Shireen Mehrunnisa Mazari: Imran Khan's right pick for rights job?

Mazari, at the helm of newly created human rights ministry, faces the challenge of ensuring rights of minorities in Pakistan

She is back to doing what she does best: Butting heads. Shireen Mehrunnisa Mazari, Pakistan’s minister for human rights, has strongly criticised the Dutch government for allowing space in that country’s parliament for its leading right-wing opposition, the anti-Islamist Dutch Freedom Party, to hold a competition of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

The cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper in 2005, exacted a terrible price: Rage and anger in Islamic nations culminating in the killing of 12 people in Paris in 2015, following an attack on the Paris office of the French secularist satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.  Within hours of taking over a ministry that has never existed in Pakistan, Mazari slammed the Dutch move as violation of human rights of the Muslims in Europe and called it an example of the western hypocrisy as it infringes the European Con-vention for the Pro-tection of Human Rights and Funda-mental Freedoms, the canons of liberty that European nations are committed to — but selectively.

This is a problematic position to defend. Mazari has taken an oath twice — when she became MP for the second time in 2018 after being elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan first in 2013 — to stay committed to the belief that Mohammad was the last Prophet. But the Ahmadiyyas and other Muslim communities believe that there could be and are, other Prophets. Besides, there is the minority Shia community, which is relentlessly attacked. There is a law of blasphemy in Pakistan to punish those who believe there have been prophets after Mohammed. How compatible this is with the human rights of the minority non-Sunnis in Pakistan is a complex issue, especially as the laws of blasphemy first identified the Ahmediyyas (for example) as non-Muslims only in 1973. Is there a cut-off date for proving that you are a devout and committed Muslim? In 2011, Pakistan People’s Party lawmaker Sherry Rehman realised the inconsistencies in the blasphemy law and the way it is implemented, and lobbied to change it in a bid to make the Pakistani state more aligned to modern ideas of human rights. The move never got off the ground.

But Mazari is not engaging herself in those issues for the moment. She is defining the parameters of her ministry and the kind of work she wants to do. If her past is any indication, much of it will be tussling with adversaries without mincing words. A few years ago, she said British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was being “foolish” for saying the Kashmir issue should not be a precondition for starting a dialogue with India. 

She parted ways with her party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf briefly in 2012 after being served a show-cause notice for making “unfoun-ded, incorrect, inaccurate and false statements” about the party and its chairman. At the time she was the party’s vice-president and local newspapers rep-orted that she felt the party had been hijacked by “big money”.  She returned soon after in time for polls and was awarded a party ticket from a reserved seat for women in the National Assembly. Then she said her misgivings that “big money was taking over the party” were set aside in light of intra-party elections and she had never doubted Imran Khan’s “integrity or commitment”.

Mazari is a fierce fighter for the rights of women. When Marvi Sirmed, a human rights activist, was allegedly assaulted by a leader of the right-wing Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl on a television programme, Mazari took up Sirmed’s cause at half a dozen fora, though politically, the two are poles apart.

What gives her the confidence to be outspoken is her education and vocation: She has a degree from the London School of Economics and a PhD in political science from Columbia University. She is a defence analyst and was on the faculty at Quaid-e-Azam University. She was the director-general of a state-run think-tank and editor of the English newspaper, The Nation.

With Mazari as a minister, Pakistani politics, especially its engagement with other countries is set to become more vibrant, contentious and…well, rude. This is a woman who can can turn up trumps on US President Donald Trump when it comes to plain speaking. She needs to be watched.