Bina Shah on Muck Rack

Bina Shah

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Karachi, Pakistan
As seen in: Medium, The New York Times, HuffPost, The Guardian, The Independent (UK), The Times of India, Goodreads, NPR, Al Jazeera English, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and
Covers:  islam, violence against women, women's issues, women's rights, women and islam, literature, education, the arts, pakistan, society, technology
Doesn't Cover: politics, engineering, sports
Pakistani author of Before She Sleeps and The Monsoon War. Lying in the gutter, looking up at the stars. My new Substack is in testing phase; link below.
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No, Islam Is Not Inherently Misogynistic. Here's Why.

No, Islam Is Not Inherently Misogynistic. Here's Why.

Huffington Post — Junaid Jamshed, Pakistani pop singer turned Islamic preacher, landed himself in hot water when he recently made misogynistic remarks on television. Erroneously trying to prove that women do not have an independent status of their own in Islam, he said, "Hazrat Maryam's (Mary's) name has been solely mentioned in the Holy Quran and that too because of Hazrat Isa (Jesus). Other than that, no other woman's name has been quoted in the Holy book. Also, Allah doesn't like it when a woman's name is mentioned in the Quran." A "Ban Junaid Jamshed" movement sprang into life on social media within hours of the remarks being reported.
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Can Soccer Bring Equality to Pakistan?

Can Soccer Bring Equality to Pakistan?

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - Every Pakistani boy, it seems, has dreamed of becoming a star in one of the country's national sports: cricket, field hockey or squash. But access to sports, like so many other things here, has historically rested on class, gender and privilege; the poorest are denied the same opportunities as the rich, and girls have been left out all but completely. The Karachi United Football Foundation, however, believes that football - the kind Americans call soccer - can bring ethnic, sectarian and gender diversity to Pakistani sports.
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Pakistan, the Next Software Hub?

Pakistan, the Next Software Hub?

New York Times — Pakistan isn't usually considered one of the world's information technology powerhouses; its share of global I.T. sales is only $2.8 billion, of which $1.6 billion represents tech and I.T. services and software exported abroad. This is a tiny percentage of the expected $3.2 trillion global market for 2015, and is dwarfed by India's $100 billion worth of software exports per year. Yet Pakistan's I.T. sector is carving a niche for itself as a favored place to go for freelance I.T. programmers, software coders and app designers. There are now 1,500 registered I.T. companies in Pakistan, and 10,000 I.T.
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How High Can Pakistan's Air Force Women Fly?

How High Can Pakistan's Air Force Women Fly?

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - Flight Lt. Ayesha Farooq, Pakistan's only combat-ready female air force pilot, has become both an international celebrity and a symbol of a new Pakistan, where women are breaking barriers and taking on roles traditionally closed to them. Yet Pakistan is also known as a country where women's place in society yo-yos up and down. For example, in the 1990s it entrusted the leadership of the entire nation to Benazir Bhutto while still resisting girls' education and advances in women's rights. Given this contradictory attitude, how far can Pakistan's female air force officers expect to go? That's hard to answer.
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Pakistan's Loss: A Beacon of Free Thought

Pakistan's Loss: A Beacon of Free Thought

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - In Pakistan, Karachi is known as the City of Lights. Whenever I fly back here and see those lights, my heart jumps happily because I know I'm home. But at the end of April, as I returned from abroad over the ribboning streets, my heart throbbed with infinite loss. Days before, the brightest light in Karachi had been extinguished forever. That light, to me, was Sabeen Mahmud, whom I met in the 1990s, after I returned from studies in the United States. I became the editor of a computer magazine, and was interviewing Sabeen at a multimedia company she had helped start.
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All foreign policy should be feminist foreign policy

All foreign policy should be feminist foreign policy

Quartz — On Mar. 10, Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström announced the cancellation of a 37 million euro arms deal with Saudi Arabia, citing the kingdom's poor human rights record. She singled out the case of liberal blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes from the Saudi government for speaking out against some Muslim clerics. A diplomatic row ensued between the two nations, with the kingdom declaring that Swedes would no longer be issued visas. This in turn drew ire within financial and diplomatic circles in Sweden, which claimed the minister's move would hurt Sweden's foreign standing and financial interests in the world.
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A New Language for Pakistan's Deaf

A New Language for Pakistan's Deaf

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - With one national language, Urdu, four provincial tongues (Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto and Balochi), and nearly 300 regional dialects, Pakistan 's linguistic diversity is like a beautiful carpet, interwoven with threads ancient and young. The regional languages developed over thousands of years, while Urdu came from northwestern India in the 12th century. Then, in 1947, English was made an official language as a legacy of British rule in India. Now a small group of educators of the deaf intends to add one more language - this one not spoken.
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Aiding Pakistan's Mentally Ill

