In recent years, Pakistanis have been increasingly consumed by the concept of ghairat, or honour. An urge to defend the nation’s ghairat – a blend of intense patriotism and heightened religiosity – underpins the country’s soaring anti-Americanism and growing calls for the Islamisation of society. It also drives the sanctimonious diatribes of politicians and talk show hosts who dominate Pakistan’s public sphere.
Just last week, a morning show on a private news channel, caused a stir when its host chased down couples in Karachi’s public parks and harangued them for dating.
But for a country so obsessed with honour, Pakistanis seem to care little for the dishonourable acts of their public figures.
This contradiction was highlighted earlier this month when a raunchy music video that featured the prominent Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz in the role of ringside commentator as two scantily clad women wrestled went viral.
The video has been circulating as Ijaz finds himself in the middle of a political storm. In October, he wrote an opinion article about an unsigned memo in which the Pakistani civilian government purportedly sought US help to stave off a military coup within Pakistan. Ijaz claims the memo was drafted by Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, and addressed to the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. Ijaz says the video is being widely broadcast in an effort to malign him.
Since failing to turn up on Tuesday for a scheduled appearance before a judicial commission investigating the memo scandal, Ijaz has had the nation on tenterhooks, wondering when, or if, he might testify. In the absence of his testimony, Pakistanis are focused instead on the ridiculous Ijaz video.
Social and mainstream media outlets can’t get enough of the music video of Italian house DJ Junior Jack’s 2004 single, ‘Stupidisco’. Images of the businessman’s innuendo-laden comments and sly grin have largely replaced all other footage of him on Pakistani airwaves. Confirming his participation in the shoot, Ijaz accused supporters of Haqqani and the civilian government of circulating the video to undermine his credibility before his testimony.
This is not the first time that a public figure’s personal life or morality has been exposed to compromise political standing.
Last year, the right-wing opposition leader Nawaz Sharif’s offer to American journalist Kim Barker to be his “special friend” was endlessly blogged in an effort to expose his hypocritical politics.
The news media also gave excessive coverage to a rumour that President Asif Ali Zardari had secretly married an American surgeon, implying that such a union would invalidate his claim to his late wife Benazir Bhutto’s political legacy.
Earlier, photographs that showed the late politician Salmaan Taseer drinking alcohol and vacationing with his family in Europe were published both online and offline to cast him as a pro-West liberal who couldn’t be trusted. It did not work. Taseer remained in high public esteem as governor of Punjab until January 2011, when he was assassinated after defending a Christian woman accused of blasphemy.
Despite the media hype around these efforts to convey their moral dubiousness, the political credibility of individuals involved remained largely intact.
Zardari may be reviled for what many see as his corrupt practices, but not for his widely discussed eye for the ladies. Sharif remains a major political contender and his demonstrated predilection for American women, as opposed to his anti-US policies, has not been explored during intense campaigning in the run-up to the next general elections.
As for Ijaz, far from being written off, he has been granted yet another opportunity to testify before the judicial commission on February 9.
The persistence of this double standard in honour-obsessed Pakistan says a lot about the country’s politics and its class and gender dynamics. Perhaps Pakistanis have accepted that politics is a dirty business that could only attract dishonourable characters. Or perhaps they acknowledge that different rules apply to those who have power, connections and wealth. There’s also the reigning belief that boys will be boys, even if they’re also major political figures.
Either way, Pakistanis remain eager to see what evidence Ijaz presents as part of his testimony before the memo commission, regardless of his indiscreet appearance in a video of battling bikinied wrestlers.
Huma Yusuf is a columnist for a Pakistani English daily and was the 2010-11 Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington.
