Gender Bias in Pakistan

The uproar created by the hard-line Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) party, in response to a bill regarding women's rights, clearly highlights the fact that gender bias is alive and well in Pakistan. The bill, introduced in November 2006, sought to give greater inheritance rights to women, create a path for legal action against spurious divorces, and to criminalize widespread cultural practices that discriminate against women. Some of the current practices that the MMA wishes to uphold include the following.

1.Inheritance Laws

According to the Qur'an, women receive half the property that men do in inheritance law. In Pakistan, most women are expected to give up even their half share of property to their brothers out of "respect," but in rural society it means that basically gets NO share of the inheritance. Many people will argue that getting a half-share of property is better than getting no share of property, which may have been the common practice regarding women in pre-Islamic times.

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The Role of Silence in Corporate Prayer

For the past several years I have been an active member of different Christian sub-cultures in New England. Silence has an important place in corporate gatherings of prayer and worship, and extended periods of silence tend to be comfortable whereas they would tend to be awkward in most other settings. There are three exercises in prayer that seem to have distinct uses of silence: meditative prayer, prophetic prayer, and intercessory prayer.

"But the LORD is in his holy temple;
let all the earth be silent before him."
Habakkuk 2:20

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Moving Abroad and Hiring a Maid

To most Americans, the idea of having house help is a luxury. But in many developing countries, anyone who can afford to will keep at least one domestic helper. Many households have several paid servants. There can be a maid, a nanny, a cook, a driver, a gardener, an errand boy, and a guard all working full time in the same house. If you're an expatriate living overseas and most upper and middle class families in your host country employ house help, you'd probably be best to do the same.

When I first came to South Asia, the idea of having a maid was not something I liked. I thought, "I can do it all myself, just like I do when I'm in America." Well in America we have washing machines. We have dryers. We don't need to iron our clothes every day. We might even have a dishwasher. We certainly do not have as generous a helping of dust as Asian countries have. Living overseas our house needs to be dusted, swept and mopped every single day. I was spending hours a day washing clothes in buckets and attempting to iron them in the 120-degree heat. I finally gave in and hired someone to help.

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AIE Summer Classes

Here's me with two of my language improvement program students.

Coping with Pakistan's Energy Crisis

As power cuts are getting worse and worse I've had to think of creative ways to beat the heat.

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