| ABOUT US | ARCHIVES | LINKS | RSS FEED | MONDAYS | |

3quarksdaily

An Eclectic Digest of Science, Art and Literature

« Sarkozy Shows His Colors--Green | Main | Trying to Establish a Literary Canon in Romania After the Cold War »

May 08, 2007

Are Vice Vigilantes Running Even More Amok in Pakistan?

Mariana Baabar in Outlook India:

Just the other day Tahera Abdullah was driving down the spiffy Margalla Road in Islamabad, the windows rolled down to enjoy the evening breeze. A development worker, her silvery hair could tell anyone she's 50 plus. Tahera stopped at the traffic signal; an eight-year-old boy accosted her: didn't she know Islam required her to cover her head? Tahera immediately rolled up the window. "How do you argue with an eight-year-old?" she asks. But the encounter with Pakistan's religious extremism, at once frightening and puerile, has prompted Tahera to choose sweating inside the car over letting in the breeze. "We women are feeling more threatened today," she says.

The streets of Islamabad are menacing women, compelling them to be what they are not, what they have never been. Consultant Sara Javeed realised this when she lit a cigarette in her car recently. "I quickly stubbed it. I don't want strangers asking me why I'm smoking. This is the new me," she says dolefully. Sara feels the emerging extremism could Talibanise Pakistan. "I don't want to live in such a state," she declares.

You can hear the winds of extremism whistle eerily even in Parliament. This week, Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Sherry Rehman, as progressive as she's glamorous, wrote to the speaker of the lower house asking him to stop her monthly stipend as she wasn't anyway being allowed to speak on vital issues. "I'd never want to wait for anything to happen to me personally before I stood up to speak for women who are today in a far more dangerous situation than even during Zia-ul Haq's times," she says.

Posted by Robin Varghese at 06:37 PM | Permalink

Comments

Just finished a book on women who had reached the summit of K2 (all are dead, however, K2 has been climbed by a female survivor)-
Their observation, from climbing all over the word, Pakistani men were the worst they had encountered- sexist, repressed, rude, and overall pigs and to be avoided at all costs. It was one of the pitfalls of Climbing in Pakistan-
Dealing with repulsive Pakistani men.
One offered the observation that they were so sexually twisted because of fundamentalist Islam, and this repression and sickness manifests in their treatment of women.

Posted by: Scott Ahlf | May 8, 2007 10:33:46 PM

Scott, if we ever happen to be in the same room and you run in the opposite direction, I guess I will understand!

Posted by: Abbas Raza | May 9, 2007 3:32:30 PM

Abbas--
Just relaying information from primary sources, with real experiences.
My family had a Pakistani exchange student when I was in High School--
We go along great, and It was a positive experience. I love have always wanted to travel the Karakoram, but it is not the 60's, and the dark clouds of Islam have shut down exploration--
It is really to bad religion has poisoned their culture, although they are not alone.

Posted by: Scott Ahlf | May 9, 2007 8:22:56 PM

Political Islam: Champion, World's worst ideology contest, 1989-2007.

Posted by: Jeb | May 11, 2007 6:40:21 AM

Scotty,

I know some Caucasians who are real assholes, here and abroad. You don't even have to go to the Rockies. They populate major metropolitan centers. They are sexist, repressed, rude, and actually look like pigs, pink and pasty, and are the heirs of the Enlightenment.

Posted by: HMN | May 12, 2007 11:23:03 PM

Post a comment






Subscribe to this blog's feed  

3QD ADVERTISING


3QD on Twitter


Miscellany

Lijit Search

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Add to Google


Recent Comments

fred lapides on The Recession Is Over!

Carlos on A Patchwork Mind: How Your Parents' Genes Shape Your Brain

Karthik on India, China and the polemics of the East

Elatia Harris on The Israeli thought-police is here

Lambness on A Patchwork Mind: How Your Parents' Genes Shape Your Brain

Fill on A Patchwork Mind: How Your Parents' Genes Shape Your Brain

Lambness on A Patchwork Mind: How Your Parents' Genes Shape Your Brain

Justin on Desire Paths: Reading, Memory and Inscription

Cyrus Hall on The Israeli thought-police is here

Carlos on The Israeli thought-police is here

Richard Sweeton on A Patchwork Mind: How Your Parents' Genes Shape Your Brain

Cyrus Hall on The Israeli thought-police is here

Andrew on A Patchwork Mind: How Your Parents' Genes Shape Your Brain

aguy109 on The Israeli thought-police is here

Daniel Rourke on Desire Paths: Reading, Memory and Inscription

Dave Ranning on India, China and the polemics of the East

Bob on The Israeli thought-police is here

Louise Gordon on Desire Paths: Reading, Memory and Inscription

Elatia Harris on Desire Paths: Reading, Memory and Inscription

Carlos on Desire Paths: Reading, Memory and Inscription

Casey on Cooking Up a Pot of Civilization

Elatia Harris on Summer time and the eating is easy

Daniel Rourke on Desire Paths: Reading, Memory and Inscription

Space Toast on India, China and the polemics of the East

Chris Schoen on Summer time and the eating is easy


Acclaim For 3QD


"I couldn't tear myself away from 3 Quarks Daily, to the point of neglecting my work. Congratulations on this superb site."—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University.

"I have placed 3 Quarks Daily at the head of my list of web bookmarks."—Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

"Just wanted you to know I’m one of many who reads and enjoys 3 Quarks....almost daily."—David Byrne, musician, former lead-singer of the Talking Heads, artist, intellectual.


The 3QD Prizes

Logo designed by Vicki Winters

Subscribe to this blog's feed