First Lady vs. First Gentleman

The long battle for a Democratic primary candidate has ended, much to my relief, probably because the candidate I support was named the Democratic contender in the presidential elections. Hillary Clinton’s supporters, however, are not very happy. Some of them contend that she deserved to be named the Democratic nominee for president, as though someone is born with the stamp of a presidential nominee. When Barack Obama won the nomination, Clinton’s supporters attributed his victory to sexism, alleging that Hillary had lost only because of her gender. (They conveniently forgot about her vote in favor of the war in Iraq; McCain may want to stay for another century in the violence-embroiled country, but Clinton was one of the people who authorized the invasion in the first place.)

Clinton’s supporters point to the inherent sexism in American politics as contributing to the downfall of their candidate, and I find myself agreeing with a portion of this statement. Yes, American politics has elements of sexism, but not in the way that so many Clinton supporters are getting riled about. While it is true that at times Clinton was scrutinized on certain things that were never an issue with Obama—such as one statement that her shirt was too low cut—by and large, sexism did not defeat Clinton; she herself created her demise. However, I noticed blatant sexism in another arena of the Democratic primaries: the controversy surrounding Michelle Obama.

I was watching Anderson Cooper on CNN at a heinously early hour last week when he and three political pundits commented on Michelle Obama’s role in her husband’s campaign. The press had labeled Michelle “an angry black woman” after her comments about being proud of her country for the first time, and this had put the Obama campaign on the defensive. Cooper and the political commentators spoke about Michelle Obama as a strong woman and how that image may hurt her husband’s political aspirations. It seemed that Michelle’s outspoken comments were detracting from her husband’s campaign, even though Barack’s outspoken comments on race only amplified the respect people had for him. People loved Michelle when she spoke last summer about her struggles growing up, how the campaign was affecting her family life, and what it was like to be a working mom. Yet the minute she ventured past the domestic sphere and commented on politics, the press attached an ugly racial epithet to her and the public’s perception of her changed, so much so that there are hints that the Obama campaign has hired a PR person to soften Michelle’s image.

One might point out the example of Bill Clinton as another outspoken spouse, and rightly so. Bill Clinton also came under fire from the press because of his egregious comments throughout the primary about Obama and why people were voting for him. The press went so far as to call him a potential liability for Hillary, but nobody called him “an angry white man.” There was no name calling after any of Bill’s gaffes, but when Michelle made a viable comment about the issue of race in America, the press vilified her.

It seems that America cannot handle strong, opinionated women unless they are running for office. Hillary’s opinions are well-known to all, and she was lauded for her political analyses, but this was acceptable because she was running for office. Yet because Michelle Obama’s husband is running for office, she is expected to remain silent while he expounds his political views to the public. The message that is being sent is that a woman is supposed to stand beside her husband and defer to his political acumen. She is supposed to present the soft side of her husband to the public; she is supposed to comment on their family life but not on her husband’s political beliefs. Despite Bill’s excessive commentary throughout the campaign—at one point, it seemed that Bill was running for office, he was campaigning so much—the attitude towards him was very different from the attitude towards Michelle. With Bill, people joked that what else was he going to do except campaign for his wife and present her views to the public? After all, he has had so much experience campaigning. But with Michelle, people questioned her right to even present, much less comment on, her husband’s views and to be outspoken.

What it came down to was that Michelle’s role, if Obama were elected, would be as First Lady, which has been shaped by centuries of tradition. Why must a potential First Lady be a domesticated wife, a woman who leaves politics to men to confine herself to the immediate circle of her family? Perhaps that role should be consigned to the past, and a new image of a First Lady, befitting the change that the Obama campaign advocates for, should be minted.

Beauty Onstage

My op-ed this week was prompted by an article that appeared in the Pakistan Post last week featuring Miss Pakistan World on the cover, with a two page spread inside. I was so angry that the PP had published yet another cover page with a model that I called the editor, who to her credit, responded in a really patient manner. She had come under a lot of fire for publishing this article and had wanted to do it to present a different side of the paper, but people were not really appreciating that, so I decided to tackle the topic.
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The June 5-June 11, 2008, issue of the Pakistan Post featured an article about Miss Pakistan World and instigated quite a few comments among the Post’s readers. To be honest, I was seething with anger the moment I saw Miss Pakistan gracing the cover of the newspaper. I am vehemently opposed to all beauty pageants, whether they are Miss World, Miss Universe, or Miss Pakistan, because they serve only to fetishize beauty and propagate the idea that women can and should be viewed as sexual objects.

However, despite my personal opinions on this matter, I believe that this article should have been published. The press should be free to print articles about controversial topics, because how else will there be discussion and a free exchange of ideas if there is no freedom in the media? Discussions shape people’s attitudes and ideas, and even if we disagree with the idea presented, we are better able to articulate our thoughts precisely because we are well-informed. Too often, the Pakistani community assiduously avoids discussions of controversial topics, when it is precisely these topics that should be discussed. Subjects that confront us when living in Western societies are blithely ignored by parents and the community, with disastrous consequences resulting for Pakistani youth. It is not enough to say participating in X action is wrong—we should be prepared to provide insightful evidence for our opinions. Likewise, those who have presented dissenting opinions shouldn't be lambasted, but rather, dialogue should be opened up. The end result will be a more educated society with well reasoned foundations for its beliefs and traditions. One of the ways in which to accomplish this goal is through presenting topics, however controversial they may be, in the media.

Supporting freedom of the press allows both sides to present their opinions to the world, and I exercise this right every time I write an article. In this past issue of the Pakistan Post we read about one aspect of the Miss Pakistan World pageant, and I applaud the author for introducing this topic to us, but at the same time, certain questions were left unexplored. Should anyone who participates in these pageants—whether she wears a bikini or not, whether she dates or not—be viewed as a representative of Pakistani culture? Unequivocally, absolutely not. Let us not even venture towards the Islamic aspect of beauty pageants, because one need only examine verses 30 and 31 in Surah 24 that clearly enjoin modest garb and attitude for both men and women to understand the Islamic perspective on beauty pageants. Instead, let us approach this from a different angle: that of the modern day feminist.

The problem lies not with what a beauty pageant contestant is wearing so much as the very nature of the pageant and the message she is sending when she participates in it. On the Nadia Khan show on Geo TV, Sonia Ahmed, the organizer of the Miss Pakistan World Pageant, stated that the beauty pageant culture “is a women’s rights culture.” I don’t know what sort of women’s rights she has in mind, but parading women onstage with the sole purpose to choose the most beautiful of them does not advocate any sort of women’s rights in my mind. Judging women on their figures and faces propagates a culture that trivializes women’s achievements and emphasizes only outer beauty. It sends the message to women all over the globe that their intellect is secondary to their physical appearance, and reflects a value system that hinders any celebration of true femininity that goes beyond merely the physical. Sonia Ahmed conveniently forgot about the 1969 feminist protest of Miss America in Atlantic City when she effused about how beauty pageants support women’s rights. The women who really have fought for women’s rights would completely refute this statement.

