Ziauddin Sardar, 57, is one of the leading contemporary Muslim intellectuals. He specialises in topics dealing with the future of Islam, as well as Islamic science and technology, and has published more than 40 books on related topics. What sets him apart from the rest is his command over the language, which he uses to such a good effect that he could be read as a fiction writer on the merit of his diction alone. For example, in his most widely-read book, entitled Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim, he calls Islamabad "an architectural eyesore".

Sardar has an amazing ability to simplify some of the most complex debates on contemporary Islam. To a cursory reader, he might seem to be stuck amid 'secularism' and 'fundamentalism', but he is not; he just takes the followers of both to task for their various ideological misgivings. It is for this reason that while he unleashed a scathing criticism on Salman Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses, he also opposed the Iranian fatwa against him.

Sardar's basic contention is that each generation must "reinterpret the textual sources in the light of its own experience". Though identifying himself as a moderate, he embraces a willingness to look at the scripture as a product of its time that must be periodically re-examined, lest it lose its relevance for those who love it. This is perhaps the greatest achievement of Sardar, who lives in London with his wife and three children, as both a writer and an intellectual. Excerpts of his recent interview with The News on Sunday follow:

The News on Sunday: Do you agree that many of the problems Muslims are currently faced with have to do with the way Islam is interpreted?

Ziauddin Sardar: We can only have an interpretative relationship with a text, particularly when we regard that text to be eternal. We have been relying on age-old interpretation of the Quran, one that is frozen in history. The context of this interpretation is the context of the eighth and ninth century Muslim societies, when the great commentaries on the Quran were written and Islamic law was formulated. But if the interpretative context of the text is never our context, not our own time, then its interpretation can hardly have any real meaning or significance for us as we are now. Historic interpretations constantly drag us back to history, to frozen and ossified context of long ago; worse, to perceived and romanticised contexts that have not even existed in history. This is why while Muslims have a strong emotional attachment to Islam; Islam per se, as a worldview and system of ethics, has little or no direct relevance to their daily lives apart from the obvious concerns of rituals and worship. So, yes, I do think most of our problems, the problems faced by Muslim communities today, stem from the way Islam is interpreted.

TNS: Is there a fixed essence of Islam? If either case, can you please elaborate?

ZS: Yes and no. There are certain absolute values and conceptual categories such as tawheed, risalah, akhrah, adl that we find in the Quran but beyond that everything else is open to interpretation. The contours of Islam are well established; but what lies within these contours has to be discovered by generations to generations, epoch to epoch. There is a unity within a diversity of interpretations; and no one can claim that their interpretation is more correct than equally valid other interpretations.

One of the worst aspects of contemporary Muslim societies is the essentialising tendencies of some Muslims, the insistence of some people that they know the essence of true Islam and that their interpretation is the only true and correct one and everyone must submit to their interpretation. This is like saying that there is only one way to be a Muslim; all other way of being a Muslim are not only wrong but should be subjugated. This is a totalitarian tendency that can only lead to a totalitarian society. But this outlook is not entirely new to Islam. It has a long history going right back to the formative phase of Islam in the seventh century. It began with the Kharjites who emerged a few decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Kharjites were a puritan sect who believed that history had come to an end after the revelation to the Last Prophet. From now on, there could not be any debate or compromise on any question: the 'decision is God's alone'. They were prone to extremist proclamations, they denounced Hazrat Ali as well as Hazrat Usman, and pronounced everyone who did not agree with their point of view as infidel and outside the law. They also developed a rather narrow and fixed interpretation of what it means to be a Muslim. To be a Muslim, they argued, is to be in a perfect state of soul. Someone in that state cannot commit a sin and engage in any wrongdoing. Sin, therefore was a contradiction for a true Muslim -- it nullified the believer and demonstrated that inwardly he was an apostate who had turned against Islam. Thus anyone who did any wrong from the particular perspective of the Kharjites was not really a Muslim. He could thus be put to death. Indeed, the Kharjites believed that all non-Kharjite Muslims were really apostates who were legitimate target for violence. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other extremist groups are the direct contemporary equivalent of the Kharjites in our time.

