Some of you guys are living in serious bubbles, including those living in Pakistan. It is very well known that the rich of Pakistan have no clue what goes on with the lower class and the middle classes in Pakistan.
I go to Pakistan for months at a time every 2-3 years, since I was a baby, so I have enough exposure that I can describe trends over time, that a constant dweller who lives in Model Town, Lahore, might not know about. In fact, anyone from the north here, who is Punjabi or Pathan basically has limited knowledge. How often do I find these people don’t even know there is a Chinese refugee population in Karachi for decades now and they speak Urdu. 
So let me drop some knowledge on you. At least this is what has been going on in Karachi.
Up until 911, jeans had crept in - and at least the GUYS were wearing jeans more than shalwaar kameez in the 80’s, 90’s. Then when 911 happened, things really changed. America went into Afghanistan and the Taliban started spreading propaganda since they jumped the border, came to Pakistan and hid along border towns. They played the victim card, and all of a sudden if you guys recall, everyone thought the “War on Terror” was actually a “War on Islam”. Which it sort of was, but that’s a side story. In REACTION, men started putting their shalwaars back on, started growing beards, and the women all of a sudden went from fashionable shalwaar kameez’s and college educations to burqas and staying at home with kids and spending time in dars’s.
For the upper class women, Farhat Hashmi lectures were in. She catered only to the rich (because like that’s totally Islamic), and so the poor and the lower middle class got their indoctrination from localized madrassas, often unregistered, and sometimes downright pathological. ex. Girl’s madrassa in Karachi where girls go in, and never come out for YEARS, no access to TV, or newspapers, are not taught English, only taught to memorize the Quran and are given manuals with Wahabbi-violent interpretations of the verses, and are taught that anyone outside the door has to be hated. This is fact. These madrassas exist, and it was all over TV. I didn’t even have to go there to see it. These people were interviewed in their own madrassas and the crazy came pouring out.
So, did everyone do this? No, thankfully, most people remained somewhat balanced, but there definitely was a higher focus on Islam, whether healthy or not. Some folks became tele-evangelists and became diehard fans of folks who conveniently grew a beard, read some books, and came on TV and acted like they knew everything. Some folks became readers, picking up all the literature on the market regarding Islam, because pre-911, there were A LOT of Pakistanis that had even abandoned practicing Ramadan and reading namaz. Not everyone but there was a segment of society as such. And if anyone knows about the literature in the markets in Pakistan on Islam, it’s very dangerous. I’ve picked up books that are filled with pure lies about Islam. Stuff that’s absolutely horrid, and you’ll easily find hatred literature in the bookstores. Meanwhile, try to find a feminist piece of work like Fatima Mernissi’s The Veil and the Male Elite and more knowledgeable store owners will flat out tell you it’s a banned book and they’ll get destroyed if they sell it. Because, like that’s Islamic. Fatima, btw, is perfectly muslim. For the bigots out there, just so they know.
So, yeah there was a change after 911.
And to deny it, is being blind.
In posh areas, things are more or less the same. The women are driven around in fancy cars (aka a Toyota bloody Corolla) and keep their windows up and look at their iphones - they have no clue what’s going on in the real world. Shuttled between home and school or work then home, or often work from home, so they don’t feel like what it is to REALLY work in Karachi, they are oblivious.
But go on any street in Karachi and it’s a sea of burqas. I remember the 80’s and 90’s in Karachi - you’d only find the low class unpar folks wearing burqas only in certain segments of the city, like where the pathans lived for example. But outside of that, people wore shalwaar kameez openly, their hair was exposed, and you could see their faces.
Now it’s burqas everywhere, and you actually stand out if you’re not wearing a burqa. I actually felt out of place the last time I was there, because if you’re not wearing a burqa now , you at least have a dupatta on your head. I was one of the few on the street that had my hair uncovered. I definitely felt out of place.
Locations I’ve been around: Clifton, Tariq Road, Bahadurrabad, Sindhi Muslim, Gulshan Iqbal, Saddar. So mainstream Karachi. Now go to Defense and you’ll see more modernized women walking around, but interspersed in this are definitely Arabized bungalows where the architecture and the people coming in and out make you think you’re in Kuwait.
So, while I don’t see everyone TALKING in Arabic, I think the prevalence of beards, hijabs, and burqas, and abayas, and niqabs are now so prevalent, that you don’t see the shalwaar kameez anymore, and you will definitely see some guys wearing Arabic thobes in Karachi. You can tell these are families that go and work part time in KSA and then come back for their vacation time.