In September 1981, an 18-year-old pregnant woman and her husband were arrested in Pakistan after they had eloped. The woman’s parents filed a case against the newlyweds, Fahmida and Allah Baksh, stating that their marriage was illegal. Under the newly implemented “Islamicized” laws—called the Hudood Ordinances—of general-turned-president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the couple’s supposedly adulterous union was deemed to be a criminal offense. Fahmida was sentenced to 100 lashes and Allah to death by stoning. Against a worrying backdrop of increasing restrictions on women’s rights, this was the galvanizing incident that prompted a spate of emergency meetings to take place in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, resulting in the formation of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF). According to a Human Rights Watch report in 1999, the WAF was the first nationwide women’s movement in Pakistan to be so comprehensive and effective in opposing Haq’s policies. Artist, activist and teacher Lala Rukh was at that initial, impromptu meeting in Lahore and became one of the founding members of this revolutionary group. “We suddenly understood what the so-called Islamic laws meant for women,” she said, speaking to me in characteristically soft tones from her home in Lahore, “and we had to do something.”