When the East India Company first came to India in 1601, it claimed — through the principle of extraterritoriality — to be governed by its own laws, rejecting lex loci or the local laws of the Mughal Empire and its feudatories. Accordingly, the earliest charters empowered the East India Company to draw up reasonable laws in consonance with the principles of English common law. The charter of 1726 applied the laws of England, in entirety, directly to the East India Company’s holdings in India, namely the towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, and all their residents. English law was applied in these towns not just to the English settlers and traders but all communities, castes and people residing within the boundaries of these towns, without any distinction.
YLH&Co is a Lahore-Pakistan-based full service law firm committed to law and information about the law. The primary practice area of the law firm is internet law, information technology law, telecom law and cyberspace laws and security. Contact: For details contact Mr. Yasser Latif Hamdani, Attorney at Law. Email: yasser.hamdani@gmail.com; or Call: +92 300 555 2232
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Monday, September 10, 2012
The logical result of Blasphemy Law
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
(Published in Daily Times Sept 10, 2012)
The events of the last week may have surprised you. Seeing mullahs falling over one another to declare that Rimsha Masih, the 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl, was innocent of the charge of blasphemy was quite a spectacle in a country no stranger to spectacles. It is not out of a sudden love for justice or humanity that the mullahs have adopted this stance. Khalid Jadoon Chishti’s attempt to drive out the Christians from their locality is just one case where the real motivations have been exposed entirely due to one conscientious muezzin who had the courage and humanity to speak out against this outrage.
A year and a half after the tragic assassination of Salmaan Taseer, it has become obvious to good Muslims of this country that in its present form clause 295-C militates not just against fundamental human rights but also against Islam. They now realise that the worst kind of blasphemy is misusing the name of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) to persecute a minority community when all Muslims agree that he (PBUH) spoke of religious freedom long before it came to be universally accepted as a key principle of liberty.
(Published in Daily Times Sept 10, 2012)
The events of the last week may have surprised you. Seeing mullahs falling over one another to declare that Rimsha Masih, the 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl, was innocent of the charge of blasphemy was quite a spectacle in a country no stranger to spectacles. It is not out of a sudden love for justice or humanity that the mullahs have adopted this stance. Khalid Jadoon Chishti’s attempt to drive out the Christians from their locality is just one case where the real motivations have been exposed entirely due to one conscientious muezzin who had the courage and humanity to speak out against this outrage.
A year and a half after the tragic assassination of Salmaan Taseer, it has become obvious to good Muslims of this country that in its present form clause 295-C militates not just against fundamental human rights but also against Islam. They now realise that the worst kind of blasphemy is misusing the name of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) to persecute a minority community when all Muslims agree that he (PBUH) spoke of religious freedom long before it came to be universally accepted as a key principle of liberty.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Did Jinnah want a secular state?
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
Taimoor Ashraf made a number of patently inaccurate claims, based on a flawed and utterly misdirected rendering of facts about Jinnah, partition and the making of Pakistan. The gist of his convoluted piece was this: Jinnah might have been secular, but did he want a secular Pakistan?
Mr Ashraf claims that Jinnah was not secular because the August 11, 1947 speech was made as a consequence of terrible sadness on his part because of the communal bloodletting. By August 11, 1947, there were communal disturbances, but the communal bloodbath, largely, happened in late August and September. Then he claims that Jinnah was not secular because he was a pluralist. So in other words being ‘secular’ and ‘pluralist’ are mutually exclusive? There are no qualms with the fact that Jinnah’s secularism was more of the British variety than the strict French laicism of Kemal Ataturk. Does that mean Jinnah would have approved of ‘priests with a divine mission’? That incidentally is one of the more famous Jinnah quotes: “Pakistan shall not be a theocracy to be run by priests with a divine mission.”
Taimoor Ashraf made a number of patently inaccurate claims, based on a flawed and utterly misdirected rendering of facts about Jinnah, partition and the making of Pakistan. The gist of his convoluted piece was this: Jinnah might have been secular, but did he want a secular Pakistan?
Mr Ashraf claims that Jinnah was not secular because the August 11, 1947 speech was made as a consequence of terrible sadness on his part because of the communal bloodletting. By August 11, 1947, there were communal disturbances, but the communal bloodbath, largely, happened in late August and September. Then he claims that Jinnah was not secular because he was a pluralist. So in other words being ‘secular’ and ‘pluralist’ are mutually exclusive? There are no qualms with the fact that Jinnah’s secularism was more of the British variety than the strict French laicism of Kemal Ataturk. Does that mean Jinnah would have approved of ‘priests with a divine mission’? That incidentally is one of the more famous Jinnah quotes: “Pakistan shall not be a theocracy to be run by priests with a divine mission.”
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