Straw irritate me:
"There is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men... who target vulnerable young white girls. We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way."
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Politics
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By Sadanand Dhume
Every time you think things can’t possibly get worse in Pakistan, along comes something to prove you wrong. On Tuesday, in possibly the country’s most consequential political shock since the 2007 murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Salman Taseer, the 65-year-old governor of Punjab province, was gunned down in an upscale Islamabad market by one of his police bodyguards. The reason: the governor’s plain-spoken defense of Asia Bibi, an illiterate Christian woman sentenced to death under Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws. According to press reports, Taseer’s killer pumped nine bullets into him for daring to call the blasphemy provision a “black law”.
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Society
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 By Tahmena Bokhari
Like many others, I sat in shock as I read the news of the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, being murdered for supporting the revision of blasphemy laws. If you read any of my work, you know I am a staunch advocate for doing away with these unjust laws and you know that I am in favour of a progressive, liberal and tolerant Pakistan. As I saw the various news reports of so-called leader-spokespersons, who are usually men I might add, using this to further their own agendas, I began to feel very sad.
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Politics
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By Geoffrey Bindman
It is time not only to defend the Human Rights Act but to counter-attack the falsehoods and distortions of those who misrepresent it. Regrettably these include the Prime Minister as well as more predictable elements of the media, particularly the Daily Mail. Furthermore, it is time for Labour to speak up for the Act which it courageously introduced in the face of bureaucratic opposition to enable people to defend their fundamental rights from arbitrary power - including, of course, the despotic power of the press.
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Business and Economy
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 By Paul Rogers
The casualties of 19th-century industrial disasters in northern England and tragedies in Bangladesh and Iraq today are connected by deep economic and political forces - and by an ethical understanding that stretches decades ahead.
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Society
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 By Kamran Shafi
Well, hopefully, what with the obscurantist forces back on the march in an attempt to bludgeon into submission those who advocate the imperative and immediate need of making the blasphemy laws in this country less draconian, less obnoxious; what with the gas loadshedding that makes even cooking a meal an uphill task, let alone heating the house during this cold snap; and what with the power outages, five every day where we live in the Lahore cantonment.
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