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This week on Uprising:

In the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s death, we’ll hear an hour-long special interview of the late former Pakistani Prime Minister and responses by analyst and activist, Pervez Hoodbhoy.

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Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Thursday December 27th. Bhutto was at a political rally when she was killed at close range by gunfire while riding in a vehicle which was then shattered by a suicide bomber. Pakistan has been plunged into nation-wide violent protests in response to the assassination. Backed by the US, Bhutto represented an opportunity for unelected incumbent Pervez Musharraf to legitimize himself through an alliance with her. Musharraf’s own future remains even more uncertain now. In 1988 Benazir Bhutto, chair of the Pakistan People’s Party, became Prime Minister of Pakistan and the first woman to head an Islamic country. She was in exile until recently returning to run for election before her untimely death.

I met Benazir Bhutto in Los Angeles in February 2004 and interviewed her about her tenure and the situation in Pakistan. Following the interview, I asked Pakistani anti-nuclear activist and Professor of Physics at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, Pervez Hoodbhoy, if he would provide some balance to Benazir Bhutto’s statements. What follows is an hour long series of clips from my interview with former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto and responses from Pervez Hoodbhoy.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.” -– Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder and first leader of Pakistan who based the country on a secular Islamic system.