There are three aspects of the neo-Kharjite thought that we need to appreciate. First, this tradition is ahistoric. It abhors history; and drains it of all humanity and human content. Islam as a religion, interpreted in the lives and thought of people called Muslims, is not something that unfolded in history with all its human strengths and weaknesses, but a utopia that exists outside time. Hence it has no notion of progress, moral development or human evolution. Second, this tradition is monolithic. It does not recognise, understand or appreciate a contrary view. Those who express an alternative opinion are seen as apostates, collaborators or worse. It also means that there is only one Islam: other interpretations that differ from the neo-Kharjite variety are outlawed. The plurality and diversity of Islam that has existed for the last 1500 years is expunged. Third, this tradition is aggressively self-righteous; and insists on imposing its notion of righteousness on others. It legitimises intolerance and violence by endlessly misquoting the Quran and Hadith. It sees other Muslims as a legitimate fodder for violence and terrorism.

TNS: Is there a need to reform the Shariah? Moreover, is it possible considering there are so many sects and schools of thought within Islam?

ZS: Most Muslims consider the Shariah to be divine. But the only thing that can legitimately be described as divine in Islam is the Quran. The Shariah is a human construction; an attempt to understand the divine will in a particular context. It is juristic law based on the interpretation of the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah at a particular time in history. It was formulated during the Abbassid period and reflects the concerns, the morality and the social circumstances of the period. This is why the bulk of the Shariah actually consists of fiqh or jurisprudence, which is nothing more than legal opinion of classical jurists. The very term fiqh was not in vogue before the Abbasid period but when fiqh assumed its systematic legal form, it incorporated three vital aspects of Muslim society of the Abbasid period.

At that juncture, Muslim history was in its expansionist phase, and fiqh incorporated the logic of Muslim imperialism of that time. The fiqh rulings on apostasy, for example, derive not from the Quran but from this logic. Moreover, the world was simple and could easily be divided in black and white: hence, the division of the world into Daral Islam and Daral Harb.

Furthermore, because the framers of law were not by this stage the managers of society, the law became merely theory that could not be modified -- the framers of the law were unable to see where the faults lay and what aspect of the law needed fresh thinking and reformulation. Thus fiqh, as we know it today, evolved on the basis of a division between those who were governing and set themselves apart from society and those who were framing the law. When we describe the Shariah as divine, we actually provide divine sanctions for the rulings of bygone fiqh.

What this means in reality is that when Muslim countries apply or impose the Shariah, it simply reproduces the conditions of ninth century Arabia. Muslim societies acquire a medieval feel. We can see that in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Afghanistan under the Taliban. When narrow adherence to fiqh, to the dictates of this or that school of thought, whether it has any relevance to real world or not, becomes the norm, ossification sets in. The Shariah will solve all our problems becomes the common sentiment; and it becomes necessary for a group with vested interest in this notion of the Shariah to preserve its territory, the source of its power and prestige, at all costs. An outmoded body of law is thus equated with the Shariah, and criticism is shunned and outlawed by appealing to its divine nature.

I would argue that one of the most pressing needs of contemporary Muslim societies, bar none, is the reformulation of the Shariah. And this reformulation is already happening. In Morocco, for example, the personal aspects of the Shariah has been totally reformulated, and a new family law, called Moudouana, came onto the statue books on October 10, 2003. It is a product of decades of agitation by women, activists and progressive Muslim scholars. Most importantly, it was produced with the full cooperation of the religious scholars as well as active participation of women. The changes it introduced are noteworthy.

The traditional notion of the husband as head of the family has gone. The family has become the joint responsibility of both spouses. The degrading and debasing language previously used in reference to women has been replaced with gender-sensitive terminology. Women's marriageable age has been raised from 15 to 18, bringing it on par with that of men. Women and men now have the right to contract their own marriage without the legal approval of a guardian. Women have the right to divorce; and a man's right to unilateral divorce has been ditched. Verbal divorce has been outlawed. Men now require prior authorisation from a court before they can obtain a divorce. Moreover, husbands are required to pay all monies owed to the wife and children in full before a divorce can be registered. Polygamy has been all but abolished. Men can take second wives only with the full consent of the first wife and only if they can prove, in a court of law, that they can treat them both with absolute justice -- an impossible condition.

Moreover, women can claim alimony and can be granted custody of their children even if they remarry. Indeed, a woman can even regain custody of her children if the courts initially ruled in favour of the husband but the husband failed to fulfil his responsibilities. There is also provision for the child to get suitable accommodation consistent with his or her living conditions prior to the parents' divorce. This requirement is separate from the other alimony obligations, which conventionally consisted of a paltry lump sum. The new law also protects the child's right to acknowledgement of paternity in cases where the marriage has not been officially registered or the child was born outside wedlock. The new law also requires that husbands and wives share the property acquired during marriage. Husbands and wives can have separate estates but the law makes it possible for the couple to agree, in a document other than the marriage contract, on how to manage and develop assets acquired during marriage.

