Middle-aged Shahnaz Bibi’s ordeal at the hands of her village’s tough guys makes hers the most read story on the BBC World website. Earlier this month in the remote village of Neelor Bala in Haripur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, she was punished for her son’s alleged affair with a neighbour’s wife, possibly under a jirga ruling.
Bibi was stripped and paraded alongside her 11-year-old son through the village streets at gunpoint. The entire village religiously came to watch the spectacle, ostensibly under threat from the gun-toting men who terrorised the innocent woman.
The report tells us that when they finally let her go, she ran straight for the forest and spent the night there with her child, too scared and ashamed to return home. It took her three days after the incident to muster up the courage to lodge a complaint with the police. Some of the accused have been since arrested while others are still at large; but Bibi is scarred for life and says going back to the village where she was humiliated is not an option for her. Even if all of her tormentors are brought to justice life will never be the same for her. Henceforth, she shall live in self-imposed exile from her home.
There are no American drones or the CIA at work here. Nor are Pakistan’s own intelligence agencies behind such horrible incidents. Hence there are no protests in the streets or the media for sullying national honour — even as such horror stories make the international headlines, day after day, year after year — as time stands still.
If you consider the social ordeal Pakistani women and our minorities have to put up with (together they make up the majority of our population), you cannot even laugh at those proud males of this country who cry themselves hoarse over such fancy notions as sovereignty and national pride. Does a nation that has stripped the majority of its own people of their respect and the right to a life of dignity deserve any respect from any quarter? One just marvels at having the cheek to demand it under the circumstances.
Why is it that leaders of all hues and shades who put their lot together to safeguard national pride and honour never as much as issue a statement of condemnation when such reprehensible acts take place? No long marches are called for to discourage hate crimes against women and minorities; no threats are issued to block the roads; no strike calls are given when not a day goes by that a woman is not severely beaten up, burnt, mutilated or humiliated.
Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis suffer even more and risk being served mob justice if they even dare demand social justice. Ahmadis are not even allowed to practise their faith but behind closed doors; they cannot congregate in one place or, blasphemy of all blasphemies, call their place of worship a mosque, even though their call to pray and the prayer itself are the same as the namaz and the masjid of their countrymen. We must also abuse their religious leader as an article of faith even as we go signing legal documents like the national identity card or even a bank account form, which demand that we establish our antecedents as true Muslims.
The trouble is that none of our proud patriotic Pakistanis himself belongs to a minority or even shows having an ear for their predicament. How can they? Minorities and their sense of patriotism do not mix. Their version of the world is one that hinges on spreading the message of Islam, the kind that they practise and under which so many suffer. This they intend to do by eliminating kafirs and bad Muslims, like Salmaan Taseer, so Allah may grant them a special place in Paradise along with the martyrs, with houris for company and canals of milk and honey, from which to respectively quench their lust and thirst. Nay, women and minorities are the least of their concerns.
For those who have put their trust in Imran Khan and pinned hopes on him leading a revolution, and if they feel anything for the majority of Pakistanis who are not being killed by American drones but by their very own brethren in faith every day and in large numbers, it should be fit to demand a social agenda from their leader.
Instituted, socially practised and tolerated discrimination is a bigger evil than financial corruption or fighting America’s war, for it corrupts the minds by blurring the lines between what is right and wrong, and raises an entire progeny bereft of basic human values.
Come to think of it, who was the last national leader after Quaid-i-Azam (and long before him the Prophet of Islam himself), who unequivocally assured the women and minorities of their right to a life of dignity and honour in society? Alas, it is yet to be, in Pakistan, in the wider Muslim world.
—The writer is a Dawn staffer
