Qandeel: the star of our condemnation

Qandeel just opened a few buttons in a society that Manto described as being “already naked”

Qandeel existed because we do, but not any more. We eliminated her like nature strikes out various species after they fail to survive the test of evolution. Sometimes it’s their inability to cope with adverse temperatures, sometimes a lack of available food and sometimes the inability to defend themselves against bigger and more powerful species. The only thing different here is that natural selection applies equally to all — it’s as fierce to elephants as it is to ants.

Qandeel, unfortunately, was born in a world where being ‘different’ made you a feast for scavengers. Ones that water you as long as they have something else to feed onto and once it’s done, they consume you like it’s their last supper. And these rules don’t apply to everyone and certainly not to those parasites that are very much a part of the same system.



The fact that the slain internet sensation gets her rise out of us says as much about us as it does about her. She came from nowhere, caught our attention and made a name for herself. In no time, she started getting as much attention from society as Ayyan did and she was not even a super-model, let alone a party to a complex criminal conspiracy. Qandeel was just smart enough to closely gauge a society that is full of people who pray for winning motorbikes on a Ramazan show and channels that conveniently prey on this desperation. She had just opened a few buttons in a society that Manto described as being “already naked”. In a more feminist context, she was indeed a very powerful woman. One who had the courage to rise above the moral fixations that keeps a lot of men grounded.

In an ideal world you wouldn’t have cared about her and she would’ve fizzled out like many girls trying to gain attention by showing themselves off on the internet. She would have been ‘a has-been’ by now. But by showing condemnation, we turned her into a star as if we had nothing better to be concerned about. As if schoolchildren are being attacked in Palestine, or Shias and Ahmedis being murdered in Syria and on a much shallower note, people suffering from thirst in the North Pole.

This associative attitude towards everything irrelevant is a direct result of our false sense of moral obligation. The very obligation that led her brother to strangle her to death, as if turning a sister he already hated into a national loss would bring less shame to him and his family.



We have to admit that as a collective of people living together, we tend to shelf our sense of satisfaction onto others. The tendency of associating our sense of respect with someone else is what leads to complexes and, in turn, to issues like castration anxiety or merely just an inflated ego. It is simply impossible to make everyone around you behave and spend life the way you or your ancestors wanted it to be. But we are so much ingrained in our tribal values or to what some may refer to as family values that live and let live doesn’t apply to us Pakistanis. Our collective ego constitutes of these self-explosive values that we boast of around the world, so much so that expat Pakistanis tend to hinge on to them out of an identity crisis.

However, every ego has a shadow and as much as you’d like to carry the cloak of your ego around, it will always be chased by its shadow. The very shadow will stare you in the eye whenever a Qandeel incident happens. Whenever someone gains the courage to surpass self-made moral boundaries because he or she wants to and someone else thinks that’s the wrong thing to do.



Things do get very serious when they happen to immediate family members. Someone was quick to question me, “Agar tumhari behan hoti tau tum kia kartay?” Unfortunately, I don’t have a sister but the more I thought about it, I concluded he was asking the wrong question. The question should’ve been, “Agar tumhari behen hoti tau tumhe kia karna chahiye tha?”Give it a thought.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2016.

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