Saima Sher Fazal

On our way to holistic Communication for unity and integration : Body language, words, images and sounds are the most basic modes of communication we use in daily life to interact with fellow human beings. Unfortunately modern technology has lessened our utilisation of these natural media and we rely more on artificial media which were merely supposed to facilitate and not replace the natural media. Artificial because a picture or a video of an event, place or person is never free of a focus and is not the actual event, place or person! That focus is magnified by facilitating modern media taking the freedom of interpretation away from the receiver and ultimately putting it in the hands of those controlling the focus. When these artificial media produce content for the masses its actually only a way to produce focus. As McLuhan rightly pointed out that : “The medium is the message” We are fed with thoughts that might not have anything to do with our area of action. Disrupting

Biases; rejection, isolation or acceptance? A natural sense of justice demands that there should be some measure or method to deal with our biases. We all have biases and are never rid of them. Old biases only shape into new ones or are moulded into new ones with learning and growth. Usually biases are considered as something opposing justice or equity but if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture it is these very partialities that define us and our existence. Sometimes these biases grow so much that they begin to impede the rights of others, this is why it is very important to have a criterion or a methodology to deal with them. Islam offers us the most realistic and practical criterion. None other is as easily applicable. The Quran is literally the Furqan as Allah ji himself states in the Quran. It takes our biases and moulds them without complete rejection. It puts us on a journey. This is what justice and equity is actually about in this world. A journey of self r

“We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” C. S. Lewis The Muslim Woman today needs to ask herself what does progress mean to her and how will she define it.  Will she accept the contemporary definition of progress offered to her or will it be a more natural consequence of her own journey? The contemporary standards against which female progress is gauged like ‘gender parity’ and ‘gender equality’ are far from becoming a reality any time soon. Given the condition of women all around the world, it would be foolish to claim that getting more jobs, earning more money, getting a degree, climbing mountains or even travelling into space is the sort of human progress we should be pressing for when ‘female objectification’ throughout international media is constantly perpetuating “violence against women’ and is shaping male and