Therefore, even if Mahleej Sarkari had participated in Miss Pakistan World fully clothed, I would have disagreed with Sonia Ahmed’s categorization of Ms. Sarkari as “an ambassador.” An ambassador does not denigrate women and does not participate in a culture that sexualizes women. Sonia Ahmed also mentioned Miss Pakistan World’s efforts to bring a softer image of Pakistan to the West, claiming that people who see Mahleej in a bikini and in Pakistani clothes change their opinion about Pakistan. Having a woman show off her body will never change people’s minds about a country. Rather, having Pakistani women speak up about women’s issues, educating women, producing female Pakistani physicians, lawyers, journalists, advocates, artists, engineers, and businesswomen will. What Pakistan needs is not more women to walk onstage in a skimpy two-piece; what it needs are successful, educated, and articulate women who truly represent the best aspects of Pakistani culture.

Women: Bend like a Willow

My family has celebrated two engagements in the past month, and so when I went home last weekend, preparations for the engagement parties, suggestions for the wedding dates, and speculations of what everyone would wear where the foremost topics of conversation.

The marriage frenzy was so intense that even I got a dose of it in the form of advice about the importance of compromise in marriage, a concept with which I fundamentally agree. However, there was an important amendment to the advice I was offered: it was important for women to compromise more in a marriage and be willing to mold themselves to their husbands.

I was astounded. What was it about being a woman that allowed Pakistani culture to recommend that I subsume my needs to those of my husband? Despite my education and the fact that one day I would be self-sufficient and (hopefully) a member of a respected profession with authority and knowledge about the human body and health, I was still being told that in a marriage, none of that mattered. My gender still dictated how a man would interact with me.

There is no doubt that compromise in any relationship is important. Unfortunately, people in my generation are so accustomed to having their every whim satisfied that they do not understand how to compromise, regardless of their gender. The divorce rates for Muslims in the US reflect this development: 31% of marriages end in divorce. Compared to the 50% divorce rate among all Americans, 31% for Muslims may not seem terrible, but in both Iran and Turkey, arguably among the most progressive Muslim countries in terms of education and economic opportunities for women, the divorce rates are below 10%. One could counter that perhaps the permissibility of divorce in the US accounts for the nearly tripled divorce rates among American Muslims, but many Muslim communities have as conservative ideas about divorce in America as they do in either Iran or Turkey, so clearly there are other factors at play in this situation.

The culture of instant self-gratification is partly to blame for the demise of American Muslim marriages; we have lost the patience to work through problems and cannot sacrifice for others. Yet does this problem of not compromising naturally lead to the solution that women must be prepared to become like putty in a man’s hands? If we forego our own identities and our own personalities when we get married, there would probably be fewer problems in a marriage, but there would also be significantly less happiness. Self-immolation is not my version of a compromise. This solution is not feasible not only for me, but for any other Pakistani American. If only women are doing the compromising, a relationship can never truly be a partnership and mutual respect will be nonexistent. People may claim that these ideas of partnership and of men and women being equal are recent inventions heavily influenced by Western society. They are not.

In the Quran, women and men are given different responsibilities in regards to a family—men are explicitly labeled as the protectors and financial providers for their families—but that in no way means that women are second-class citizens. In fact, the opposite is true: the Quran adjoins men to respect women. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) helped his wives with the housework, and considering that men don’t help their wives with the housework in this day and age, his actions said a lot in the 500s CE.

With these examples, I struggle to understand how the onus of maintaining a marriage has fallen upon Pakistani women. I cannot even ascribe it to the differences in thought among different generations, because growing up, I saw my father helping my mom with the housework, and both my parents worked together and compromised for the sake of their marriage. Obviously then, a partnership is not a novel concept among Pakistanis. It is not something that we women who have been raised in the West have suddenly begun to demand; it is something that has roots in our tradition but has largely been ignored.

Perhaps instead of telling women to mold themselves to their husbands’ needs, we should be teaching both men and women the importance of compromise and sacrifice. Instead of placing the burden of sustaining a marriage on the shoulders of Pakistani women—which obviously has not worked, considering the high divorce rates—we should be asking people to think about marriage as they would think about any other relationship where understanding and equality are central aspects of the bond between two people.

Radicalizing Religion

5/8/08

Muslims living in America “don’t throw bombs, but they create political cover for ideological support of this jihadi movement” claimed David Horowtiz, a founder of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, in an article recently printed in the New York Times entitled “Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School” (April 28). This article documented Debbie Almontaser’s effort to found a public school in New York City where children were taught Arabic in addition to a standard public school curriculum. Her message was clear: she wanted the graduates of this school to be “ambassadors of peace and hope.” It sounds like an ideal vision in this world of conflict, war, and bitter strife, so what was the problem? It was Ms. Almontaser’s religion: she is Muslim.

News of the school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which was sponsored by the Gates Foundation, enraged the likes of David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. Mr. Pipes interpreted Ms. Almontaser’s desire to open a school as way to propagate the ideas of radical Islam. He told the New York Times reporter that “It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia…It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.” Apparently, any time we as Muslim-Americans want to take part in this society, whether it be by educating the youth, presenting our viewpoints to Americans, or accepting a government job, we are bent on infiltrating and destabilizing American society. Never mind that many of us living in America consider it our country and our home; if we exercise our full rights as equal citizens of this society as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, Daniel Pipes would have the rest of America believe that it is for a nefarious purpose. Instead, we are to remain as second-class citizens, to be viewed with suspicion because of a group of men who hijacked not only airplanes but our religion, who perverted our way of life, and who defied the things we hold sacred: the preservation and sanctity of life, the respect accorded to all of humanity, and the message of peace and love which are cornerstones of every religion, including Islam.

On September 12, 2001, everyone became a self-proclaimed expert on Islam. The people who had no idea where Afghanistan even was (and still don’t!) talked about the Taliban and their oppression of women with undisputed authority. People who had never heard about hijab now had long-winded discourses about sharia. The anger against the terrorists was palpable, and America had its eye—and its military firepower—focused on Osama Bin Laden. Since then, that focus has shifted from criticizing a group of terrorists—who amounted to a tiny speck of the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide—to attacking Islam itself. This year, that Islamophobia has become more apparent to me than at any other time since 9/11. When people express concerns about Barack Obama’s supposed ties with Islam and demand to know whether he believes in Jesus Christ as the son of God, when a woman like Ms. Almontaser, who has spent so many years working with other faiths, is reviled and attacked for the sole reason that she is Muslim, when Muslims are accused of carrying out a “soft jihad” when we ask for the rights we deserve as citizens of the US, the reality of the prejudice is indisputable.

The message is clear: Americans are not ready to accept us as fellow Americans.

Instead, they label us as foreign even when we espouse more of America’s democratic values than some Americans whose families have been here for generations. Mr. Pipes demarcates the divisions Americans and Muslims by painting all Muslims as extremists at heart. “Are these people who are not using violence but who are not fully enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture — are they on our side or are they on the other side?” he said about Muslims in the New York Times. How is opening an Arab-language school showing that Muslims aren’t enthusiastic about American mores? Since when did doing something different become un-American? This country was founded by an extraordinarily different action that defied the greatest empire in the world. This country exists to challenge mores and culture—ever hear about the student riots in 1968 and the Counterculture of the 1960s?