The traditional tribal custom of favouring male heirs in the sharing of inherited land has also been dropped making it possible for grandchildren on the daughter's side to inherit from their grandfather, just as the grandchildren on the son's side. The new Shariah also assigns a key role to the judiciary. Public prosecutors must now be involved in every legal action involving family affairs. New family courts have been set up and a family mutual assistance fund has been established to ensure that the new code is effectively enforced. The reformulated Shariah enshrines the principle that minorities should be allowed to follow their own laws. So Moroccan Jews can be governed by the provisions of the Hebraic Moroccan Family Law. Where Morocco leads, I think, other Muslim countries will follow. Similar attempts are being made in Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey.

TNS: You are against secularism and freedom of expression beyond a certain extent. Isn't it a contradiction considering that you have yourself been the major beneficiary?

ZS: It is wrong to say that I am against freedom of expression. Indeed, as a Muslim I believe in total freedom of expression. But I do believe it should be exercised with responsibility and respect towards all others. Moreover, I am not against secularism -- I believe that the state should be fair and just to all and neutral in matters of religion. But I am against secularism as an ideology -- quite a different thing. As an organised philosophy, secularism has been privileged and has claimed the centre ground, because it has persuaded many of its superior ability to serve the real needs of society. Allegedly, it is the neutral, dispassionate and disinterested outlook which alone is capable of maintaining a peaceful conversation between all the competing voices, factions, interest groups, ideas and ideologies contending in the public space of an increasingly complex and heterogeneous society.

What fits secularism for a dominant role is its trademark: doubt, perpetual doubt that debunks, overturns and interrogates all grand narratives claiming to explain the human condition. The clear implication of secularism is that conviction, convincement of almost any kind, is the product of a closed, unreasoning and potentially irrational, not to say fanatical, mind and hence by implication bad and most certainly a limited and inferior outlook. I do not buy this. And I am against privileging all forms of ideologies. I also believe that religion has an important part to play in the public sphere -- in shaping civic society, in debating issues of ethics and morality, in promoting social justice and in holding corrupt politicians and decision-makers accountable.

TNS: In your view, what could be the broad contours of an ideal Muslim society in the modern times?

ZS: Any society that claims to be Muslim must be based on two cardinal concepts of Islam: adl and ilm. It will be a society where social justice is clearly evident in all its manifestations from distribution of wealth to the care and support of the needy, the marginalised and those on the periphery. It will be a knowledge-based society where science and learning, arts and creativity, are openly thriving. It will also be a society where ijma (consensus) and shura (consultation) are highly valued -- which to me means it would be a thriving democracy, where there is no place for authoritarianism of any kind. And it will be a society where criticism and self-criticism are the driving forces of progress. For me, this much seems pretty obvious.

TNS: How can Muslims contribute to peace in the modern day world?

ZS: Charity begins at home. By becoming peaceful societies themselves! How can we seek peace elsewhere when peace is so conspicuously absent from our own societies. To become peaceful, Muslim societies have to implement the concepts I have mentioned above.

TNS: Contrary to what you seem to believe and project in your writings, isn't Sufism the only ray of hope in these dark times, especially if we take into account the Indian subcontinent's history?

ZS: No. I do not believe that a single way of being Muslim can be a ray of light for all Muslims. As a human community, Muslims have all shades of opinions and views, numerous different ways of being, doing and knowing. I believe in diversity and different and diverse ways of being Muslim, according to the desires, visions and spiritual and material needs of a people. There is immense goodness in Sufism; but it is also an authoritarian system. The very fact that you submit to a Master or a Shaikh means it is hierarchal and patriarchal. Moreover, while mysticism has contributed to thought, philosophy and spirituality, it has never, in history, created a material civilisation. We can't live by spirituality alone! I have no problem with those who chose the Sufi way. But others should be allowed to follow their own way.

TNS: Is The Satanic Verses really an outcome of secularism as you seem to believe? Salman Rushdie criticises the Iranian 'revolution' in his own style, while you do that in your own, especially in Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim. Then why such an opposition to Rushdie, especially if we take into account the fact that there are many books criticising Islam much more explicitly, ranging from Ibn Warraq's Why I am not a Muslim to Robert Spencer's Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam?

