A Precedent note
The most important thing to understand about the Pakistani voices on this site is that they are centrists, not extremists. Kabir, El Khawaja, S Qureishi: none of them is a fringe figure in Pakistani society. They are roughly where a literate, urban, employed Pakistani sits, and that fact deserves attention.
It deserves attention because India, over the last decade, has stopped engaging with Pakistanis altogether. Visas have collapsed. Cricket is gone. Cinema is gone. Academic exchange is gone. The everyday oxidation of one society against another, the slow correction by which extreme positions get rounded down through exposure to people who hold different ones, has been switched off. What is left is each side talking to itself about the other.
Brown Pundits is one of the few places where that has not happened.
The thread that prompted this note will illustrate. A week ago, S Qureishi observed that the only downside of the Islamic Revolution was that “there is no OnlyFans.” We were deeply offended by this line seriously enough to write the next piece on counterfactual analysis of Iranian society. Q then returned, under another post, with a fuller thesis: female sexuality must be controlled to sustain a civilisation. Pressed on enforcement, he listed disownment, violence, lawsuits, vandalism. Finally when pressed on honour killing, he admitted it was “horrible” and “immoral.”
Three voices took shape on the thread. The most salient asked that the comment be deleted as misogynist.
We are not deleting it.
We disagree with Q on almost every line he wrote. The thesis that female autonomy is the load-bearing crack in civilisation is one we reject in full. The post on Virginity Policing that triggered this thread was our own. But Q is not a Taliban spokesman. He is a Pakistani who, when challenged in writing by other commenters, was forced to articulate his position, defend it under hostile examination, and concede that violence is wrong. That is not platforming. That is engagement. It is the slow work India has decided it no longer needs to do.