As far as I’m concerned, there are no sides, just false divisions that men like Daniel Pipes create to undermine the unity of this country. I’m tired of apologizing for the misguided actions of others. I know what I stand for, and none of it contributes to a polarizing debate that alienates me from my fellow Americans. I’m a Muslim, and I’m a patriot.

Class and Race

4/24/08

For the past few weeks, Americans have been confronted by the realities they do not wish to acknowledge—that race and class remain divisive issues in our country. The rallying cry of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” rang through the towns of the 13 colonies while their economy was driven by slave labor. Horatio Alger popularized “rags to riches” stories where protagonists succeeded because of American meritocracy, while child labor was rampant in American cities and the poor lived and died in filthy slums.

People can claim that these examples from the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries have no bearing on life in America now, but to think this way is a fallacy. Since its founding, America has been a great country, but has also been a hypocritical one, and this duality and the historic socioeconomic situation in America have colored contemporary Americans’ lives and culture. We value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but find no problems incarcerating 1.6 million Americans, the largest number of incarcerated people in any country in the world. We boast of world-famous American universities, but when an African-American male between the ages of 18-24 living in inner-city Boston is more likely to get killed than to attend any college—forget about an Ivy League one—, we as a society have a problem, and this problem has everything to do with race and class.

These are cold, hard truths in the American story. The differences in lifestyle between those of certain races and classes are painstakingly obvious to the conscious observer. The African-American population that has been historically repressed for centuries cannot suddenly achieve a high quality of life after the end of segregation. The immigrants who were spat upon and told to return to their country and whose college degrees gathered dust in the closet while they drove taxis to make ends meet did not make the leap from rags to riches. Those without feasible economic opportunities cannot compete with a class of society that has an abundance of resources. Yet people do not wish to hear these truths. It is as though racial integration, affirmative action, and financial aid at universities are enough to assuage our consciences and to assure ourselves that we have done all we can to remedy the blights of racism and class privilege. Yet who are we really helping with these initiatives?

Recently, Harvard Medical School unveiled a new financial aid plan whereby students from families making less than $120,000 will receive more financial aid. As a first-year at Harvard Medical School and as a student whose family falls firmly into the category of making less than $120,000, I was thrilled to hear that my six-figure debt might be reduced to a five-figure one. Imagine my surprise when I read in the same article that only about 1/3 of Harvard Medical students would actually be affected by this financial aid policy. How is it possible, I wondered, that 2/3 of some of the smartest future doctors also come from incredibly privileged backgrounds? Are only wealthy people smart? Obviously not. Then the next question is: why aren’t more children who grew up in working-class or middle-class families at Harvard Medical School?

The tangible connection between wealth and future success has manifested itself even at Harvard Medical School, with its need-blind policy of admission, for the obvious reasons: wealthier parents can afford personal tutors, private lessons, and tuition at exclusive high schools. We have to face the facts that people are exposed to different opportunities depending on their socioeconomic status, and that, in turn, depends upon race to a certain degree. I’m not saying that all minorities are poor and disenfranchised, because that would be a gross miscategorization of the problem. What I mean is that socioeconomic status—in other words, one’s class—shapes the path one’s life takes. For many years, the upper echelon of society had its doors closed to all racial and religious minorities, and now that is gradually changing. In many ways, it is easier to break the barriers of race than of class. There are many minorities represented among my peers at Harvard Medical School, but fewer people hail from working class families. Money cannot buy you everything, but it can smooth the way to success regardless of the color of the hand holding the dollar bills.

Faced with this conundrum, we must ask where we as a society have failed. We have provided life and liberty to people but have not given them the means to live. We offer financial aid at universities but neglect early education. We decry Jim Crow Laws but do nothing to address the contemporary, continuing ghettoization of American cities. Race and class are firmly interwoven into the narrative of American history, and it is time we address them.

The Xenophobic Melting Pot

4/9/08

These past few weeks have placed Harvard College in the spotlight again, a role to which it is no stranger, but instead of highlighting the College’s academics, the media is in a frenzy over the women’s hours at the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (QRAC), one of the College’s gyms. Reporters from all over the country have been interviewing Muslim women affiliated with the Harvard Islamic Society about this new policy, which was instituted on January 28. Harvard College’s daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, has published articles and editorials about this issue. The Crimson’s readers have responded with bitter comments about a religion that is “hijacking” American liberalism for its own purposes and comparing Muslims to Nazis. Underlying all this discussion is not just a complaint about restrictions on male access to the gym but a xenophobia so potent that it alarms me.

The women’s hours at the QRAC are an inconvenience both to the women who requested the hours and to the men who live in the Quadrangle and wish to use the gym. Each of the twelve residential houses at Harvard has its own gym, and the women who requested the gym hours originally asked for hours in their residential house’s personal gym. That request was denied, and instead, the administration decided to allocate women’s hours in the QRAC, which is one of the least used Harvard gyms and is the farthest from where the women originally requested time. The time slots for women’s only access to the gym were also established by the administration with little student input, and some men argue that the specific timings of the women’s only hours cut into prime gym time. Yet now people are lambasting Muslim women for making unreasonable demands when the potential problems could have been eliminated had the administration initiated a college-wide discussion with the students. Unfortunately, it seems as if the university accepted the policy not for the interests of the students, but rather just for the sake of preserving the notion that Harvard respects religious diversity. While the administration’s intention—to accommodate students who made a reasonable request—was appreciated, their implementation of the request has only fomented criticism. Furthermore, blame has unfairly been dumped on “an antiquated segment of a particular religion” and an “anachronism” as one of the Crimson’s readers put it, referring to the Muslim students and Islam, respectively.

It is criticisms in this vein that make me question the liberalism and tolerance of American society. Why is requesting women’s only hours at a gym seen as Islam taking over? No one seems to have a problem with Curves, Slim and Tone, and the other 1, 250 fitness clubs that are only for women or offer women’s only hours across the U.S. Yet just because Muslim women happened to make the request, people panic about Islam’s encroachment upon America’s finest university and ridicule the women who are so oppressed that they cannot even work out in front of other men. Yet NOW, one of the earliest feminist organizations in the country, supports women’s only gyms and succeeded in lobbying to prevent the Massachusetts state legislature from banning them. The Muslim women who requested women’s hours requested them on behalf of all women at Harvard who would feel more comfortable working out only among women, and as is proven by the nation-wide popularity of these women’s gyms, thousands of women across the country—whether they are Muslim or not—appreciate these facilities. It is not a question of oppression; rather, their request is a symbol of how far women have come in asking for their rights.