ZS: Yes, The Satanic Verses is a product of secularism based on perpetual doubt. I think doubt, as Al-Ghazaali pointed out, is essential for those who believe -- it ensures you do not transcend the human and humane boundaries. But when doubt becomes all there is, then it becomes an oppressive, all-encompassing ideology. There are different ways to criticise. I criticise to reform and change Muslim behaviour and understanding of Islam. Rushdie criticises Islam to destroy it. The Satanic Verses has deliberately rewritten the seerah in a denigrating and abusive way to demonstrate that the life of the Prophet is only a myth; and like all myths it is dispensable. I cannot believe any believing Muslim would not object to this. But there are also other differences in our criticism. You can criticise Desperately Seeking Paradise any way you like: I may or may not accept your criticism, but I will not suggest that, because you are critical of my book, you are somehow an irrational barbarian.

The Rushdie affair had no place for reasoned Muslim opinion. It was structured on the assumption that those who question or criticise Rushdie's right to say what he said are by definition barbarians. Thus, the only valid Muslim opinion was the extremist one; and only Muslim voices that could be heard were of those who supported the fatwa. This dynamic justified the perception that Islam represented, in Rushdie's words, "the darkness of religion". To add insult to injury, we were told that Muslims knew nothing about art, and even less about fiction. Ibn Warraq and Robert Spencer are Islamophobes -- their criticism is firmly aimed at representing it as a barbarian enterprise and promoting hatred of Muslims. They, like Rushdie, have another agenda: to promote the supremacy of America. They seek to project America as a loving and caring imperial power. There is a world of difference between them and me.

A few years ago it was decided by the Folklore Society of Pakistan, a non government body, to organise a festival where the Manganhaars were identified and then brought to one place to perform. The Manganhaar Festivals held in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore three years ago followed by another round two years ago proved to be a fillip to the traditional activity of the Manganhaars; many of them who had left singing and dancing saw an opportunity to go back to the hereditary vocation and organise themselves to make a viable impact.

In our tradition and social make-up, there were certain tribes and ethnic groups that were required to sing and dance. Their identity was conditioned and contingent upon their ability to perform. It was the profession that determined their place in society. One such group of people is the Manganhaars. These tribes, or group or a sub group within an ethnic dispensation, spread over a large area that spans Rajisthan, Sindh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and portions of the lower Punjab, were known for their creative activity particularly music.

As the society has changed a great deal, it is difficult to track down the roots of various communities and it has become progressively more difficult because most people, when they become famous, start to deny and negate their roots. Now in our societies, with so much of vertical and horizontal mobility, people have become dissociated from their hereditary professions and even from the place of their origins. It has become well nigh impossible to tell who the people actually are. The Manganhaars may have been singing and dancing in the traditional society but now they don't, at least not all of them.

The fourth Manganhaar Festival was held in Karachi recently and it appeared that the organised effort at preserving and promoting the music is still being done by the baithaks of ustads -- like Rasool Baksh Abro in Sukkur and Shafi Muhammed Faqir in Umerkot. These baithaks had been abandoned as there were no takers and the ustads were as if thrown out of work even if they wanted to teach and pass on the traditional musical knowledge and skill to the next generation. With a little help, both financial and moral, these ustads in the last four years have been able to revive their baithaks and the shagirds have started to come back to them.

As one ran through the list of participants, it was obvious that nearly all belonged to these two baithaks. The shagirds of Ustad Rasool Buksh Abro from Sukkur who participated in the festival were Shazia, Rehman Ali, Shahida Parveen, Nazar Muhammed, Zahid Parveen and Nazakat Ali while the shagirds of Ustad Shafi Muhammed who displayed their talent were Sher Ali, Rizwan, Mushtaq Qurban, Farooq, Nadeem Arshad, Manzoor, Aslam, Liaqat Ali, Arshad Ali and Imtiaz Ali.

The compositions are usually traditional and the orchestra is also not very elaborate with some of the instruments being played over centuries like dholak, banjo, khartal, tabla, manjari, harmonium and qaincha. And it was so in this festival, too, with the participants also dressed in very colourful costume attempting to capture the atmosphere of the melas as they must have been held in the past. The most prominent among those who participated was Akbar Khameeso Khan, son of Khameeso Khan, whose playing the instrument has also become synonymous with Sindh, the alghoza. Akbar Khameeso Khan has improved a lot since he started to play the instrument in public a few years ago. In the festival, he played many of the popular and representative compositions of Sindh like rano and kohri.

