What is happening to the balanced families of Pakistan that can balance tradition, deen, and duniya? I feel like there was a time when families encouraged their daughters to go to college, you’d see girls in shalwaar kameez with their books in hand being seen going to university, you’d see men and women talking appropriately with one another without chichorapan, and religion had it’s place, but no one was obsessed with it 24 hrs a day, constantly pushing religion on others.
I go to Pakistan now, and everyone is either one extreme or the other. Either people are completely Americanized and want NOTHING to do with Islam, or people are constantly ON and ON about religion, as if there is no other topic to discuss.
What happened to the girls going to university with books in their hands? You don’t see them on the street anymore because 1. it’s not safe for women to walk back from school alone, and 2. they’re now in burqas, and whether they’re holding a book under that burqa or a gun, you have no clue.
What is happening to the balanced families of Pakistan that can balance tradition, deen, and duniya? I feel like there was a time when families encouraged their daughters to go to college, you'd see girls in shalwaar kameez with their books in hand being seen going to university, you'd see men and women talking appropriately with one another without chichorapan, and religion had it's place, but no one was obsessed with it 24 hrs a day, constantly pushing religion on others.
I go to Pakistan now, and everyone is either one extreme or the other. Either people are completely Americanized and want NOTHING to do with Islam, or people are constantly ON and ON about religion, as if there is no other topic to discuss.
What happened to the girls going to university with books in their hands? You don't see them on the street anymore because 1. it's not safe for women to walk back from school alone, and 2. they're now in burqas, and whether they're holding a book under that burqa or a gun, you have no clue.
What is happening to the balanced families of Pakistan that can balance tradition, deen, and duniya? I feel like there was a time when families encouraged their daughters to go to college, you'd see girls in shalwaar kameez with their books in hand being seen going to university, you'd see men and women talking appropriately with one another without chichorapan, and religion had it's place, but no one was obsessed with it 24 hrs a day, constantly pushing religion on others.
I go to Pakistan now, and everyone is either one extreme or the other. Either people are completely Americanized and want NOTHING to do with Islam, or people are constantly ON and ON about religion, as if there is no other topic to discuss.
What happened to the girls going to university with books in their hands? You don't see them on the street anymore because 1. it's not safe for women to walk back from school alone, and 2. they're now in burqas, and whether they're holding a book under that burqa or a gun, you have no clue.
I think more girls are going to college these days, compared to a generation ago.
The cohort of Zia-ul-Haq, Saudi Arabia and the US can again be blamed for popularizing the Burqa all over Pakistan. The Wahabi flavor of Islam worked well to cripple the Russians in Afghanistan, however it left us with all sorts of problems once the war was over.
Heck you could ever get booze in Pakistan before Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto decided to ban it.
I digress. Let's stick to burqas and college lasses.
I'm not sure how that form of Islam did anything to the Russians, they never gave a crap about religion anyway. And I doubt the US is behind the burqa idea, we don't even like that stuff here. So no. Let's blame the real culprits. Pakistani people themselves for misinterpreting their faith.
As to your question “I’m not sure how that form of Islam did anything to the Russians?”
The wahabi flavor is geared towards wars the most. It gave the Mujahideen morale, and much of it was needed as they were up against a super power.
The Afghans didn’t defeat the Russians on their own. The US figured that Russia taking over Afghanistan wasn’t in it’s interest and they had the whole cold war thing going. The US didn’t want to get involved in the war directly. So they provided funds to the Mujahideen through the Pakistani ISI.
Saudi Arabia which was and is an ally of the US sent money and clerics to train Mujahideen in Wahabi Islam.
Once the Soviets were defeated the Mujahideen had nothing to do. They had no purpose. So they adapted. They created a purpose for themselves with the ideology they had been taught. And they made use of all the weapons and madrasas they had left with them to fulfill that purpose. And most of those madrasahs/training camps were in Pakistan. Cause they wouldn’t have survived the Russian bombing in Afghanistan during the war.
A lot of money went into establishing infrastructure in Pakistan that would later be used for terrorism. And ISI was a part of all this too. They just didn’t realize this would blow up in their face. The money they were getting from the US and Saudi was just too, who cared about consequences.
It took a lot of work to radicalize Pakistan. People didn’t just go crazy on their own.
I already know that whole story, but I'm saying Islam itself was not what Russians were afraid of. The mujaheedeen didn't preach them to death, they fought them, so Islam is irrelevant, it was just used as a tool to peeve people off and go fight a war they didn't need to fight.
But back to the topic, balanced pakistani women are a dwindling breed.
In my opinion the women in Pakistan are making great progress, despite all the challenges. Burqa is their way of coping with the outside world. Is it really that bad a thing if it means more parents let their girls go to college or school.
Right now the focus should be on getting them to school and teaching them critical thinking skills. The fight against burqa is better left for a day when we have no other problems.
As far as misinterpreting the faith goes. They're not necessarily misinterpreting it, their's is a just a different interpretation. Your interpretation of the religion is affected by where you grew up and their's is affected by where they were raised. Hence your interpretation being more accommodating of Western Values and their's leaning towards traditional Eastern values they grew up with.