Critics claim that Muslims should assimilate instead of making unreasonable demands. Yet when a separate, Kosher-only refrigerator is available in every dining hall at Harvard and Harvard’s Jewish students observing the Sabbath are allowed to take final exams on Sundays instead of Saturdays, no one shouts at them to assimilate. The Jewish students’ requests are just as valid as the Muslim students’, but no one calls their religion an anachronism, nor do they compare observant Jews to Nazis. The profound fear of Islam that has penetrated Western society gives rise to these comments. A woman in hijab is oppressed, even if she attends the most prestigious university in America, and Islam gives birth to extremists and suicide bombers: these are the messages that we have accepted. American culture is incredible in many ways that all members of this society should accept. Yet assimilation does not mean wholesale destruction of one’s own culture; rather, it implies integrating parts of one’s ethnic culture and adopted American culture. America has been famed as a melting pot for centuries, but lately, this melting pot has been distinctly unfriendly towards Muslims. Let us not forget that freedom of religion is the basis upon which this country was founded.

War and Peace

3/24/08

Last week during my spring break, I decided to explore San Francisco with some friends. When we reached the city, we wandered around and attempted to look for maps to guide us to the famous tourist destinations that San Francisco is so well known for. Instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, though, we stumbled upon a massive anti-war protest. Protestors had organized a lay-in, where they laid down across the road and prevented traffic from passing through. Across another side of the street, people in bright orange jumpsuits, their faces covered by black hoods, their heads bowed, sat next to each other like broken dolls to represent the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The street was lined with riot police in full garb, batons at the ready. A circle of riot police had also surrounded the people who had lain down across the road. Despite the imposing amounts of security and police presence, the atmosphere was defiant and even exuberant.

As one peace group handed out anti-birthday cake to commemorate the five year anniversary of the Iraq war, my friends and I were stunned to realize that the war in Iraq had begun on exactly this day, March 19, in 2003. Five years of bloodshed, civilian deaths, and the wholesale destruction of a country’s infrastructure, economy, and national spirit had been occurring, and we had not even remembered the day it all began. Moreover, 4,000 American lives (and thousands of Iraqi lives) had been lost and billions of dollars from an already struggling American economy had been rerouted into an offensive war that had been deceptively labeled as a war of defense. In our consciousness, war had become such an ongoing spectacle that it carried nearly no importance for us. After all, we weren’t the ones risking our lives as American or Iraqi soldiers. We weren’t Iraqi civilians exposed to deprivation and living in constant fear of insurgents, bombs, and sectarian rivalries. We were Americans, and not just any Americans: we were a generation infused with apathy, a generation that had grown up in a complacent, self-satisfied America that had too quickly forgotten the activism of the 1960s and ‘70s.

The protest reminded me of everything I had chosen to forget about the war in Iraq. It had been years since I had attended an anti-war protest, even though I considered political activism an important aspect of civic life. I first attended an anti-war protest the day the war in Iraq began; the groups on my college campus had organized a walk-out and rally, and I remember being so inspired with the idea that I was part of a movement that had dared to challenge the government. People were spirited and united. Three years later, another anti-war rally was organized on campus. I stopped by but left soon afterwards, dismayed by the small number of people who had gathered together.

Somehow, in just a few years, the atmosphere has changed. As the war stretches on, and the government makes it amply clear that its citizens’ protests cannot affect its political course, people have lapsed into apathy. Even a part of me has given up the hope that I can ever contribute to change through activism. There is no point, I reason, in making myself hoarse by shouting anti-war slogans when they land on deaf ears.

My generation does not have the moral stamina to withstand resistance; instead we give up when we are not immediately congratulated with political change. We do not have the foresight to reason that political change did not come immediately after the student protests in the late ‘60s either. Even after the student protests in 1968 against the Vietnam War, the U.S. did not officially end its involvement in Vietnam until 1973. With our knowledge of history, we should know that political change will not occur overnight. Yet, we are a generation that has become accustomed to instant gratification, and so when faced with a challenge that requires patience and perseverance, we are easily defeated. By and large, we accept authority and hesitate to criticize the establishment. We view political movements as a vestige of the hippie years and remember only the long hair and bell bottoms and not the courage, hope, and inspirational vision of a better future that those activists proposed.

My faith in this generation of Americans was restored during the rally last week. As I saw young people being handcuffed and led to police vans, I marveled at the fact that people were willing to be jailed on grounds of civil disobedience in a time when civil disobedience has little role in our society. Their defiance of accepted norms indicates that the international situation has reached a nadir. The desire for change has resurfaced among my generation—all we need is the momentum to sustain it.

Different But Equal

3/6/08

The strides that women have made in the last forty years in the U.S. are truly incredible. High school girls are achieving higher test scores than their male counterparts, more women than men are attending college, and professions that were traditionally the bastion of the male, such as law, academia, and business, now employ more women than ever before. Our lives have been revolutionized, and the possibilities that lie before us are seemingly endless. Ostensibly women are equal to men, yet what was the price of this success and liberty? The so-called equality that has liberated us from pinafores may have had a more nefarious effect on women: it has wiped out all gender differences. It has forced us to become—well, macho men.

The messages that women are getting are that in order to succeed we must never show any emotion. I distinctly remember working hard to organize a dinner attended by over 150 people for an organization I was part of as an undergraduate. At the end of the night, a fellow board member made a negative comment to me about the dinner that I felt was completely unjustified, as I had followed all the protocol that the board had set. It was the end of a long day, and I was exhausted and still had to clean up, and I felt an overwhelming sense of injustice and frustration. My eyes welled up with tears, and I had to turn away. Upon this demonstration of “weakness,” my colleague told me that I cried at the drop of a hat and stalked away.

I couldn’t believe it. I had worked hard, done my job, and then responded to undue criticism by getting upset, a completely natural response, given the circumstances. But I hadn’t responded the way a man would have, and therefore my demonstration of emotions was considered inappropriate. The strong, manly response would probably have been a scowl (or perhaps a few choice four letter words), but my nonconfrontational, personal response was deemed weak. I was a woman, and a sensitive person, but I was being held to standards of manly behavior that society had arbitrarily established just because I had entered a man’s world.

Women are forced to be comfortable in a man’s world, now that we’ve gotten admission into it. And that’s all that’s happened—women have merely been allowed entry into the playground reserved for men. We’ve been informed of the status quo and told to adapt to it, without being given any realistic possibilities of changing it to fit our personalities.

Just last week, a group of classmates and I were discussing our professors. One woman asked the only man at the table what he thought of our female professor, who happened to be a young, attractive woman. His response, which focused in a crude way solely on her physical figure, shocked and disgusted me. Immediately, I told him that was an incredibly disrespectful comment, and he defended his statement by declaring that he was a full-blooded man. It was a question of virility, and my classmate normalized this vulgar comment by implying that all manly men thought and spoke this way. It was just a man being a man and expressing himself. None of the other women supported me and instead chose to remain silent.

The underlying message was clear: it was a man’s world, and we women who had entered it had better get acclimated to it fast. The good old boys’ club now included a lot more estrogen than before, but the rules were unchanged. Disparaging remarks such as this one, which in an earlier, less “enlightened” era no gentleman would have ever voiced aloud in the presence of a woman, were now accepted, even encouraged by women as a way to demonstrate their camaraderie and gender equality.

