Swipe

Arafat Mazhar is the Director of Engage Foundation for Research and Dialogue where 9 years of research came together in the seminal report, “The Untold Truth of Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws'', recognized for its rigor by human rights groups and presented at various prestigious academic institutions such as Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Stanford, Woodrow Wilson, and University of Oslo among others. He has worked and written extensively on Islamic jurisprudence and blasphemy laws, including "Plurality, Dissent and Hegemony: The Story Behind Pakistan's Blasphemy Law" in Freedom of Expression in Islam Challenging Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws (I.B. Tauris, 2021). Arafat is also the winner of the Malala Yousafzai Award for Courage.

In 2019, Arafat launched the animation studio, Puffball, where he gets to practice his other two loves: music and visual design. Puffball Studio's debut film was the highly acclaimed Pakistani dystopian short, Shehr-e-Tabassum which was praised by critics as “a treat to behold”. The film takes inspiration from lessons learned on censorship while researching Pakistan's notorious blasphemy laws to tell a poignant story about fear and freedom in Pakistan today. Puffball's second animated film, Swipe, is a more direct confrontation of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, extrajudicial violence, and decreasing space for difference and expression.

Arafat has also created multiple educational online platforms: Shehri Pakistan, which produces civic and legal literacy animations; and Hashiya, a history channel with a focus on critical approaches to history. He is currently working on a documentary on the history of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, scheduled for release by 2022, an animated anthology on partition of South Asia, and an animated surrealist horror film on the 1971 formation of Bangladesh.