LAHORE: Recently, the world of social media in Pakistan was up in arms about the actions of Maya Khan. Usually, the efforts of our youth on Facebook and Twitter to rid the country of its evils results in just angry comments and quasi-intellectual debates, but this time the torrent of abuse actually resulted in the termination of the said person’s employment. However, she recently appeared on television defending her actions and wondered why she had been socially persecuted.
Ms Khan claims that she has not committed any crime. However, I find myself differing with her once again. The dissemination of an opinion likely to cause harm is a crime, which is exactly why hate speech is punishable in the western world. What Hitler did was based on an opinion as well, not that I am saying that she is like him.
We live in an extremely volatile and increasingly intolerant society. In such an environment, promoting the idea (even if by using paid actors, as now Ms Khan claims) that young people hanging out at a park is something paid, is only going to feed the intolerance and reinforce the view held by many in our society that it is not okay to be friends with members of the opposite sex.
Recently, I had to travel to Nathiagali as part of a university course. I was coming back from Nathiagali to Murree with a few friends, when we were stopped at a police check post opposite the Daisy Dot hotel —in Changla Gali. A police van with the number plate A-5663 with officers Shah Zakir and Muhammad Fariq took us inside the post and threatened to charge us under what they said was ‘Section 354-A of the Pakistan Penal Code’, for sexual assault of a woman, a crime punishable by death, just because we were in the same car as girls. They eventually let us go after we paid a hefty bribe and let them have all our valuables.
We were lucky to escape with our lives but how many people in Pakistan have suffered just because they have dared to be friends with a member of the opposite sex?
Shehzad Ghias
LUMS
Published in The Express Tribune, March 3rd, 2012.
