Have you seen the most popular female talk show host in Pakistan?
Pakistan is a fascinating mix of educated, brilliant elite often religious in name only, a reasonably large middle class (considering the circumstances) who are fairly progressive for Muslims, and a huge number of fairly conservative Muslims. There are also sizable populations of Christians and Hindus, although they typically keep a low profile about their religious beliefs and worship and many are at the bottom of the economic heap. When I was growing up in Hazara District, of all the Pakistani Christians I knew, only a handful did not hold menial jobs.
It is a very diverse country in some ways, although you aren’t going to see skimpily-clad women in public anywhere, and in the NorthWest Frontier Province, any that try will be, at minimum, forcibly corrected.
In a private home of an intellectual elite, you could easily share a cigar and bourbon, and watch a relatively pornographic movie. Interestingly, women in positions of either public service (politics, e.g.) or as television characters are not unusual, and as those public personas might find support even in areas where guys keep their women literally cooped up. I think there is a whole other interesting discussion around that. But take the talk show lady’s live show to Pakhtunkwa and I’m afraid it wouldn’t last.
Chillies. Pakistani cuisine is too mild. Mughal/Persian influence.
I would be interested in your response to Pedant’s response to this.
Aside from Eurasian knowledge workers, those non-Muslim immigrant workers are going to be sorely disappointed if their life goal is to get assimilated as equals into Islamic society in the “prosperous Arab states.” One of my closest Pakistani childhood friends spent a lifetime in Saudi Arabia trying to earn a decent wage to send back home, eventually returning broke. Even as a token Muslim (but non-Saudi) he never achieved anything beyond a paycheck. The prosperous Arab states have a rather long history of fairly harsh treatment of non-locals, from outright slavery to functional slavery using permanently poorly paid immigrants. As recently as 1950 there may have been several hundred thousand slaves just in Saudi Arabia. I wouldn’t say that’s much “economic opportunity” in the sense that, say, immigrants to the West eventually found.
But you knew that.
Why is that?
The conservative Muslim movement in Pakistan is qualitatively different. As typified by the Pakhtunkwa crowd they are militantly anti- any perceived threat to their conservative principles. Pakistan’s percentage of this sort of soul is also much higher than that of India. Here in the West we tend to portray “Islamic extremists” as if they are a tiny minority. In Pakistan there are millions upon millions who would qualify under an ordinary definition for this, and that creates a very large, very conservative and very militant subset. It’s kind of interesting to sit in a bazaar and have a perfectly ordinary conversation in public about whether or not a blasphemer should be executed immediately or given three days to repent. Anywhere in Khyber Pakhtunkwa such a conversation would not raise an eyebrow regarding its content. I find it remarkable (from a Western perspective) that 500 religious leaders would sign a public comment in support of an assassin of a public figure, happily be interviewed regarding their support, and quite contentedly discuss the merits of the assassination. I don’t think most (naive) Westerners understand how utterly destabilizing that sort of thing is in establishing a robust democracy.
As referenced above, various religious extremists have a sordid history all over the world creating crappy societies. I’m not clear how that means the same thing is not true for Pakistan–true in spades because of the greater volume of “extremists.”
At a personal level, the average tribesman of northern Pakistan is a wonderful man and for me as a young adult, at least, wonderful wonderful friends, companions and even guardians (for me as a young child). None of them would confuse that relationship to mean they shouldn’t kill me if I represent a threat to Islam. It’s nothing really personal. It’s just a part of their belief system.
Across Pakistan, the more conservative elements seem to be growing in number and militancy, fostered in part by this ridiculous notion the United States–OK; Mr Bush–had that you can fix Muslims and help them create a democratic nation. We’ll see where that notion ends up, especially using the military as the message-bearers. Faced with the current geopolitics, Pakistan doesn’t have a bat’s chance of creating a decent stable democracy.
'Cuz they have never grasped the notion that democracy should protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, and that true democracy only exists when all ideas from all comers are given equal opportunity. 
If you don’t allow all peoples and all ideas equal access to the public forum in the first place, there’s nothing for the masses to be democratic about… That’s why Islamic countries, which are fundamentally theocratic (with their Allah being the “Theo” ), don’t do democracy well. The only real choices are culled from the fundamental Islamic slate of choices.
So “fairly harsh treatment of non-locals” is something you would expect to find in all Islamic countries, not just the Arab ones? It’s not an Arab thing specifically?
Just out of curiosity, if you still lived there, could you still post to the Dope? That is, would the infrastructure be available?
kab aur kahan paida hoya thay aap? Aur yeh baat tu durost hai kay Urdu tu subah sarhad ki zaban hi nahain hai, tu app tu bohat kam logoun mein say hain phir jo subah sarhad mein paida hoya aur un ki zabaan na pushto na hindko thee.
Hey, AK84 - I’m all for verifying the bona fides of posters who made unusual claims, and Chief Pedant has done that. But could you post a translation later? This is an English-language board, after all.