“We’re the same as you,” is the message modern-day women give to modern-day men. No, I beg to differ, we are not. Women and men are different, and these differences should be respected, not obliterated. When people say women are just like men, they don’t empower women or give them autonomy—they take it away. The message is not that we have achieved as much as men, it’s that we have achieved as much as men because we have become like men. What happened to recognizing women’s innate strengths and capabilities? We should be proud of being women who are sensitive and outspoken and won’t stand for sexual objectification. Yes, we’re different, but we deserve equal opportunities, equal amounts of respect, and equal rights, just as our male colleagues do. In claiming that we are like men, people are robbing us of the very femininity that has enabled us to succeed. It’s time for us to demand it back.

Benazir

2/20/08

I remember the first time I saw Benazir Bhutto: she was wearing a green and white shalwar kameez, and a white dupatta covered her hair. I remember the spot where our paths crossed: by the 7-11 on JFK Street, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was easily distinguishable among the jeans and T-shirts that comprised the ordinary garb among the people who usually frequented Harvard Square. Too shy to acknowledge that I recognized her, I continued on my way, thinking only that I had just passed within inches of one of the most famous Muslim women in the world.

It was late April, 2005. Bhutto had returned to Harvard, her alma mater as well as mine, to deliver a speech at Harvard Law School. I believe she may have paid a nostalgic visit to Eliot House, her residence at Harvard as an upperclassman, which is where I also lived at Harvard as an upperclassman. I had actually been on my way back to Eliot House when I spotted her. When I returned to my room, I elatedly told my roommates that I had just seen Benazir Bhutto. Puzzled expressions greeted this declaration. Only one of them—a government and political sciences major—knew who she was. Choruses of “Well, that’s cool,” ensued when my roommates understood Bhutto’s fame and her role in politics, and then the conversation turned to whether Eliot House’s dining hall had offered better food in Bhutto’s day than it did in ours.

The next day, Bhutto was scheduled to lecture on “Pakistan and the War Against Terrorism” at Harvard Law School. I showed up early, determined to get a seat in the lecture hall, as I had been anticipating a huge crowd. The hall was half empty, a stark contrast to when President Musharraf had delivered a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in September, 2002. That time, I had waited in a line that snaked around the block for four hours with my friends, and unfortunately, the hall was filled before we even got within ten feet of the entrance. Bhutto’s speech did not attract as much attention; she was barely known to many of my undergraduate and graduate friends. I found a seat easily, choosing not to sit closer to her, but somewhere in the middle of the room. I wanted to distance myself from this woman who inspired such conflicting feelings in me. While I admired her for being the first female leader of a Muslim nation, I remained critical of her for not doing enough for ordinary Pakistanis in the way of education, health care, and human rights, and for allowing corruption to mar her government. I awaited her speech with ambivalence.

When Bhutto began to talk, I immediately recognized that she was an accomplished rhetorician. She did not abide by the topic, but her charm and charisma were irrefutable. Instead of discoursing on Pakistan’s pivotal role in the war against terrorism, she went into detail about the accusations that had haunted her time as prime minister. She asserted that her husband had been imprisoned unlawfully, and half the speech was then dedicated to refuting allegations of corruption against her government. Although I was still skeptical that her government was blameless, I had to concede that she knew how to argue her points. Her rhetorical style complimented her image of a sophisticated, astute politician who remained connected to her Pakistani roots. I left that lecture amazed at the persistence of a woman who defied her critics, vigorously defended her husband against corruption charges even in the face of mounting evidence against him, and maintained that she was still the best hope for a country in constant political turmoil. Despite my reservations, she had won me over—just a little bit.

Two and a half years later, Benazir’s death has immortalized her. The Crimson, Harvard University’s daily newspaper, featured several articles about her after her death. When I returned to Harvard after winter break, many of my classmates asked me about my reaction to Bhutto’s death. I answered their questions in a general way, stating only that a democratic election had been thwarted in Pakistan yet again. I did not tell them that the day of her death, I watched the tapes of her last speech and the moments leading up to her death over and over again, numb with disbelief. There was an ineffable quality about her that attracted me and gave me cause to mourn. Perhaps she had been right that spring day in 2005, I thought, and I mourned for a potential hope for democracy and change in Pakistan that had just been extinguished. What I remembered about Benazir Bhutto was not the accusations of her critics, but my chance encounter with a courageous Pakistani woman on the streets of Cambridge.

Rape in the Congo

2/9/08

Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo contains 350 beds, all of whom were occupied by suffering, traumatized women. The word rape does not suffice to describe the experiences they have undergone. Doctors working in the Congo have coined a new term for the wounds they saw in these brutalized women: vaginal destruction. All of them have been raped, some with bayonets, others with pieces of wood, and still others have been shot. Their ages range from 3 years to 75 years old; neither the young nor the old have been spared. The level of violence used against these women is unprecedented. They are victims of the fighting that occurred between armed militias, including one organized by the Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda, and government troops. Despite the presence of 17,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops, the number of women subjected to sexual violence has increased over the past few months.

Rape as a weapon of war is not novel, unfortunately. Greek and Roman troops raped women in towns they had conquered. In 1099 C.E., when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, countless Muslim and Jewish women—and even some Christian women—were raped. In the modern era, Serbian troops raped Bosnian women to crush the morale of the Bosnians; Hutu marauders raped Tutsi women in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Currently, the janjaweed militias continue to rape young girls and women in Darfur. In these situations, rape occurs not only to cow the women’s communities into submission, but is also used to dishonor the women and is a means of ethnic cleansing.

Yet these war crimes pale when compared to the horrific brutalization of the women in the Congo and the prevalence of rape there. This violence is a methodical destruction of women’s lives, and, as a consequence, the lives of their children, their families, and their communities are torn apart. The number of women affected is staggering: in 2006, in just one province of the Congo, South Kivu province, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported. In some towns, 70% of the women are survivors of sexual assault. Panzi Hospital does not have enough beds to accommodate all of the survivors, some of whom have suffered such terrible damage that they need surgical treatment. There are too many women who need help and not enough organizations to help them.

Gender-based violence is not just about women’s rights, nor is not just a women’s issue. It is about human rights, and it is about what one human being does to another human being. It challenges the ethics that every culture espouses of protecting those members of society who are most vulnerable, which, in many societies, are women and children. Yet the global community has done little to address gender-based violence, especially rape as a weapon of war, despite the fact that it has occurred with increasing brutality in multiple conflicts in the past two decades alone. It was only in 1996 that the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal declared rape a war crime and indicted eight Serbian soldiers and police officers in connection to the rapes of nearly 20,000 Muslim Bosnian women. Although over a decade has passed since this declaration, rape continues to be used as a terror strategy, and there is little that any organization does to prevent it. Even the UNIFEM, a branch of the U.N. dedicated to women’s empowerment and gender equality, remains inadequately equipped to address this concern. It has never achieved the sort of publicity UNICEF has, nor does it have a comparable budget, and as a result, it is ineffective in combating issues such as crimes against humanity.

This past January, the government and the rebel militias in the Congo signed a peace treaty declaring a ceasefire, but very few of these men will address the invisible casualties of the fighting: the women of the Congo. They bear the physical and emotional wounds of war and have experienced the fighting in a way that no man can. The world remains silent about the violence these women suffered. Newspapers carry little information about the situation, reporting recently only that the fighting had ended. Few people have spoken about the fact that rape was used to terrorize and oppress entire communities, and fewer still are trying to help the survivors. Most importantly, few people recognize that while a peace treaty may have been signed, the ramifications of this systematic violence will continue to reverberate in these communities.

