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Afiya Shehrbano
Afiya Shehrbano

  • April 26, 2016

    Down in the weeds

    I only watch movies on airplanes. A few years ago, despite not being a...

  • April 15, 2016

    The murky middle ground

    The Islamists in Pakistan are not impressed by sympathetic...

  • March 26, 2016

    Resisting the murder of democracy

    It feels like it’s 1999 again. Gen Musharraf did it then and like...

  • March 10, 2016

    Does analysis mean dumbing down?

    There are two broad-brush conventional opinions about knowledge and...

  • March 03, 2016

    The Hollywoodisation of issues

    One can be cynical of the chauvinism that comes with patriotism and...

  • January 28, 2016

    The gift of Zia – keeps on giving

    In his original article on these pages , Feisal Naqvi invited us to...

  • December 21, 2014

    Taliban Stockholm syndrome

    The calculated massacre of schoolchildren by the Taliban in Peshawar began as a hostage situation. B

  • November 16, 2014

    The PTI’s hatred for all

    Politicians commonly attack their opponents because at the end of the day, they have to compete agai

  • September 23, 2014

    Questions and answers

    In 2006, a triangular debate over democracy in Pakistan was published in these oped pages. S Akbar Z

  • August 19, 2014

    The boiled-egg revolution

    Surely, the conscience of this nation lies with our moral angels, the TV anchors and hosts of talk-s

  • August 06, 2014

    The moral base of conflict

    As the Israeli war machine targets and systematically mows down Palestinian children, global observe

  • July 23, 2014

    Sex crimes - dare we compare?

    In both the Shakti Mills gang-rape cases, the Mumbai police and crime branch were committed to what

  • July 22, 2014

    Sex crimes - dare we compare?

    Part - IAny effort at a comparative analysis between postcolonial and post-Partition progress in

  • June 17, 2014

    The limits of protest

    The spectacular protests around the current World Cup in Rio offer an important lesson for the IOC,

  • June 06, 2014

    Beyond sound and fury

    Part - IIIt is worth asking what distinguishes west-based Pakistani academic-activists from the

  • June 05, 2014

    Beyond sound and fury

    Part - INot beyond military rule: Gen Musharraf’s greatest contribution to Pakistan has not been

  • May 08, 2014

    Compatriots not patriots

    This is not an article about Imran Khan or the PTI (So, Insafians are requested to disarm all social

  • April 26, 2014

    Censorship: between conservatives and liberals

    Even after the remand and continuing trial of Gen Musharraf, few believed that the days of military

  • March 27, 2014

    Fear of liberal politics

    The offended Moeen Cheema takes exception to my criticism of the scholarship produced by him and his

  • March 16, 2014

    The crisis of an ideology

    It’s really quite unfair. The Council of Islamic Ideology is facing considerable criticism for

  • January 31, 2014

    The politics of the dead

    Several human rights activists in Pakistan have observed the ‘double jeopardy’ that enables the syst

  • December 31, 2013

    The worth of a picture

    The images of Imran Khan and other PTI men administering polio drops to children in Khyber Pakhtunkh

  • December 20, 2013

    Reinventions of 2013

    2013 had been predicted to be a year of change, transition and even closure in Pakistan. Apart from

  • November 15, 2013

    Will the end of conflict mean peace?

    The decade-old debate of whether the conflict in Waziristan is ‘ours’ or ‘theirs’ has intensified si

  • October 24, 2013

    Waar-ing us softly

    One would agree with those who argue that it is completely irrelevant whether the ISPR funded the re

  • October 04, 2013

    Is the PTI a tea party?

    Some years ago, I found myself as the only woman on a planeload of PML-N men travelling from Quetta

  • September 25, 2013

    Faith-based failure

    In the wake of the mass murder of Christian worshippers in Peshawar, there will follow the predictab

  • September 19, 2013

    Women against ‘gang war’

    Criminal designs, collusion and mistrust: The sisters of Ibrahim and Shoaib, the murdered activists

  • September 18, 2013

    Women against ‘gang war’

    A material and symbolic battle: The graffiti along the entrance walls of the Hingorabad goth of Lyar

  • July 24, 2013

    Permanent victimhood

    Politically speaking, Malala’s gravest error was to survive the attack by the Taliban gunmen who sho

  • July 07, 2013

    Lessons from the Brotherhood

    Surely Nawaz Sharif is empathising with fallen President Morsi of Egypt to some extent. Some aspects

  • May 19, 2013

    Make politics ordinary

    Those who care for historical comparison may note that in 1988, General Zia’s children of dictatorsh

  • April 30, 2013

    Ignorant goodwill

    This article has not been sponsored by any infidel government or agencies such as Mossad, the CIA or

  • March 15, 2013

    A worthier adversary

    The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi, with a background in women’s studies and has authored

  • January 19, 2013

    Tahir and Tahrir

    Of all the claims made by various political leaders, from the avengers of democracy to the forecaste

  • November 28, 2012

    Anti-heroes of Pakistani liberalism

    A dinner-table conversation on political liberalism seems to have caught the imagination of neophyte

  • October 16, 2012

    Murder by an abstraction

    Condemning the assassination attempt on Malala’s life but not naming the perpetrators - Taliban - is

  • October 03, 2012

    Gender and the politics of slander

    Over the last five years, as Pakistan faced its most critical challenges in the realm of foreign rel

  • April 25, 2012

    The trouble with the politics of tsunami

    There was a time when PTI founder Imran Khan used to harbour doubts over the compatibility of democr

  • April 14, 2012

    Do we need solutions?

    According to many Pakistani analysts, the answer to our fiscal and political problems is to emulate

  • April 03, 2012

    Exceptional in death

    The dead body of ‘dancing girl’ Shabana, mocked with currency notes strewn across it at Khooni Chowk

  • February 14, 2012

    A city of three tales

    In Karachi, any reference to the ‘other side of the bridge’ is usually a euphemistic allusion to soc

  • November 21, 2011

    Shutting the doors?

    A few months ago, the National Commission on the Status of Women , chaired by the seasoned wom

  • November 18, 2011

    Perils of a new liberalism

    If Gen Musharraf should be tried and punished for anything, it should be for the crime of co-opting

  • October 06, 2011

    The geometry of reason

    In his article ‘Dealing with non-linear reason’, Mosharraf Zaidi grapples with how democratic states

  • August 29, 2011

    The politics of anti-secular scholarship

    The lack of academic debate over the role and place of religion, Islamist politics and secularism in

  • August 03, 2011

    Dangers of cultural revivalism

    The PM recently made statements to encourage what he called, ‘cultural revival as a means to counter

  • July 02, 2011

    Is devolution too dull?

    One of the most forceful influences of globalisation has been the free-flow of information. This in

  • March 21, 2011

    No honourable exception

    It is quite understandable that the Jamaat-e-Islami, Imran Khan and the likes consider the acquittal

  • January 26, 2011

    Strategic surrender

    Every time there is a political crisis, civil society activists in Karachi become conflicted over ‘s