Ali Eteraz at his eponymous blog:
The editor of a leading Pakistani think-tank advocating equity, fairness and gender equality in Pakistan’s Islamic Laws has been shot in the mouth. The Daily Times reports:
LAHORE: Al-Mawrid Research Institute’s monthly magazine Ishraq’s editor Manzoor-ul-Hassan was shot on Wednesday night by unidentified men in front of the Al-Mawrid building in Model Town Extension, sources told Daily Times.
Hassan was walking alone in front of the building at around 9pm on Wednesday night when two unidentified men on a motorcycle shot him in the mouth. Hassan survived but is reportedly in a critical condition.
As we speak, as you sit in your chair, connected to the vast outside world something immense, and like all immense things, something uncontrollable, is happening in Pakistan. The setting is a combustible South Asian nation. The battle is for the equality of Muslim women and simple human dignity. The war within the Law of God has become a war between Violence and Reason. One speaks with the authority of bullets and flame; the other through the authority of pamphlet and humility.
More here.