Aatish Taseer’s, son of slain Punjab governor Salman Taseer, in an article for Vanity Fair, said that the personal life of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan “closely reflects the moral and cultural schizophrenia of the [Pakistani] society”.
In a profile of Imran for the magazine, Taseer touches upon Imran’s playboy days in London to his ‘spiritual awakening’ leading to a marriage with Bushra Maneka and the dilemma Imran faces in materialising his dream of the Islamic welfare state.
The article quotes Imran’s former wife Reham Khan, Allama Iqbal’s grandson Yusuf Salahuddin, former Pakistani envoy to US Hussain Haqqani pop star Ali Zafar – who’s accused of sexual harassment by fellow singer Meesha Shafi, also pointed out a by a Twitter user— among others.
According to the article, Bushra Bibi–the first lady– has two jinns who only eat meat. And that she was told to marry Imran Khan in a dream.
Taseer writes Bushra “offered her sister to [Imran] Khan,” as well as her daughter. Imran refused and “then Maneka went away to dream again…and the voice in her head told her that she, Bushra Maneka, a married woman and a mother of five, was the wife Imran Khan needed.”
According to the article, Bushra Bibi’s husband Khawar Maneka, “agreed to give her a divorce,” so she could marry Khan.
‘ENVIOUS IMRAN CALLS BENAZIR IMMORTAL’:
Taseer writes that when Benazir Bhutto died in 2007, Khan came to Pakistan a few days later “with a French girlfriend” and had been “photographed poolside in swimming trunks as his country was engulfed in trauma”.
Taseer also mentions the time when he met Khan alone after BB’s death, Khan said that God had saved Benazir. Khan said that BB, in making a deal with General Musharraf had done, “the most immoral thing you could have done. So this thing has come as a blessing for her.” Taseer asked Khan what he meant by “this thing” and Khan replied, “Death,” as a matter-of-fact. Then, with what sounded almost like envy, he added, “Benazir has become a martyr. She has become immortal.”
‘WESTERN DECADENCE AND IMRAN’:
“Indeed, it is Khan’s extensive personal experience of what he now condemns as Western decadence that enables him to rail against it so authoritatively. ‘An emotion that he feels very strongly about is that we should stop feeling enslaved to the West mentally,’ said Ali Zafar, Khan’s friend and Pakistan’s biggest pop star. ‘He feels that since he’s gone there—he’s been there and done that—he knows the West more than anybody else over here. He’s telling them, ‘Look, you’ve got to find your own space, your own identity, your own thing, your own culture, your own roots.’”
‘JEKYLL AND HYDE PROBLEM’:
“It is easy to view the contradiction between Khan’s words and actions as hypocrisy. But to my mind, hypocrisy implies willful cynicism. This was different. It was as if Khan was unable to make a whole of the many people he had been—unable to find a moral system that could support the varied lives he had led. For his new self to live, it seemed, the old one had to be renounced. ‘This man has a Jekyll and Hyde problem,’ Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s former foreign minister, explained to me in Lahore. ‘He is actually two people at the same time.'”
‘A TRUE PICTURE OF PAKISTANI SOCIETY’:
“If Khan’s personal life fascinates, it’s because it so closely reflects the moral and cultural schizophrenia of the society in which he operates. Like evangelicals in the United States, in whom a politicized faith conceals an uneasy relationship with modernity and temptation, Khan’s contradictions are not incidental; they are the key to who he is, and perhaps to what Pakistan is. Like other populists, Khan knows far better what he is against than what he is for. His hatred of the “ruling elite,” to which he belongs, is the animating force behind his politics. He faults reformers, such as Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk and Iran’s Reza Shah Pahlavi, for falsely believing that ‘by imposing the outward manifestations of Westernization they could catapult their countries forward by decades.'”
IMRAN—SOURCE OF COMFORT FOR GENERALS?
“The zealous support of followers like Noon is both a source of Khan’s power and a comfort to the military. “From the generals’ point of view, things could not be better,” observed Haqqani, the former ambassador. “They have an ostensibly civilian government in place, which can get the blame for Pakistan’s myriad problems, while the generals run the government.”
The article has also stirred Twitterati in a heated debate, with some calling the article an ‘excellent masterpiece’ while others questioning the very need of writing such a piece.
Some call Taseer out for name-dropping
That Vanity Fair article was less about Imran Khan and more an excuse for Aatish Taseer to name-drop how many of the rich and privileged he knew.
— Hassan A. Niazi (@HNiaziii) September 13, 2019
A painful read
Would have been much better if this never went live. Such a painful read @AatishTaseer. This is basically an opinion piece with not an ounce of factual reporting. All you have is opinions of people from your social circle. https://t.co/E7rJIzthVN
— Muntaqa Peracha (@muntaqa) September 13, 2019
‘Excellent’ piece for people exposed to ‘good writing’?
Confession: seeing some of the people who are critiquing the Vanity Fair piece by @AatishTaseer actually reaffirms my view that it was an excellent article. Not my fault if you are not exposed to good writing and writers on a regular basis ?♀️
— Aima Khosa (@aimaMK) September 13, 2019
Or it’s just elitism?
In this whole Aatish Taseer’s vanity fair piece I find it highly amusing that there are people who are depicting critics as sad plebs who have not come across ‘good writing’.
— MehrHusayn (@mfhusayn) September 13, 2019
‘Chota Naipaul’
(1/4) I love Aatish Taseer. To me he is Chota Naipaul (I say this as a complement).
I do relish watching the Woke crypto-PTI Liberals squirming & squealing over Taseer’s refreshingly uninhibited writing. Much as I smirked through Edward Said’s attacks on old Naipaul. ?
— Ziyad Fayçal (@Ziyad_F) September 13, 2019
‘A fine fine piece’
What a fine fine piece by Aatish Taseer. Such swirling sentences: “Here, I remember feeling, was a man who had dealt so little in ideas that every idea he had now struck him as a good one.” https://t.co/y1h0LG4JyU
— Mahim Maher (@Mahim_Maher) September 12, 2019
While some have a problem with its sexist undertones
Red flags in #AatishTaseer‘s profile of #ImranKhan that any editor should’ve called out, a thread:
– Taseer’s sources are mostly male, frequently problematic. Given IK’s sexist and predatory legacy wrt women, he should’ve extensively quoted women critics as a counterpoint
— Hamna Zubair (@hamnazubair) September 13, 2019
