Are there any subscribers to Unherd of Pakistani nationality or origin who’d like to comment?
The article provides an interesting window into the cultural shifts underway in a predominantly Muslim society. I’d never heard of Aurat March, so i welcome this insight. I worked alongside many well-educated, highly intelligent and pleasant female colleagues of Pakistani origin in the NHS. I’m surprised to hear about Aurat March pandering to western Critical Theory, since my overall impression was that those i worked with were refreshingly free from bullshit.
I understand there has recently been a large donation from the U.S meant to further the LGBTQ+ agenda in Pakistan. It comes in the guise of ‘gender equality’ but is really meant to promote gender ideology
“Today, on International Women’s Day, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director Shalanda Young, previewed that the President’s 2023 Budget will request approximately $2.6 billion for foreign assistance programs that promote gender equity and equality worldwide, USAID will strive to improve the lives of women and girls starting the day they are born, with particular attention to those who face multiple forms of discrimination, such as adolescent girls and young women, Indigenous women, women and girls in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community, women with disabilities, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities”
Given that ‘Islamic’ means that which takes the Quran (with its passages of clear misogyny ‘woman’s testimony worth half that of a man’) as a moral guidebook for behaviour; and ‘feminism’ is that which promotes liberty and agency for females, ‘Islamic feminism’ / ‘Muslim feminist’ are indeed terms reflecting oxymoron.
One simply cannot revere the Quran as inerrant AND be a campaigner for women’s equality.
Daniel P
10 months ago
Progressive elites are more interested in being seen as edgy and pushing boundaries and virtue signaling to each other than in actually solving problems for people, women in tough places in particular.
It’s about accumulating power by perpetuating problems rather than solving them.
Dominic A
10 months ago
Just one more example of the corrosive effects of unrecognised narcissism – when a tiny minority, or individual, highjacks a far greater endeavour, all in service of the great ‘I am’.
Valerie Taplin
10 months ago
So sad that such a tiny minority has such undesirable and disproportionate influence.
Gender identity ideology and democracy – at least, the kind of democracy that includes the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ – are at opposite ends of a political spectrum.
Davy Humerme
10 months ago
Thanks Hina. I value that publications like Unherd can inform me about issues like this by giving a platform to journalists who swim against the tide. I have long thought that since the Bhutto’s era Pakistan has been dripping in upper middle class noblesse oblige, which often conceals entrenched power structures. Woke is its new form and the insane anti-woman gender ideology and hostility to religion and community moral values ( some very questionable), is part of it. Your article gives a fresh and critical perspective.
Tony Kilmister
10 months ago
Christ, this bizarre mode of thinking is even being embraced by the upper orders outside of the West.
There appears to be a wilful determination on the part of, loosely termed, the ruling classes of a growing number of nations to separate themselves not just economically but culturally from the wider populace. And how do they do this? By pretending to believe that geezers using the deliberately grotesque excesses of drag to pronounce themselves women really are women.
Why are our ruling classes doing this?
Arkadian X
10 months ago
How do they know that 0.24 of the population in Pakistan is transgender? I clicked in the link, but couldn’t find an explanation.
It’s not just Pakistan; the same applies absolutely everywhere else. What does it actually mean to say that somebody is ‘transgender’, when the only metric allowed is self-identification? It is no more meaningful than citing what proportion of the population claims to be ‘a good person’, or reincarnated, or Jedi. But worst of all, for such navel-gazing to attempt to usurp the fight for the emancipation of actual, biological women – a scientific reality that gender identity ideology flatly rejects – is utterly shameful.
Claims of being funded from the west are easily put aside – Pakistan has been begging for western funding recently because of the flooding. Perhaps you can’t have your cake and eat it.
By the same argument, if the elite in Pakistan does want billions of dollars of investment from the west, they surely should copy the attitudes of the west to get it. The attitudes of the west are clearly NYT-like attitudes. Makes a lot of sense to me.
So, if we want countries like Pakistan to clean up their act, don’t we have to sort out our priorities first?
May I observe that your comment reeks of colonialism, and the idea that starving people should only be fed on condition that they abide to your progressive values is quite morally repugnant ?
People like you or the Aurat march organizers are in fine guilty of giving talibans the moral high ground, at the very least in the eyes of the afghan population
Your comment that Emmanuel took issue with did not come across as ironic to me either. But I am, in fact, American and apparently given your comment above, we are all the same in our inability to catch irony. So, not sure where that leaves us.
Are there any subscribers to Unherd of Pakistani nationality or origin who’d like to comment?