During the course of the century, the purity of forms particularly in music came under a great deal of pressure to change. Initially, one group living in a certain place specialised in its form honing its style and resisted any outside influence. In the last two or three decades, it has become even more difficult because many of the exponents of the form died and the newer and younger ones were not really prepared to take on the mantle. But as they did move in, they substituted their lack of training by including the more prevalent and popular forms of music. It also helped them to create a bigger audience for themselves especially in the semi urban areas of the country. This has, over the years, led to a great mixing of forms and languages. If one singer was singing in one language like Gujarati he may be singing in the tune associated with Marwari music.

It is prudent to create conditions where musicians and other artists belonging to the performing arts can develop their skills and build on their inherited knowledge. One way of doing it to establish institutions in the bigger cities and set up academies where the environment is traditional yet the artists are being tutored to live in a contemporary environment. The other option is to create conditions in the towns and qasbas to bolster traditional institutions so that they do not collapse altogether, or to revive institutions that have almost collapsed. In these festivals, it seems that the latter approach has been adopted and the results have started to appear even in as short a period as four years.

The impression of richness in colour and form dominates Humera Ejaz's art. The artist transitions without any difficulty and hesitation from abstract forms and non-figurative art into realism touching, on the way, both symbolism and metaphor. What makes Ejaz's art so absorbing is that, for her, it is insufficient to penetrate into a single aspect of human sensitivity that reflects determined fragment of the seen or unseen world in plastic form.

A riot of colour, pattern and mark making, her drawings in pastels with touches of gold paint, on show at the Indus Gallery in Karachi, thrill with their nearly psychedelic Southeast Asian colour combinations. Saffron shapes mark their way across jigsawed magenta and brown fields. Emerald spheres and shards of gold and cerulean appear to vibrate on mud-coloured grounds. With edges so soft that they look spray-painted, birds appear from smudged lines and back dabs arrayed on symmetrical spots of lavender. Peninsulas of electric blue folded around red inexplicably produce pockets of deep space and a horizon. Faces and figures float across the surface while white spaces between bleeding forms provide the connecting tissue and trump perspectival space reminiscent of Rothko's proto-abstractions resembling underwater vegetation. Ejaz's shorthand and openness to spontaneity and chance show the vitality of formalism at its best.

Is Humera Ejaz suspicious of the mark that expresses personality by expressing the movement of having been drawn? That is to say, the lines do not reveal by their movement but to the contrary, obscure: in fact, they obliterate underlying imagery in their repetitions. In her oeuvre, the self-expressive medium of drawing is transformed to become the medium of a self-concealment. Personality is shown but withdrawn, like a moment of immobility within a dance, which accounts for the quality of a picture that seems stilled but not permanently, representing a condition that did not last for long.

What is that, Paul Valery asked: 'A condition which cannot last for long, which takes us out of and remote from ourselves, and yet in which we are maintained by instability, whereas stability can only occur in it by accident.' His answer: '…such a condition evokes the idea of another existence, fully invested with the rarest moments of our own, entirely made up of the supreme values of our faculties. I am thinking of what is commonly known as inspiration.'

Humera Ejaz is a visual artist, but that does not mean that she believes that vision can provide access to the meanings of what she paints. Like Matisse, who once said that if he closed his eyes he saw objects better than with his eyes open, Ejaz may be thought to de-emphasise vision in the sense of realising that you can only capture all the emotional resonances of a thing if you are not looking at it. The title 'Sacred Spectra' and the presence of an image that can be taken to resemble a dryad, together with the obviously anthropomorphic forms, afford the option of a descriptive reading of this work. Yet, even that image and those forms withdraw from description in their painting as if to tell us that description will not suffice to explain what the painting records, that the visual appearance of things cannot be trusted truly to represent them.