The fighting has ended, but for many women, the road to recovery has only begun.

The Dynasties of Democracy

1/24/08

The Dynasties of Democracy

Dimokratia is the Greek word for democracy, or rule by the people, in its most literal translation. Democracy is an ancient political concept, stretching as far back as the 4^th century B.C.E., when Aristotle and Plato were actively contrasting and comparing its benefits and disadvantages. Both men were from the city of Athens, where a power struggle between the democrats and the oligarchs, or those who supported rule by a few privileged, elite members of society, led to turmoil in the city and execution of leading democratic politicians in 411 B.C.E.

From ancient times, the question has always been: who will govern the people? Power struggles have ensued in every society and politicians have vied with each other for control over the government, sometimes in subtle ways, other times in a brutally repulsive manner. Dynasties have been established and overthrown all in the hopes of gaining and securing power.

Pakistan and America both face the question of who will govern the people, and while ostensibly, both countries are democracies, the current political trends have alarmed me. In the US, a former president’s wife is running for office, and in Pakistan, the teenage son of an assassinated politician has been declared co-chairperson of one of the leading political parties. On the surface, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bilawar Bhutto Zardari seem to have very little in common, yet the political machinery they are relying upon is founded on the success of someone in their families. In effect, we are seeing the emergence of the Clinton dynasty and the resurgence of the Bhutto dynasty.

Let us seriously consider whether Hillary Clinton, on her own merit, would be such a popular candidate. She has little personal charm (despite her teary eyes in New Hampshire) and has never retracted her vote in favor of the war in Iraq, which is a source of contention. Her health care plan was developed recently compared to the other candidates and is a near duplicate of John Edwards’. Yet the Clinton name is attractive, especially considering Bill Clinton’s enormous popularity. People joke about the 2-for-1 deal when they mention Hillary and say that they’re going to get Bill in the White House again for free.

Similarly, Bilawar, a nineteen-year-old who has spent most of his life outside of Pakistan and has no political experience, would never have been appointed a co-chair of anything other than a student organization at Oxford if he wasn’t Benazir’s son. Yet the Bhutto legacy continues to stand strong, in part because of Benazir’s tragic murder. The woman who had previously been accused of corruption charges is today celebrated as a martyr. Her death has endowed her son with an aura of moral and political authority.

Of course, both the U.S. and Pakistan have a history of political families. The Kennedy family in the U.S. and the Bhutto family in Pakistan have traditionally been actively involved in politics. Yet political families may not offer the best solutions for a country, especially countries such as America and Pakistan that are poised for overwhelming change that will affect domestic and foreign policy.

While Bill Clinton in his time was an effective president and the Bhutto family members have been leaders of Pakistan, their relatives do not represent the best option for their respective countries. These political families have become dynasties, where power is passed from one hand to another, regardless of the suitability of the next in line. Neither Hillary nor Bilawar are the worst options for America or Pakistan, but nor are they the best, and unfortunately, they can rest on the laurels of their eminent relations. They are entrenched in politics, and speak of change, hope, and democracy but lack actual substance to their promises.

We should demand politicians who do not support wars that drain our resources, like Hillary does. We should demand politicians who do not have associations with people in positions of power who received kickbacks from foreign companies doing business in Pakistan, which is what Bilawar’s father was accused of. We should demand change. I do not advocate change for the sake of change, but rather because the politicians of today have very little to offer the public in terms of actual policy. Although they attempt to show us that they have political experience—sometimes only by association with a political family, as though political acumen is genetic or can be transmitted via diffusion—their experience reads more like political expediency and opportunism.

Pakistan’s and America’s political destinies are inextricably intertwined. Both countries are at historic points in politics, and the promise of a new order, where politicians serve the demos, or people, and not their self-interests, approaches. The upcoming elections in both countries offer their citizens this hint of a promise—if only we can grasp it in time.

Spiderman

1/11/08

Taking care of a child is an incredibly demanding task, but I thought of it only in terms of the basic, mundane tasks: changing diapers, feeding the child, bathing him, changing his clothes. I had never thought about how childhood encompassed those things but went beyond them as well, for children needed entertainment and company, just like adults did. I would quickly learn just how demanding taking care of a child could be.

When my aunt asked me to babysit my three-year-old cousin, Rayan, I readily agreed. He is an adorable child, and I assumed that his angelic looks correlated with angelic behavior as well. Besides, I was just going to watch him for an hour while my aunt ran errands, and I reasoned that sixty minutes was too short of a time for anything to really go wrong. What I didn’t understand is that the very definition of childhood entails some mischief.

The trouble began even before my aunt had left the house. As soon as Rayan saw his mother put on her coat, he insisted on going with her. She tried telling him it was too cold to go outside and that she was going to return soon, but he could not be convinced. I could see the initial indications of a temper tantrum brewing, so I suggested that Rayan help me cook his dinner. Together we stirred Maggie noodles as they simmered on the stove, and he was so engrossed in the importance of his task that he did not notice that his mother had left.

When dinner was ready, we sat at the kitchen table while I attempted to feed Rayan. He had other plans—he had spotted a plate of raisins and was busy munching on those and kept refusing to eat the noodles. When I removed the plate of raisins, he shot me a reproachful look and then promptly crawled under the table, into a corner where I couldn’t reach him. I attempted to coax him from the recesses of the table, but he only entrenched himself further. I got down on my hands and knees and tried to feed him under the table, but he turned his face away.

I realized that a three-year-old was defeating all of my ingenious ploys. Being a pedantic nerd, I frantically tried to think of any literature I had read that could help me deal with this dilemma of a child refusing to eat, but I couldn’t recall any suggestions. Where was Dr. Spock when you needed him? Rayan must have taken pity on me, because he crawled out from the table of his own accord and allowed me to feed him some dinner. Relieved that one of my duties was accomplished, I asked Rayan what he wanted to do next.

“Watch Spiderman!” he responded.

I hunted all over the house for the Spiderman DVD until I remembered that it was in my brother’s car. I popped in the DVD, and when Tobey Maguire appeared on the screen, Rayan shook his head and told me he wanted to watch Spiderman.

“But Tobey Maguire is Spiderman,” I attempted to explain, but Rayan looked at me as though I had no idea what I was talking about and asked me where Spiderman was.

I fast forwarded to an action scene where Spiderman sailed through the air. This prompted another flurry of questions from Rayan: What’s Spiderman doing? How can he fly? Where is he going? What is a web? Why did he fall?

The kid was a bottomless fount of questions. He fired them at me rapidly, in his lilting lisp and then stared at me expectantly, waiting for some adult illumination. None of my answers seemed to satisfy him; it was apparent that I was failing miserably. Eventually I gave up and told Rayan I didn’t know, and I could just see him wondering what kind of grown up I was who couldn’t even tell a three-year-old how Spiderman could fly.

