DEFACING VULGARITY

Having never been to school, Qasim Ali, 13, spent most of his time in the streets of Mughalpura. He also picked up vulgar abuses from rickshaw and van drivers and was getting into the habit of smoking also. This changed when he heard a sermon on vulgarity and obscenity in the Pakistani media at a mosque.
He then voluntarily joined a group that is out to wage a war on obscenity and vulgarity on billboards, streamers and other publicity material on the roads. His brother also helps the cause. “Dirty thoughts come in the minds of men when they look at these pictures. If we will throw paint on them, we will protect the society from sin,” said Qasim. “This is dirt and filth and if they will keep putting it up, we will keep throwing black paint on it,” said another 15-year-old in the group.
RENEWED VIGOUR:
A residential housing scheme had put up billboards and streamers showing a woman half-embracing a man in Baghbanpura from Shalamar Garden Chowk to Singhpura. This group of boys found these pictures ‘offensive’ and threw paint on the face of the models in the wee hours of the night. They also left a message in glowing paint that read, “fahashi, bayhayi band karo” (Stop obscenity and immodesty). The advertising company did not protest against this vandalism, nor was this issue brought up in the mainstream media. This group has friends in Islamabad also. A number of billboards that featured female models were defaced at the F-10 roundabout near McDonalds. Billboards that were advertising clothing were also torn and defaced in Jinnah Avenue on the Blue Area Road.
EVERYONE’S WAR?
According to a Gallup study, 64 percent of Pakistanis do not want to see scantily dressed women on billboards. Only 31 percent said they were alright with images of women all billboards. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, the percentage of those who disapproved of billboards with female models crossed over 70 percent. “It is the job of the government to curb vulgarity and instead it is turning a blind eye to it,” a local religious leader, Sheikh Barkat, said, denying that his mosque or any other were involved in recruiting boys to deface billboards.
According to the members, groups of a dozen boys, mostly teenagers, are assigned to different parts of the city where they either tear down the billboards or throw black paint at it. The movement to recruit boys has seen a surge during Ramadan. Shabab-e-Milli, a sister organisation of Jamaat-e-Islami, has a track record of defacing billboards with female models. “Multinational organisations are putting up posters of scantily dressed women deliberately to destroy our moral values and we will not put up with this,” the organisation’s divisional president, Saad Kanju, said. This organisation was also able to destroy billboards in Multan under the police’s nose that refused to interfere ‘unless the protesters do not destroy public property.’
BIGGER PROBLEM:
“This issue only points to a bigger, deeper problem in our society. We are people who have been torn apart into two extremes, liberal-secular and religious. Unfortunately, the only thing common between these two extremes is hypocrisy,” said Maulana Jawzi Rehman, a scholar, adding that “The state has failed miserably in establishing a Muslim or a secular identity. But since the majority is Muslim and this country was made because of religion, it is going to be hard to turn it secular. That is why the government allows obscenity, drinking, underground parties, interest and other blatantly un-Islamic activities.”
“This attitude is not just limited to our society,” Dr Abdusalam, a psychiatrist, said, adding “such incidents have also been witnessed in Israel and other countries, especially those that have been made on a particular ideology.” “In January this year, orthodox Jews activists defaced pictures of women on billboards. They erected street signs calling for the separation of sexes on the sidewalks and sent out ‘modesty patrols’ to enforce a chaste female appearance. They also pasted signs to ask women to dress modestly,” he added.
This issue only points to a bigger, deeper problem in our society. We are people who have been torn apart into two extremes, liberal-secular and religious. Unfortunately, the only thing common between these two extremes is hypocrisy,”