Aiding Pakistan's Mentally Ill

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - After the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar last December, a volunteer team of psychologists and psychiatrists traveled there to provide psychological help to the survivors, most of whom were students. They were the first emergency medical workers responding to the trauma that the children, whether wounded or not, experienced. In their four-day assessment, they uncovered a complex picture of mental health damage that will affect the children, perhaps for the rest of their lives, as well as the parents, teachers, policemen and military officers who were at the scene.
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Pakistan's Competing Narratives

Pakistan's Competing Narratives

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - As a writer and storyteller, my main preoccupation is with narrative - the literary term for a series of events strung together in a linear or nonlinear way. We aim to create a fictional or nonfictional narrative and populate it with people either imaginary or drawn from real life, using language that bends to our wishes as it projects perception and beauty. Now the term "narrative" has been co-opted by those who observe politics and seek to make sense of the real world. Hence the question "What's the narrative?" whenever a major political event unfolds.
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The Legacy of Benazir Bhutto

The Legacy of Benazir Bhutto

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - Seven years have passed since Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister, was assassinated in Rawalpindi, on Dec. 27, 2007. Her legacy and significance in world history continue to hold a special place in the hearts of the millions of Pakistanis who mourn her death as much as they mourn the death of the dream of what Pakistan might have been had she lived to rule the country just one more time. As with that of many political icons, Ms. Bhutto's sudden death left a void in both leadership and inspiration; no politician in Pakistan has been able to fill it.
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Women's Bodies Were the Ultimate Battleground of War-Torn 2014

Women's Bodies Were the Ultimate Battleground of War-Torn 2014

Huffington Post — Posted: When we speak of international women's rights, it's tempting to think of them as a destination -- a large, glittering city that we travel towards, hoping one day to arrive there and find that all has changed in our favor. The denizens of that city, we think, live in perfect harmony, and women and men stand equal in economic, social and political status. Yet like a desert mirage, the more steps we take towards that city, the further it seems to retreat from our view. Things seem grim for women wherever you look.
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Pakistan's sickening massacre isn't about religion - it's about intimidation | Bina Shah

Pakistan's sickening massacre isn't about religion - it's about intimidation | Bina Shah

Guardian — Last week I wept with pride as Malala Yousafzai collected her Nobel Peace prize in Oslo, next to Kailash Satyarthi. The world stopped to listen as she gave her acceptance speech, in which she said: "It is time to take action so it becomes the last time, the last time, so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education ... Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last, let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potentials."
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Flying Feckless in Karachi

Flying Feckless in Karachi

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - It was a scene out of a cinema farce. Pakistan International Airlines Flight PK-370 was scheduled to take off from Karachi to Islamabad early one evening in September, but it had been delayed for two hours - a mechanical problem, the crew claimed. Then a crew member confessed: The plane was waiting for a V.I.P. passenger. When a senator from the opposition Pakistan People's Party, former Interior Minister Rehman Malik, finally showed up to board the flight, passengers mutinied and booed him away from the plane's door.
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A 'Homeland' We Pakistanis Don't Recognize

A 'Homeland' We Pakistanis Don't Recognize

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - When I heard that the fourth season of Showtime's "Homeland" would be set in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I awaited its season premiere with anticipation and trepidation. A major American television show would be portraying events set in my country, but I knew those events would be linked to the only thing that seems to interest the world's eye: terrorism and how Islamist extremism affects Americans and the West. As advertising for the season premiere was heating up, a short essay by an American writer and activist, Laura Durkay, appeared on The Washington Post's website under the headline "Homeland Is the Most Bigoted Show on Television."
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A Letter From Containeristan

A Letter From Containeristan

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - In a Pakistani election, each party is represented by a ballot icon - the Pakistan Peoples Party an arrow, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz a tiger, the Awami National Party a lantern - so that illiterate voters can identify the candidates. It may be only a matter of time before a party adopts the shipping container as the most ubiquitous image of Pakistani politics. After a month of upheaval in Islamabad, the clumsy giant boxes now litter the capital, having been used both as roadblocks to frustrate protesters and as platforms from which to arouse them - and in such profusion that some Pakistanis are calling their country "Containeristan."
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The Fate of Feminism in Pakistan