The article provides an interesting window into the cultural shifts underway in a predominantly Muslim society. I’d never heard of Aurat March, so i welcome this insight. I worked alongside many well-educated, highly intelligent and pleasant female colleagues of Pakistani origin in the NHS. I’m surprised to hear about Aurat March pandering to western Critical Theory, since my overall impression was that those i worked with were refreshingly free from bullshit.
I understand there has recently been a large donation from the U.S meant to further the LGBTQ+ agenda in Pakistan. It comes in the guise of ‘gender equality’ but is really meant to promote gender ideology
“Today, on International Women’s Day, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director Shalanda Young, previewed that the President’s 2023 Budget will request approximately $2.6 billion for foreign assistance programs that promote gender equity and equality worldwide, USAID will strive to improve the lives of women and girls starting the day they are born, with particular attention to those who face multiple forms of discrimination, such as adolescent girls and young women, Indigenous women, women and girls in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community, women with disabilities, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities”
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/mar-08-2022-us-government-announces-largest-ever-budget-request-26-billion-advance-gender-equity-and-equality-around-world
This is not to mention the untold damage this nonsense is doing to LGB rights in conservative developing societies.
It’s certainly made me more conservative.
#MeToo
Looking round at the Pakistani community in the UK I would say that Pakistani Feminism is an oxymoron.
That strikes me as a compelling reason for supporting it.
“Islamic feminism”
Given that ‘Islamic’ means that which takes the Quran (with its passages of clear misogyny ‘woman’s testimony worth half that of a man’) as a moral guidebook for behaviour; and ‘feminism’ is that which promotes liberty and agency for females, ‘Islamic feminism’ / ‘Muslim feminist’ are indeed terms reflecting oxymoron.
One simply cannot revere the Quran as inerrant AND be a campaigner for women’s equality.
Progressive elites are more interested in being seen as edgy and pushing boundaries and virtue signaling to each other than in actually solving problems for people, women in tough places in particular.
It’s about accumulating power by perpetuating problems rather than solving them.
Just one more example of the corrosive effects of unrecognised narcissism – when a tiny minority, or individual, highjacks a far greater endeavour, all in service of the great ‘I am’.
So sad that such a tiny minority has such undesirable and disproportionate influence.
Gender identity ideology and democracy – at least, the kind of democracy that includes the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ – are at opposite ends of a political spectrum.
Thanks Hina. I value that publications like Unherd can inform me about issues like this by giving a platform to journalists who swim against the tide. I have long thought that since the Bhutto’s era Pakistan has been dripping in upper middle class noblesse oblige, which often conceals entrenched power structures. Woke is its new form and the insane anti-woman gender ideology and hostility to religion and community moral values ( some very questionable), is part of it. Your article gives a fresh and critical perspective.
Christ, this bizarre mode of thinking is even being embraced by the upper orders outside of the West.
There appears to be a wilful determination on the part of, loosely termed, the ruling classes of a growing number of nations to separate themselves not just economically but culturally from the wider populace. And how do they do this? By pretending to believe that geezers using the deliberately grotesque excesses of drag to pronounce themselves women really are women.
Why are our ruling classes doing this?
How do they know that 0.24 of the population in Pakistan is transgender? I clicked in the link, but couldn’t find an explanation.
It’s not just Pakistan; the same applies absolutely everywhere else. What does it actually mean to say that somebody is ‘transgender’, when the only metric allowed is self-identification? It is no more meaningful than citing what proportion of the population claims to be ‘a good person’, or reincarnated, or Jedi. But worst of all, for such navel-gazing to attempt to usurp the fight for the emancipation of actual, biological women – a scientific reality that gender identity ideology flatly rejects – is utterly shameful.
Well said!
Exactly.
Claims of being funded from the west are easily put aside – Pakistan has been begging for western funding recently because of the flooding. Perhaps you can’t have your cake and eat it.
By the same argument, if the elite in Pakistan does want billions of dollars of investment from the west, they surely should copy the attitudes of the west to get it. The attitudes of the west are clearly NYT-like attitudes. Makes a lot of sense to me.
So, if we want countries like Pakistan to clean up their act, don’t we have to sort out our priorities first?
May I observe that your comment reeks of colonialism, and the idea that starving people should only be fed on condition that they abide to your progressive values is quite morally repugnant ?
People like you or the Aurat march organizers are in fine guilty of giving talibans the moral high ground, at the very least in the eyes of the afghan population
It is called ‘irony’. Either you are American or very young.
Your comment that Emmanuel took issue with did not come across as ironic to me either. But I am, in fact, American and apparently given your comment above, we are all the same in our inability to catch irony. So, not sure where that leaves us.
It was patently ironic.
Chris W is describing woke shitt, not advocating it.
I can’t wait to read Musa Al-Gharbi’s new book: https://musaalgharbi.com/2021/05/05/book-announcement-we-have-never-been-woke/