Sure I will. And I can think of a few poster (I am thinking Annamika) who could translate. But lets see how Chief Pendant responds before we do that.
“When and where were you born. And this is true that Urdu is not the language of the Frontier Province, and you must be one of the few people who was born in the Frontier, but whose language is neither Pushto nor Hindko.”
I was not born in the Frontier, but in Karachi. I did spent a most of my time from Class V1 to Class X in Pershawar and Risalpur (PAF schools). I don’t speak either Hindko or Pushto. I am a non-Muslim, and as far as I am concerned a non-Pakistani. I left Pakistan in 1987, figuratively shaking the dust of the country off my sandals. But I have a great many friends and relatives living there, with whom I am in daily contact (since e-mail became prevalent in the late 1990s). Basically the Islamic nutcases ruined the place in the 1980s.
I think both AK84 and Chief Pedant are taking things too far in opposite directions. Yeah, I did get beaten up in school a couple of times because I wasn’t careful enough about what I said about my religion. Once for asking a question in History (actually called Pakistan Studies, I basically questioned the Muslims=Good, non-Muslims = Bad narrative that is part and parcel of the curriculum) that some of the boys didn’t like. One day one of my close friends let slip something that I had said to another kid, and four of them beat me up. My aunt is a nun in a convent that has a school in a medium sized city, that used to be a fairly moderate type of place. Their convent, church and school have each been attacked, and the church burnt down in the last ten years. But of course I have a distant cousin who lived in Zimbabwe and Rwanda as a child and teenager. What she described in Rwanda was pretty similar to what my mother witnessd in 1947 during partition. So it is not necessarily a religious thing.
But being a non Muslim in Pakistan is at the very best, a continuous string of insults. Even the name Pakistan, means Land of the Pure, and the Pure means Muslims. The clown who came up with the name insisted that it doesn’t, and that is some tortured acronym. But every other -stan is the “Land of” the suffix, and Pak means pure or sacred. Even the first words in the national anthem are Pak Sar Zameen, which means Sacred Land. Denial that Land of the Pure, where Pure=Muslim is trotted out strictly for foreign consumption. No one in Pakistan believes it, not the Muslims, nor the non Muslims, who are by implication “the impurities” in the population.
Even in a Catholic school that I attended in Karachi (Pakistan’s largest and at the time most cosmopolitan city) in the early 1980s you had to be pretty careful what you said in the religious area. You just kept your mouth shut as a non-Muslim. By 1982 we had to briefly stop having Cathechism classes for Catholic students.
One of my cousins converted to Islam, and then tried to go back. He quickly found out that the attempt could be fatal. The Muslim “missionary” group that converted him in the first place, got wind of his plans and put a “watch” on him. On Easter Sunday he had to stand all day in a public place to make sure everyone could see that he did not go to church. Apostasy is not a joke in Islam. You can convert to Islam, but it is very dangerous to go the other way.
For my last two years of high school, I studied Islamic Studies, and took the school leaving exam in that subject. Non Muslims could opt out and take Civics instead. But it no one could ever get a grade higher than C in Civics, while Islamic Studies was an easy B. The examiners knew that everyone who was taking the Civics exam was a non Muslim, even though your name was not on the papers. So they would take 20 points right off the top. You could also participate in the Junior Cadet Core and get a grade bump for that. But the Core was so dominated by religious zealots, that non Muslims really couldn’t participate.
Even the textbooks for science, mathematics and composition were littered with religious propaganda. And you had to regurgitate this on the exams if you wanted good grades. So Christian students had to keep reading and writing down that their ancestors were converted to Islam to seek favors from the British government.
It just goes on and on.
Sorry I seem to have spoiled your fun. Can you try another line. I promise I will stay out of it. But of course Chief Pedant might get someone else to translate for him.
Whatever. Let’s all agree it’s actually Urdu for “Bonerland.”
Ok, so with the information so far provided, why hasn’t there been an Iranian style revolution in Pakistan (I’m fully aware the religious differences) which would convert it into a theocratic state?
There’s only so much an army can do against terrorism, however the ideas that perpetrate it seem to be endemic and growing with the passage of time, from my view it only seems a matter of time before Pakistan becomes the next Islamic Emirate of Pakistan.
Because the information provided is bogus, based upon conjecture, presumptions, surmises and usually incomplete information.
I am sorry for your bad experiences. Great you got out. Turned out for the best, for all involved.
I do however wonder where you went to school and wish I had gone there as well, would have made my school work so much easier if all I had to do for school was saying “ghair musalman boray logh hain” (non Muslims are bad people) and in Maths, science, composition had to simply regurgitate “propaganda” instead of calculus, the physics of fluids (god I hated that). And to top it off, I went to the exact same school as you did at times (PAF Peshawar for two years and St Pats in Karachi for one year). Man I got robbed.
Well why don’t you enlighten us rather than throwing insults, which is easy to do.