It is plausible to think of the completion than translation of a work of art from the privacy of the studio into the public world as representing a birth; in contrast, the soul leaving the body is usually associated with death. Ejaz seems to want us to understand her paintings not only as the materialisations of ways of experiencing, not only as bringing thought and memory into the world of objects, where they can be looked at, but she also seems to want us to understand them somewhat in the way that the first, late antique shrines were understood by their congregations: not melancholic but shining with praesentia, the physical presence of the holy, with the fullness of an invisible person manifested even in a mere fragment of remains. The art of those shrines was an art of tension between enclosure and exposure, between distance and proximity, an art that asserted unattainability in order to ensure praesentia, which, because physically unattainable, may then come out into the world and affect other people. Ejaz speaks of thoughts becoming things, making it possible for the fugitive to become durable and the invisible to be seen; yet she too displays in praesentia something that is concealed, the better to ensure its potency and vitality.

The private is not as closed in conversation as it can seem in painting. Humera Ejaz will speak publicly on the broad subject of privacy as it affects a painter, namely the solitude of a painter's life; how most of her own life is spent alone in the studio -- alone, that is except for her work. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once described it in a letter: 'More and more I am living the existence of the seed in the fruit which disposes everything it has round about it and outward from itself in the darkness of its working.' What Rilke is describing is the kind of benign forgetting of the body that is characteristic of states of extreme concentration or absorption. Rilke relinquishes the environment of his bodily object, forgets it, and becomes the seed of himself in the object of his work. In doing so, he surrenders his omnipotence, risks not knowing what he is going to say.

Humera Ejaz uses the spiritual experience. The surprise of the unexpected is, presumably, a welcome one. In any event, the activity of painting may be described as one of continual layering until a point is reached where the multiple fragments appear to collapse onto each other and coalesce, as if what we see had been painted in one go. This restoration of unity to heterogeneous, disconnected instants is, literally, making the past present in the granular continuum of the pastels. But, because we are shown the fragments as well as their coalescing, we can see the fissures in the fabric as well as its continuum, the temporality as well as the spontaneity.

Ejaz's use of randomness and accident in the process of painting, her method of drawing upon mental rather than perceptual images of the world, her surrender to the creative act as a generating force of imagery; these things link her art to automatism. One example of it is the mimicry in nature, where one thing imitates another, like the markings of the wings of moths and peacock feathers that imitate eyes. The obvious relevance of this to Humera Ejaz is her stress on metamorphosis. That her paintings suggest camouflage is also to the point here. This signals to us that we should expect to find one thing pretending to be another. Also to the point is how colour irradiates in her paintings with a fierceness that blinds us to the identity of things. Under this irradiation, things transform.

Like stones thrown into a still pool, causing the surface to ripple, these saved, revisited observations serve artist and viewer alike as starting points for mental and emotional meanderings.

The shift from weighty coins cast in gold, silver, copper and brass to the crisp paper currency is a sign of how the society adapts to new forms for old functions. There is a long list of nostalgic objects, habits and customs such as: the colonial times, old etiquettes, peaceful cities, successes of our teams in various sporting events, and more recently the fascination for popular art. There was a point in our art history when the popular urban art -- cinema paintings and transport decorations -- came into vogue. A few, mainly Karachi-based, artists initially discovered the possibility -- of appropriating imagery, method and material -- in order to create works that reflected their contemporary sensibility too.

Like any other movement, phase or fad, the fondness for popular aesthetics faded after some years, only to be rekindled in the works of artists who had either studied under the first explorers of popular art or were influenced by their example. Soon, they too moved on to investigate other areas encompassing a wider manifestation of local tastes and global realities changing our culture.

Adeela Suleman started her creative career by exploring the 'aesthetics of popular'. Yet, even within the collective of 'popular-art-inspired-artists', she demonstrated a distinct approach. In her degree show, Adeela constructed a large piece, composed of tea cups, spoons, kettles and other items related to the ritual of tea drinking -- rather tea offering as a symbolic custom carried out by the prospective bride in front of her would be in-laws during the marriage negotiations. Later, she picked as her subject safety products for women -- 'home-made' helmets etc. -- who accompany men on motorcycles.

The popular objects and feminist subjects in Suleman's work are starkly distinct from the usual interpretation of these concepts. In her recent exhibition held from Nov 11-22, 2008, at Rohtas 2 in Lahore, this distinction appeared more pronounced. One could glimpse a deviation -- not a rebellion – from the two important poles that once defined her aesthetics. In her work, both feminism and fascination with popular art emerge in a different manner. In a way she has combined the two into something that can best be defined by using the term 'domestic'.

