Must Pakistani Newspapers Print a Religious Verse on the Front Page?

Pakistan has an extensive and layered history of press regulation, beginning with the Press and Publications Ordinance of 1960/1963 under Field Marshal Ayub Khan, and evolving through the Zia ul-Haq era of Islamization (1977–1988) and the current PNNBR Ordinance of 2002. General Zia ul-Haq's Islamization program was broad and genuinely sweeping — he mandated Islamic dress codes for women on state television, overhauled school textbooks to remove 'un-Islamic' material, introduced Sharia courts, and made Islamic Studies compulsory in universities. Media was heavily used as a vehicle for religious messaging under his regime. It is plausible that this authentic historical context — combined with the well-known practice of many Pakistani Urdu-language newspapers voluntarily printing Bismillah ('In the name of God') or the Shahada at the top of their mastheads as a cultural tradition — spawned the false belief that such a practice was legally mandated. A review of the full text of the PNNBR Ordinance 2002 (the law governing Pakistani newspapers), published on the official WIPO legal database and Pakistan's Ministry of Information website, reveals no such provision. The Ordinance's content requirements are limited to printer identification, place of publication, and date. The myth likely circulates in 'weird laws' listicles that conflate cultural or voluntary religious practice in Pakistani media with a legal mandate.