Qandeel must not die

Qandeel came into our collective conscience a couple of years ago, primarily as a source of ridicule through Facebook. In those early days, when she had not yet permeated onto our TV screens and news websites, Qandeel was everything we as a nation didn’t want our women to be. She was scantily clad, she was loud, she was uneducated — she was irritating and she was downright indecent.

In the rush to condemn her death, we must not forget that she was all that. Instead, we must celebrate it. Qandeel, for the tragically short time that we knew her, made no apologies about her attention-seeking stunts and neither should we.

She died, but her message must not. It was a message that many of us did not agree with, but it was a message she stood by. And it was a message she paid for with her life. By doing so, she should go down in the long annals of history as a hero.

She should be mentioned in the same breath as our country’s other legends. Alongside Rashid Minhas, who sacrificed himself for his country; alongside Iqbal Masih, who gave up his life to save the thousands of fellow children struggling in bonded labour; alongside Aitzaz Hasan, who died so that others may not; alongside Malala Yousufzai, who took a bullet for speaking up.

Qandeel’s message was not noble or wise, nor was it one that we would wish to teach our children. But it was a message nonetheless — it was the message of freedom, of doing what you wanted, regardless of what people think, as long as you don’t hurt anyone. It made us uncomfortable because she reminded us, as a society, of our darkest thoughts; the ones we choose to bury deep within. She challenged us by showing us a reflection of ourselves so murky we refused to accept it as our own.

In a nation where people speak in hushed and feared whispers, she dared to shout. In a country where lechery can be fatal, she danced. In a world obsessed with redemption, she brought saints down to her level and taught them how to sin; if our mullahs can be called saints in the first place.  For that, she had to die; one way or the other, sooner or later. But her immoral message — of our mutual attraction towards debauchery, of our right to be decadent, of our depraved desires — must never be forgotten and it must not be buried with her.  To atone for what we did to her, we must forever carry her message along with us like a burden — regardless of how much we hated it.

Forgive us Qandeel, for you were braver than the rest of us. Forgive us Qandeel, for now we are proud of you when once we were ashamed. Forgive us Qandeel, for you showed us that sometimes vice is nobler than virtue. And for that we killed you.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2016.