When journalists were silenced, Shaukat Siddiqi picked up his pen and wrote louder. During the martial law era of the 1970s, the weekly magazine Al-Fath became a rare space of resistance.
With Siddiqi as a guiding editorial force, Al-Fath dared to question government repression, censorship, feudalism, and the manipulation of the press. Alongside writers like Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi and others, Siddiqi used Al-Fath not just to report, but to document a political era many tried to erase.
His editorials — now collected in the book Juhd-i-Qalam — serve as political signposts and literary artifacts. They remind us of what journalism looks like when driven by integrity, not compliance.