The Fate of Feminism in Pakistan

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - On Feb. 12, 1983, 200 women - activists and lawyers - marched to the Lahore High Court to petition against a law that would have made a man's testimony in court worth that of two women. The Pakistani dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq had already promulgated the infamous Hudood Ordinance, which reflected his extremist vision of Islam and Islamic law. Now, it was clear to many Pakistani women that the military regime was manipulating Islam to rob them of their rights. General Zia's days are over, and parts of the Hudood laws pertaining to rape and adultery have been superseded by less objectionable clauses in Pakistan 's Protection of Women Act of 2006.
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Want to end sexual violence against women? Fix the men

Want to end sexual violence against women? Fix the men

Al Jazeera — The Global Summit to End Violence Against Women in Conflict took place in London in June 2014, with 1700 delegates from 129 countries and 79 ministers attending, drawing much-needed attention to the problem of women suffering sexual assault in war zones. Yet as I studied the programme's fringe events and followed the coverage in the news, I wondered what exactly a conference in London could truly do, beyond the call to action, to help women in places like Syria, Iraq, or Egypt, where women have suffered systematic rape and sexual assault as a "weapon of war", as summit keynote speaker Angelina Jolie put it.
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Pakistan's New Fear of Flying

Pakistan's New Fear of Flying

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - I had just landed at Jinnah International Airport on July 7, and was walking toward the baggage claim area when I saw the bullet hole. There it was, a single hole in one glass pane, probably from a stray bullet, fired hundreds of yards away. It was the only visible reminder of the firefight on June 8, when members of the Pakistani Taliban invaded the old terminal building where cargo and private flights now operate. Through the night, they fought a pitched battle with security forces that ended with 36 people dead, including the 10 militants.
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DKNY's Ramadan collection shows that Muslim dress means more than the burqa

DKNY's Ramadan collection shows that Muslim dress means more than the burqa

Independent — The collection includes long, flowing dresses, skirts, and jumpsuits; long-sleeved shirts, coats, and even a three-quarters-length leather jacket. The result: outfits that are effortlessly chic, fresh, and elegant, and inspirational for Muslim women looking for ways to be glam and modest at the same time. The fact that this collection has been styled by Muslim women who are professionals in the fashion industry is a brilliant move on the part of DKNY: these women aren't just experts in their field, but they know the context and requirements of the women the collections are aimed for.
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From an Indian Muslim's Brush ...

From an Indian Muslim's Brush ...

New York Times — LONDON - On June 7, a lovely Saturday afternoon, I visited an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum: "M.F. Husain: Master of Modern Indian Painting." The air was redolent with the morning's rain and the scent of blooming grass, the museum garden packed with families, their children in underclothes, splashing in the pool outside. I felt very far from Karachi, my home, where a terrorist attack on the airport would take place a day and a half later; and farther still from the Middle East, where the situation in Iraq would deteriorate into bloody chaos in less than 10 days.
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Boko Haram beyond Nigeria: Girls' education under threat

Boko Haram beyond Nigeria: Girls' education under threat

Al Jazeera — The terrible kidnapping of the 200 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, a Nigerian armed group, has evoked disgust and condemnation from people all over the world. The incident happened more than a month and a half ago, yet nothing has happened to help these girls except for a Twitter hashtag campaign and the reported arrival of a British spyplane in Nigeria to help the Nigerian Army in the search.
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South Asia Is Waging An Undeclared War Against Women

South Asia Is Waging An Undeclared War Against Women

Huffington Post — Posted: Print Article There is an undeclared war going on in South Asia. It's a more important war than the one against terrorism being fought so desperately in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's a more pressing issue than whether or not Pakistan and India will enter into a nuclear race, or whether Pakistan's nuclear bombs can be kept secure. It is the major issue in the region, which, if left unresolved, will result in greater instability throughout the region. It will carry global repercussions as it echoes across the Middle East and Africa.
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The stoning of Farzana P

The stoning of Farzana P

New Statesman — The "honour killing" of a 25 year old pregnant woman brings shame on an entire nation.
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Teaching Liberation to Pakistan's Girls

Teaching Liberation to Pakistan's Girls

New York Times — KARACHI, Pakistan - You can't go a day on the streets of Pakistan without hearing some spectacularly rude words and colorful insults taken in stride, whether thrown in anger at an errant motorist or in banter among friends at a tea shop. But the words "sex education" are different; they release a tirade of moral righteousness from many Pakistanis, who find this the dirtiest phrase of all. These people fear that it means "teaching children how to have sex," rather than educating them about their health and reproductive rights. At least in some parts of Pakistan, though, that is beginning to change.
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