Perhaps, the concept of domestic-ness is crucial for Suleman because her sculptures -- assemblages and repousse pieces -- suggest characters, objects and ideas that are linked with home and domestic environment. At Rohtas 2, her works use small kitchen items, such as spoons, skimmers and tongs, along with large cut-outs of female figure, made by beating designs into the metal sheet. She has constructed forms that remind of a female figure or her clothes through tactfully joining certain objects which invoke specific parts of the body.

These composite items that depict undergarments as well as organs are painted in vivid colours such as reds, oranges and various shades of blues and greens. Further, these were decorated with images of flowers neatly drawn on top of a lid or at the back of a bowl or inside a spoon. Similar floral patterns were seen in the relief form on the metal cut-outs of female characters, displayed near the coffin-like structures (These designs also remind of tree of life motif found in the Persian carpets). Intricate leaves and flowers describe the detail of female anatomy in a stylised scheme. In that group, the two coffins-like structures, initially supposed to be covered with lids hanging next to them, are designed like an assemblage of motifs from traditional tapestry, such as laces and other decorative strips used in wedding costumes.

In that sense, the work of Adeela has moved ahead of the debate of feminism as well the pursuit of popular art. Because, in her case, feminism or the urge to 'use' popular imagery may not be an outsider activity or a slogan. Instead, it is more like a woman's narrative who does not necessarily celebrate the fact of being a woman (what's the point of celebrating something that just happened to you biologically!), but seems confident and content in being a woman. The sculptures fabricated with tiny and modest household items, suggest power and pleasure of being a female -- both as a producer and a seducer.

Interestingly, the colourful sculptures, made of simple items, as well as the large pieces with repousse designs denote how the two outsiders' themes/trends -- feminism and popular art -- are being domesticated. Instead of remaining alien issues or a visual vocabulary picked by foreign-trained eyes (like David Alesworth and Elizabeth Dadi or Durriya Kazi and Iftikhar Dadi who did not study art in local art schools) the two elements have been dealt with in a more subtle and comfortable level in the art of Adeela Suleman. Hence the work surpasses the divide between form and content or idea and technique. All of this make her work a representation of our 'altered' times!

Both of them are extremely funny. British-born-and-bred Shazia Mirza tells of her mother having a "moustache" and walking "five steps behind my father because he looks better from behind", while Chicago-based attorney-turned-comedian Azhar Usman mimics the speech inflections of "desi aunties" who are talking sweet nothings. Both have their audiences in stitches.

At another occasion, Shazia busts the popular "myth" about a true Muslim who will be rewarded with "72 virgins" in Paradise, by declaring, "It's actually 72 raisins!" Like a true standup, she asks the crowd seated in front of her, "Who's a true Muslim here?"

"Do we have a true Muslim here?" she repeats, completely poker-faced, and evokes great laughs.

No prizes for guessing that any heckler will be publicly faced down -- right there and then. And, sure, there's no way that Shazia would make an exception to the religiously conservative. In fact, she loves to have fun at the expense of the 'fundos' and has famously got a plethora of 'sex'plicit jokes at the ready. She relies less on innuendos and comes out with her shocking impudence and chutzpah.

Bearded Azhar Usman stands (up) in stark contrast to Shazia. He does "not do dirty" (to quote his own words). His subjects are our little, big snobberies and human follies as well as religious misfits, but his humour is never coarse. He is helped by an amazing range of facial expressions and hand and body gestures/movements that are funny, to say the least. He is also superb at using his voice to advantage.

Both Shazia and Azhar were an instant 'hit' at Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop's World Performing Arts Festival (due to close tonight) that also saw an array of participating groups from different parts of the globe. Where the festival had its usual theatre, film, puppetry, dance and music events going on at Lahore's aesthetically decorated Alhamra Cultural Complex, the standup acts were a fresh induction that made every attendant's 'night'. There were those -- the regular socialites -- who had popped in, perhaps, just 'to see and be seen' -- but a large chunk of the audience at Shazia and Azhar's gigs seemed to have a fair idea what was there to enjoy.

Dark-skinned ("they often take me for a Mexican guy," she quipped during her show) Shazia was sure coming with a 'reputation'. But, this eventually proved to be her best-selling point at the festival. All of her shows had an unprecedented 600+ people packed like sardines inside the not-so-commodious Hall III, with the result that a lot of late-comers had to sit on the carpeted stairs.

Azhar, on the other hand, was new to most people but he pulled in crowds on the strength of a great word-of-mouth. He was a complete revelation, especially for those who thought stand-up comedy -- by its very nature -- was about crude jokes and sexual innuendos.