Dave’s comment:
“I have in fact met some. In person. Ran into a lovely couple while on vacay in Guatemala. Excellent conversation along a 2 hour shared shuttle ride. Shia muslims from Baltistan â he took great pains to indicate that his community is not like the average Pakistani, and that in his biradari they are proud to educate their daughters and wives, have them take the lead in public lives. Both his daughters were young med students.
The tragedy for Pakistan is that such actual liberals with modern outlooks wisely avoid taking public positions. They donât want to get lynched. Hence the domination by the nutters and fringe on the right continues. Leading to mis-categorization of the right-wing as âthe centerâ.”
The above praises a “liberal” Shia couple from Baltistan for educating their daughters and living modern lives, contrasting them with âthe average Pakistani,â portrayed as a backward, anti-education fanatic. This framing is not just lazy; itâs offensive.
It reflects a deeply colonial hangover: the idea that modernity is rare in Pakistan, that deviation from presumed fanaticism is a revelation. But letâs be clear, Pakistanis, like people anywhere else, are ambitious, aspirational, and complex. Medical colleges are oversubscribed. Education is highly prized. And many people, devout or not, are navigating life with dignity, values, and a deep desire to move forward; not just materially, but spiritually and ethically.
Politics of Projection
Just because a population is not obsessed with hyper-capitalism doesnât mean it is âbackward.â It may simply mean it has not surrendered entirely to the logic that everything must be monetized. Thatâs not regression; it might be restraint. In a world where the only metric that seems to matter is money, resisting that tide is itself a kind of wisdom.
This kind of patronizing liberalism, one that exoticizes progressive Muslims as rare exceptions, isnât harmless. It feeds into a narrative that justifies erasure: of language, culture, self-rule, and civilizational continuity. South Asians speaking in English, debating one another with colonial grammars, is not a mark of modernity, it is a symptom of displacement. The Global South doesnât need to be saved. We need to be seen, on our own terms.
