A teenage Christian girl claims she was raped, forcibly converted to Islam and then married off to a 45-year-old Muslim divorcee in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.
Neha Pervaiz, 15, a resident of Ittehad Town, told ucanews.com about her ordeal. âI was taken by my aunt, a Muslim convert, to her house on April 28 to help her look after her sick son.
But there I was asked to marry a Muslim man named Imran. When I refused, they beat me up and threatened to kill my minor brother who was with me,â Neha said.
âLater I was taken to a room where I was raped by Imran.
They then pressurized me to convert to Islam and marry Imran.âOn April 29, I was taken to an Islamic cleric, who asked me to recite Quranic verses and gave me a new name, Fatima.â
Unfortunately, no authentic data is available on forced conversions and forced marriages in Pakistan, but about 1,000 cases involving Hindu and Christian girls were estimated to have taken place in Sindh province alone in 2018, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).
I thought the US was a lot more “racially aware” than the UK. I’ve seen countless ads that always put BAME actors in blue-collars roles.
Why didn’t they put a white UBER driver and a black couple in the back? And for those who huff and puff that Art must mirror Life; art never imitates life, have you ever seen an ugly actor? Actors and actresses are order of magnitudes better looking than the rest of the population; it’s a stylised representation of what we want life to be. Continue reading Do they even pretend to care about BAME anymore?
The arguments around the broader regional framework Pakistan lies in have often centered on cultural/aesthetic similarities or pure geography. Here, I will argue that Pakistan lies in the Middle East using scientific metrics that describe human behavior.
Regional comparisons of this kind have to account for other explanatory variables. For example, comparing Pakistan, where the urban population is less than 40%, to countries like Turkey or Iran, where it is nearly 80% can be confounding. Also, these countries are much richer than Pakistan, in part due to their more urbanized and industrialized economies. Finally, these countries are not based on the plains around large rivers.
Luckily, there is a comparator which is similar to Pakistan in these control variables: Egypt. It is a predominantly rural country, with a per capita income not much higher than that of Pakistan.
We consider Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions. Hofstede gives countries scores along the following metrics: power distance, individualism, masculinity, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation and indulgence. Higher numbers indicate a society and culture more oriented towards these values, and lower ones vice versa.
The figure below shows the scores of Egypt (blue), India (violet) and Pakistan (green) on various metrics. We see that along the metrics of individualism, uncertainty avoidance and indulgence, Egypt and Pakistan align very well with each other, but are very different from India. On power distance, Pakistan differs from India and Egypt, on long term orientation, Egypt differs from India and Pakistan, while they score similarly on the masculinity metric.
We see that Indian society is more individualistic and has higher tolerance for uncertainty and risk taking than Egypt and Pakistan. It is also much more indulgent.
Hofstede attributes India’s scores on individualism and uncertainty to Hindu philosophy. The caste system is certainly an important factor on India’s power distance score. On the other hand, the shared religion of Pakistan and Egypt decisively shapes values regarding individual autonomy, risk aversion and indulgence.
There are other similarities as well. The preeminent minority group in both Pakistan and Egypt are Christians. However, Egyptian Copts are a stronger group with links to the West, but the Pakistani Christians are former Hindu Dalits, who converted during the British rule to unshackle caste chains. In terms of marriage customs, both Pakistan and Egypt see predominantly cousin marriages.
They key difference between Pakistan and Egypt is that Pakistan’s elite speaks English and has a vocal diaspora in Anglo countries. The longer and deeper historical imprint left by Britain has decisively shaped Pakistan, indeed much of the country was settled as canal colonies during British rule. Such a deep British imprint is not seen in Egypt, where the elite was originally Francophone, but an increasing switch to English is underway.
Sri Lanka is a little country in the middle of everything. We have to be paranoid. Maybe some think distant political decisions/sanctions dont affect our country (as many others)
example: US sanctions against buying Iran oil.
a) So Sri Lanka is forced to buy Mid East, Saudi Oil.
b) Money goes to the Saudis (and other Mid east countries).
c) Saudis etc buy Weapons/Arms from the US.
d) Part of the Oil/Saudi and ME money is recycled to build Extremist Wahhabi mosques in Sri Lanka.
Who gives a shit about Climate Change and Species Extinction when your family is being bombed out of extinction in real time.
I'm in Lahore and was not fasting. At lunch I ran through complete MM Alam road to grab something to eat, none of the restaurants including KFC McDonald's was serving. So what are minorities, sick people, women on menstruation & any other person who is not fasting supposed to do?
Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donât have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.
You can also support the podcast as a patron (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone elseâŠ).
On this episode, I talk to Karl Smith. A former economist, Smith is now a columnist at Bloomberg. Smith’s style is that of a nonpartisan neoliberal driven by empirical considerations, but he actually has a very interesting background as someone who came out of an orthodox Marxist family. He was raised, quite literally, as a Bolshevik.
We also talk about his experiences being a relatively heterodox black American public intellectual, and how both of us see how racism has played out in our lives and in the country at large.
Finally, we discuss what we see in store for the United States in the future on the global stage.
We would definitely appreciate more positive reviews. Many of you listen to us, but donât leave any reviews!
Im officially an idiot I thought the reception started at 5 and the lecture at 5.30 (I ended up there at 5.40) but I still managed to hit a few points.
