Marriage venues

THE wedding season has just passed, and it was horrendous to note the increasing use of school grounds and public property as marriage venues. I would especially like to draw attention towards such blatant misuse in the area of North Nazimabad, Karachi, where school grounds as well as the Eidgah ground were consistently used to host wedding receptions.

This not only deprives the average citizens of adequate recreational activities, it also becomes a grave inconvenience for the residents of the area concerned. I would appeal to the authorities to take urgent steps to prevent such misuse in the future.

Discrimination

The Karachi University Academic Council has decided to reserve seats for A Level students rather than allowing them to seek admission on open merit. This will deny admission to many deserving students wishing to study natural sciences, visual studies and humanities.

Given that the decision came barely a month before admissions to Honours and DPharm classes, many students who passed their A Level examinations this July and have been waiting for the KU admissions will lose a year since several higher educational institutions admit students in August.

Gender Action Reform Plan

THE approval of the gender action reform plan initiated with the assistance of the ADB is no doubt a welcome step as far as elimination of gender discrimination at workplace and more facilities for working women are concerned.

However, what is disturbing about this plan is the absence of certain issues. For instance, what if a woman doesn’t want to work in an office? Shouldn’t some kind of law make it compulsory for her brother/husband/father to ensure that she is well provided for? What about those cases where women are forced to work by the male members of the family? Shouldn’t reforms be initiated to penalize such male members?

Writing skills

With reference to the article “Steps to Good Writing” I’d like to add a few pointers to those who aspire to contribute, freelance to different magazines and newspapers:

1) It is always advisable to discuss your ideas with the editor of the publication first. It may happen that you do extensive research and write a really good article only to find out that it isn’t really the type of stuff that that particular publication publishes. So unless a publication specifies that it will never reply personally to emails, you can send in a brief outline of your article and start working only if the editor approves it.

2) Make sure that you read various magazines/newspapers before submitting anything to them — this will give you a very good idea as to the kind of stuff they publish, the different sections they have, their guidelines and most importantly, the address/email address to which you have to send in your work. Some publications have different email addresses for different sections and if that is messed up, your contribution will never be read.

3) When you are sending your article as an attachment it is always a good idea to specify in the body of the email: the title of your article, and the section of the publication for which you think that article is suitable. An editor once pointed out to me that they are a bit wary of opening attachments so if you take care of these little details there is more of a chance that your attachment will be opened and read.

Death penalty

THIS is with reference to the article The Ultimate Penalty, (July 13).

The writer seems very emphatic in suggesting that the capital punishment should be abolished in Pakistan, since it is doing more harm than good.

He also emphasized that our impaired justice system sends more innocent people to their deaths, rather than those who are really responsible.

I would like to stress here that if the justice system is impaired and misusing capital punishment, abolishing the latter will do nothing to improve the justice system.

If capital punishment in our society fails to deter criminals, then isn’t it the fault of the law enforcement agencies rather than the law itself?

Capital punishment has been clearly permitted in the Holy Quran in the following verse: “We ordained therein for them: Life for life; eye for eye; nose for nose; ear for ear; tooth for tooth; and wounds equal for equal.

“But if anyone remits the retaliation by way of charity it is an act of atonement for himself. And if any fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) wrong-doers.” Surah Al-Maidah; Ayah 45.

We, as the citizens of an Islamic republic, should not be questioning those laws in our constitution, which are in conjunction with Allah (SWT)’s rules.

To suggest that capital punishment should be abolished because the justice system is impaired, is analogous to throwing away the apples when we know that it is the oranges which are rotten.