Skip to main content

10 reasons why I don't want Shari'ah in Pakistan

  1. Religion and how I choose to practice it is my business and not that of the State. 
  2. Enforcing Shari'ah will not make me a better Muslim nor will it make Pakistan a welfare state. The world's welfare states are all governed by secular governments. 
  3. I reject the idea that Shari'ah in any form can be enforced by those who have raped and plundered my country, blown up schools and mosques and beheaded soldiers. I will not give these criminals the right to dictate to me. 
  4.  I will not give up my civil rights, including freedom of thought and expression, under the guise of Shari'ah. 
  5.  I stand against acts like wife beating and the premise that rape requires 4 witnesses, all of which can be justified under Shari'ah law. Virtually anything can be justified by quoting religious scripture, and the context or interpretation of quoted text is usually not questioned. An example is a heinous crime like the Peshawar church blast being declared "in accordance with Shari'ah" by the TTP. 
  6. I abhor the notion that under Sharia law the State will be classifying its citizens into those who practice Islam and those who don't. There should be NO minority, and NO majority, everyone should be equal citizens with equal rights under the law. 
  7.  I believe that draconian laws under the guise of religion will push Pakistan back socioeconomically and isolate it from the rest of the world. This must not be allowed to happen. 
  8.  Imposing religion in a country that is already torn apart by religious extremism and sectarianism is like adding fuel to the fire.The criminals who are demanding Shari'ah are the ones who have taken responsibility for sectarian killings across the country. 
  9. We live in a modern world that uses rational thinking, information and science to frame laws which don't necessarily derive inspiration from religion or religious text. These laws can be amended according to the will of the people. Laws based on religion take away the freedom to choose, criticise or amend. An example is the relegation of scientific and forensic evidence as secondary in cases of rape. 
  10. 10. I believe the actual reason for the demand for Shari'ah is to simply grab power and territory under religious pretense. I will not give up any part of my country to anyone for any reason.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fanna

The movie, Fanaa, starts with Kajol saluting the Indian flag and this act sets the tone for the entire movie: of Kashmiris being patriotic Indians, of an Islamic movement being thrust upon them. If all Kashmiris were patriotic Indians, there wouldn’t be the need of 0.7 million troops to ‘control them’ and a movement can not be thrust upon a people until and unless they are ‘fed up’ of the present regime. Kajol is a part of Independence day celebrations choir representing Kashmir. Her parents see her off in Udhampur. So desperate to get some Kashmir in the movie, the movie makers made another mistake: Kashmiris never (almost) travel from Udhampur to Delhi on a train. The most convenient route is by bus to Jammu and onwards to Delhi. For a non Kashmiri, it does not seem to be a significant mistake. But, a Kashmiri will look at this scene and wonder how long it will take for India and Indians to understand him.

How to send mail from Ubuntu Server

We have our own in-house dedicated web server at our company running Ubuntu Server 13.04. Recently we upgraded most of our websites to the content management systems and added the functionality of user interaction and eCommerce. We wanted to have email notification whenever a contact form or new eCommerce order is submitted. I tried a number of ways to enable send mail functionality on the Ubuntu web server but I am going to share here the simplest and easy way of doing this; From Ubuntu Server Terminal windows; Install ssmtp: sudo apt-get install ssmtp Edit the ssmtp config file : nano /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf Enter the following contents in the file; root= username@gmail.com mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:465 rewriteDomain=gmail.com AuthUser= username AuthPass= password FromLineOverride=YES UseTLS=YES Replace the username and password with your Gmail or Google Apps details. Save the file and exit nano editor. You are done ! Now to test that everything is working fine. In