Word: zia
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...about a Princeton grad who grows a beard, quits his fancy New York consulting job and returns home to Lahore after 9/11, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Mohammed Hanif's 2008 novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, based on the 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq, was a finalist for the Guardian first-book award. And Daniyal Mueenuddin's superb In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a sage, Chekhovian collection of tales set in rural Punjab, has been wowing critics since publication in February. Ali Sethi's hefty novel The Wish Maker, set mostly...
Pakistan's blasphemy laws date back to the colonial era. The late military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq introduced a further, harsher clause as part of his sweeping "Islamization" program. Human-rights groups have long appealed to successive governments to repeal or amend the laws. The current ruling party, the Pakistan People's Party, vowed to do so in its election manifesto. As yet, nothing has been done. But presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar says the Gojra tragedy "has increased the urgency of revisiting these laws...
...deeper fear is that the U.N. inquiry may fail to produce results. Both of Bhutto's brothers, Shahnawaz and Murtaza, were killed years earlier in circumstances that remain disputed. Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the dictator who had her father executed and against whom she vigorously battled, was killed in an as-yet unexplained mid-air explosion. And Liaquat Bagh, the park in Rawalpindi where Bhutto had been speaking moments before the assassins struck, is named after Pakistan's first prime minister who was killed there in chillingly similar circumstances to those Bhutto's murder. This time, Pakistanis hope they...
...having tasted power, the army went on to undermine the authority of elected governments and attain a privileged position in the country. Portraying India as the permanent enemy justified the allocation of a huge percentage of national GDP for defence. The army, particularly during the period of General Zia ul-Haq, also engaged in systematic Islamization of the state by bringing in the Wahabi concept of Islam from Saudi Arabia and discarding the more gentle type of Islam as it had grown up and was practiced in the Indian subcontinent. It was, among other things, a determined effort...
...country into deeper chaos or even invite military intervention. In 1977, a movement led by right-wing and religious forces similar to the opposition parties aligned with Sharif brought down the first PPP government, then run by Zardari's father-in-law, and paved the way for Zia ul-Haq to seize power in a military coup...