Pakistan’s Blasphemy Knife (The Huffington Post)
Posted in Op-Eds on Nov 22nd, 2010
After the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, a white reporter asked Malcolm X in reference to civil rights movement, “You feel however, that we are making progress in this country?” Malcolm responded by saying, “No. You stick a knife into my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that’s not progress.”
Such is the condition of the likes of Asiya Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman accused of blaspheming Prophet Muhammad, facing the death penalty under section 295B of the Pakistani Penal Code. This is the same law that has subject Pakistani Ahmadi Muslims to...
Repeal the blasphemy law (The Express Tribune)
Posted in Letters to Editors, Print on Nov 20th, 2010
BALTIMORE, MD, US: I write with reference to Nasim Zehra’s brave call for repealing the blasphemy law in her article of November 17 titled “Time to repeal the blasphemy law”. General Ziaul Haq enacted this law to legitimise his usurping of power. The result has been that in the decades following its imposition, dozens of members from minority communities have been killed because of the misuse of the blasphemy law. Repealing this statute would earn Pakistan international respect.
Faheem Younus
Clinical associate professor
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Published in The Express Tribune,...
On Veterans Day, contemplating a world without war (The Baltimore Sun)
Posted in Op-Eds, Print on Nov 11th, 2010
On this Veterans Day, I fondly think about my time serving as a physician-in-training at a New York Veterans Administration hospital. The year was 2000. The Gulf War was over. Our national debt was $5.7 trillion. Jobs were abundant. And “Gulf War Syndrome” was the biggest health concern for our veterans.
The VA’s motto always resonated with me: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.” And I tried my best to care for my patients with Gulf War Syndrome, despite the unexplainable complexity of their symptoms — ranging from...
Where are the laws against falsehood? (The Economist)
Posted in Letters to Editors, Print on Nov 11th, 2010
SIR – As a “Muslimerican” I was embarrassed to note a fact in the Transparency International report. The top five most populated Muslim countries, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt, fell under the miserable range of 2.0 to 3.9 and only four out of the 48 Muslim-majority countries made it above 50.
As the Muslim world implements strict laws to ban alcoholism, adultery, or even free speech, one wonders: where are the laws against corruption? The leaders of these countries could learn a thing or two about curtailing corruption from Denmark, New Zealand, or Singapore, which all...
Muslims for Peace (NY Daily News)
Posted in Letters to Editors, Print on Nov 3rd, 2010
Baltimore: As a “Muslimerican,” I find the news of yet another terrorist attack aimed at America repulsive. What is refreshing, though, is the awareness that, as the radicals were planning to attack us, we were mobilizing our youth in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA to take the banner of “Muslims for Peace” to Jon Stewart‘s Rally to Restore...
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