Suddenly, Rayan informed me that he had to go to the bathroom. I led him to the bathroom on the first floor, but I had forgotten that it was being remodeled and could not be used. When I realized that we would have to go upstairs and Rayan repeated that he had to go to the bathroom, I panicked. I could just imagine what would happen if he had an accident on my mother’s rug imported from Turkey. So I grabbed him, tucked him under my arm like a football and dashed upstairs. Luckily, mishap was avoided.

I experienced a genuine sense of relief when my aunt returned home because I was completely exhausted after an hour of intense physical and mental exertion. I’m getting too old to be crawling under tables and answering questions about superpowers.

Gardasil

12/27/07

I had heard about the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, because of the furor it had caused among American politicians and the public. The vaccine, a series of three injections administered over the course of six months, protects women against the types of cervical cancer caused by four strains of HPV, which amount to about 70% of the cases of cervical cancer. Its efficacy for protecting women against these types of cervical cancer is nearly 100%, and there are few side effects. When over 10,000 women annually are diagnosed with cervical cancer, and 3700 die as a result of the cancer, this vaccine represents a significant achievement.

Then why the moral outrage? Cervical cancer is caused by HPV, a sexually transmitted infection. Estimates state that about 75% of sexually active people in the US have contracted the infection or will contract it in their lifetimes, and the infection is most common in young adults. HPV is usually a transient, asymptomatic infection, adequately dealt with by the body’s immune system, but certain strains can lead to infections that develop into cervical cancer if left untreated.

A generally asymptomatic infection that leads to cancer years after a woman has initially contracted the virus is a frightening concept that concerns me. Thus, a vaccine that can prevent the majority of cervical cancers was a welcome medical breakthrough in my view. Yet sectors of the American public expressed outrage over the vaccine and claimed that it would corrupt the youth. They said that the vaccine would encourage women to be sexually active because it would eliminate some risk of sexually transmitted infections, and that promiscuity would increase as a result. Yet to deny women medical treatment based on this fallacious argument is ludicrous.

I had noted the controversy the vaccine had caused but had not thought it had any personal implications. Knowing and accepting what Islam mandated, I fully believed that the vaccine had no audience among the American Muslim community. That idea changed recently, when I contemplated receiving the vaccination after reading information about it that a fellow medical student had distributed. I was deeply uncertain about getting myself vaccinated, but I could not understand why I was feeling this way.

What about this vaccination made me reluctant to be vaccinated? While I’m not a fan of needles (my pediatrician probably still remembers the time I kicked him in the shins when he tried to vaccinate me for mumps), I had suffered through a variety of vaccinations that would immunize me to hepatitis B, rabies, and measles. Clearly, pain and needles were not part of the issue—it was my way of thinking that was causing the problem. As a Muslim woman who followed the tenants of my religion, I had dismissed the vaccine as irrelevant to my lifestyle. Not only had I labeled it irrelevant, I had endowed the vaccine with a moral value, much in the same way that the protestors had. I felt that being vaccinated against a cancer caused by a sexually transmitted infection implied that I needed the vaccination because I was breaking religious decrees. Because of its associations with issues considered culturally taboo, I feared the moral implications of the vaccine.

This realization gave me pause. Until that moment, I had not understood that I was confounding a medical treatment with morality. It was a strange thought, because I knew women who had been vaccinated, and I applauded them for protecting themselves. However, I judged myself differently, especially because I was the only Muslim woman I knew who was contemplating being vaccinated. I kept thinking: I don’t need the vaccine because whoever I marry will be Muslim.

Then I had a moment of lucidity where I realized that it did matter. I couldn’t assume things about my partner’s life before marriage, especially if those assumptions had a direct impact on my health. I would never place my health in someone else’s hands, and by not being vaccinated, I was doing precisely that. Being vaccinated to protect myself against cervical cancer was not a moral judgment, and it did not indicate anything about my lifestyle or about my religious practices: it was just one more way to lead a healthy life. The same arguments used to vaccinate people against tetanus should be used to vaccinate women against HPV.

The very next day, I was sitting in my doctor’s office with my sleeve rolled up and my eyes tightly shut so I wouldn’t see the needle that was hovering over my arm. “I can’t watch,” I wailed, and the nurse resisted smiling.

I’m not going to lie, ladies: that shot hurt. When I communicated this to the nurse, her prompt response effectively shut me up: “Well, it hurts a lot less than cervical cancer.”

Doublespeak

11/30/07
Please note that this op-ed was published before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

On November 7, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto published an op-ed in the New York Times, by far her most outspoken and pointed critique of President Musharraf to date. She baldly stated “Pakistan is a military dictatorship” and called upon the U.S. to support its democratic rhetoric with actions that actually promote democracy in a country calling for it. Her statement signals quite a change from her earlier willingness to negotiate with a military dictator. By openly attacking Musharraf, she demonstrates a complete change of political stance, perhaps triggered by America. The proclamation of the emergency in Pakistan forced Ms. Bhutto to change her tactics and to promote herself as a representative of democracy by criticizing Musharraf’s actions.

Overall, I was relieved to read her opposition to the declaration of emergency and to Musharraf’s imprisonment of lawyers, judges, and activists. However, another part of me marveled at this woman’s opportunism: she turned on a former ally and declared Pakistan in the throes of a military dictatorship when it was an obvious fact that this had been the case for the past eight years. For Ms. Bhutto, right now was the prime moment to create an image of herself as the harbinger of democracy, an image that feeds directly into American rhetoric and sentiments.

In this respect, she is following in Musharraf’s footsteps. He has also created an image for the West: he is America’s foremost Muslim ally in the war against terrorism. These images do not necessarily have any grounding in reality, but that does not seem to matter to the U.S., which is so invested in rhetoric that it can only make a feeble protest when Musharraf institutes an emergency he claims is necessary in the war against terror. It appears that the keywords “war against terror” initiate a Pavolvian response of acceptance in the States, no matter how undemocratic the means. After all, since so many other human and civil rights have been violated both domestically and internationally, an extraconstitutional emergency is acceptable, as long as it is all in the name of fighting those terrorists.

On the other hand, the more Ms. Bhutto fashions herself as the democratic face of Pakistan, the less currency Musharraf has with the Bush administration. Thus, Ms. Bhutto knowingly continues to present herself as the reinvented democratic hope, not just for Pakistan, but for the Bush administration, which can regain some credibility by having a democratically elected leader in a country that is one of its allies. In doing so, she apes the keywords the Bush administration loves so dearly: “defeat of the Taliban and al Qaeda,” “contain extremism and terrorism,” “shut down political madrassas,” all of which she used in her recent op-ed.

She’s saying exactly what America expects to hear. It expects to hear that Pakistan is an unstable land bordering a hotbed of terrorist activity. It expects to hear that Pakistan’s educational landscape is dotted with madrassas spawning a new generation of terrorists by giving them explosives and hopes of attaining paradise through martyrdom. Although a current survey estimated that less than 7% of Pakistani children are actually educated in madrassas, the recent Lal Masjid debacle only reinforced these ideas. The political reality of the situation is so much more complex that it is frustrating to see Ms. Bhutto hone in on only the issues important to America.

