From alcohol to kites: An A to Z guide to the Islamic Republic of “Banistan”
Through the decades. Pakistan’s state and non-state actors have found a way to regulate, boycott, ban or completely outlaw technology, information, literature, media and even entire communities.
The result? The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, once imagined as a secular, democratic haven for India’s minority Muslim population, may well have become the land of “Banistan.”
Babar Sattar, a Harvard-educated lawyer, is one of “Zia’s Children” – the generation who grew up during the 1970s and 1980s when the culture of forbiddance took root through ironclad legislation passed by the country’s Islamist dictator of the time, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
“The proclivity to ban is the continuing manifestation of expanding religion-driven morality at the expense of personal liberty,” Sattar told NBC News. “We don’t even recognize that there exists a need not to allow collective outrage or shame to pillage individual rights.”
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Please. I was in Karachi during the 90′s; they’d been killing each other over language and ethnicity since the 70′s. If it’s gone badly, it hasn’t been lately.
apostic on December 31, 2012 at 4:30 PM
tom daschle concerned on December 31, 2012 at 4:32 PM
I read that and laughed and then I checked the writer….
Ya can’t figure out the noble Muslims unless one of their own ‘splains it to ya.
BL@KBIRD on December 31, 2012 at 5:06 PM
Lots of bans? Sure. But not all of those listed are oppressive, and several are even quite sensible.
Stoic Patriot on December 31, 2012 at 7:27 PM