Just because Pakistan shares a border with Afghanistan does not mean that it will succeed where America failed, because brute force alone cannot “contain extremism.” The defeat of the Taliban and al Qaeda is not so simple, as evidenced by the fact that many parts of Afghanistan are returning to Taliban rule. And how does Bhutto propose for the U.S. to “contain” the same extremists it helped to arm and fund during the Cold War? She goes after the madrassas, further playing into America’s idea that by shutting down all places where extremist thought is developed, extremism will cease. In reality, the phenomenon of martyrdom and extremism is not novel (nearly a millennium ago the Crusaders hacked and slashed their way through Jerusalem), hinting that a deeper understanding is required of this matter rather than political soundbytes that can be fed to an administration desperate for any positive feedback.

Pakistan is in a quandary, for its current leader and the woman who is perhaps the best hope for political change in Pakistan are posturing for America. They are both playing the U.S. in a desperate attempt to gain legitimacy and power. At this rate, America stands to gain the most from political change in Pakistan, not the Pakistani people.

Living the High Life

11/21/07

As a medical student facing a six-figure amount of debt, I am forced to be quite economical. So, when my dad decided to visit me a few weeks ago, I was really excited, not just about spending quality time with him, but also because I had given him a long list of groceries he should bring for me. A girl has to eat, and when pomegranates are $2 per fruit, it’s best if someone who actually has a positive net worth is buying them for you.

I felt like a pirate claiming my booty when my dad arrived with an SUV full of exotic fruits, bakery bread, and my favorite food. We decided to explore Harvard Square, and when I pointed out my favorite dessert restaurant, which I reserved exclusively for special occasions because a dessert there cost as much as an entree at other classy restaurants, my dad decided to treat me.

Afterwards, we left Harvard Square and traversed the epicenter of the wealthy and incredibly well-dressed: Newbury Street, Boston’s version of 5^th Avenue. Chanel, Burberry, and Valentino boutiques line the street. Not only are the women dressed in swanky designer labels, so are their tiny dogs. Despite having lived in Boston for five years, I had only been to Newbury Street twice, which I justified by claiming that I had little free time. Secretly, it was mostly because the thought of so many beautiful people gathered in one street made me feel slightly inadequate.

Somehow, with my father at my side, it felt different—I was with someone who had never thought I was inadequate, and so I walked with a newfound confidence, daring the women dressed in Gucci to look down at my Gap apparel. Our excursion was relegated strictly to window shopping, although a part of me reasoned that buying that gorgeous Chanel purse would only be adding another grand to my outstanding debt. It was an insignificant amount, I rationalized, but before my wild schemes could further unfold, we had reached the end of Newbury Street.

My dad wanted to meet a friend who lived in Boston.

“You probably will not want to come with me,” he said.

“Yeah…you can just drop me off at my dorm,” I responded diffidently. “Where does your friend work anyway?”

“In the hotel that used to be the Ritz Carlton.”

At the mention of the Ritz Carlton, the first thing I thought of was tea. The Ritz Carlton had a fantastic tradition of afternoon high tea, which included delicacies such as caviar and lobster profiterole. I love tea and was eager to taste some of the more exotic food the hotel offered, but in the past, I had always been deterred by the hefty price tag that could easily escalate into the three digits. However, if it was on daddy’s tab, there was no such compunction on my part.

“Please take me with you! Does the hotel still have tea?” I asked.

“Of course. We can have tea there,” my father declared, innocent of how my request would tax his magnanimity.

Although the name and ownership of the hotel had changed, its tradition of high tea remained exquisite. My napkin was unfolded for me and placed on my lap. My tea was poured for me, and I even had fresh honey to stir into it. The table was weighed down with six plates of caviar, lox and cream cheese sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, lemon tarts, scones, cream puffs, and chocolate covered strawberries. A woman played a harp in the corner of the room. I felt like the Queen of England must feel every day. It did not matter that I probably would never get an Eid gift for the rest of my life after my father got the bill for this tea—right now, I had the same purchasing power as the retired stockbroker sitting a few tables away.

The glorious day left me feeling posh, probably for the first and last time in my life. The feeling of being worthy to experience high society quickly evaporated when I returned to my room and, in an overly enthusiastic attempt to repair a teapot, accidentally superglued my fingers together. As I spent half an hour trying to salvage my hand in case I ever wanted to be a neurosurgeon, I realized that life was not about trying to fit in with the designer-worshipping crowd. It was about being with my father, who made me feel that it was worth it to drive five hours to see me. It was not so much today’s privileges that I would remember but the feeling that he cared enough to indulge me. He left me not just with an armful of pomegranates, but with the knowledge that I was an essential part of his life.

“Hum Tum”: Pakistani-Americans’ Perspectives on Gender Roles

11/14/07

A person’s ideas are never shaped in isolation, especially ideas on gender. By definition, gender is a cultural construct; thus, it varies from society to society. As a result, the Pakistani concepts of gender are dramatically different from the American concepts of gender. I wondered how young Pakistanis who had spent part of their lives in America had negotiated the formation of their ideas on gender given the varying cultural backgrounds to which they had been exposed, and whether living in the West had shaped their ideas at all. I interviewed three men and three women, all of whom are either in college or graduate school, or have college degrees and are working. I spoke to them about expectations for men and women in Pakistani-American society, the role of education in Pakistani-American women’s lives, family life for working women, and the forces that influenced their own perceptions of gender. The group represented a gamut of opinions, but one theme was prominent: the move from Pakistan to America had profoundly affected this new generation and its ideas of Hum Tum.

Maria, a Master’s student in Middle Eastern Studies, acknowledged that there are expectations of Pakistani-American women, “but I don’t think it’s anything negative. It’s a generational gap. There’s no template for my generation, because we live in a society where our parents didn’t grow up.”

Sarah K, an anthropology PhD student, elaborated on the culture that Pakistanis brought to America. When Pakistani parents established themselves in America, “they had a rosy idea of what Pakistani society back home is like, including an ideal of how men and women behave back home.” This ideal, which originated in the 1950s and 1960s, a time when many of our parents were growing up, has shaped how Pakistanis expect their children to behave, argued Sarah K. "Women are more affected by those ideals because they have to be good Pakistani girls, get married to the right kind of guy, from the right kind of country, with the right kind of background," she declared.

Many Pakistanis immigrated to America for better economic opportunities, and so the majority of them want their children to be educated in order to succeed. Maria stated that the expectations for daughters and sons were essentially the same. “You get educated, you get a good job, and that draws you closer to having a better life.”

However, some people noted that the burden of economic success changes for men and women once a woman is married. Sarah A., a junior in college, pointed out that “generally, not specific to Pakistan, men are supposed to be the breadwinners.” Abdur-Rahim, a graduate student in a joint MBA and Public Administration Master’s program, stated that although he grew up in a family where both parents worked, he believed that "a woman has the right to pursue a career, but the ultimate responsibility of earning for the family rests with the man."

Does this mean that a woman’s career is not as important as her husband’s? Not necessarily, Wasim, a law student, said. “Men and women have equal potential in terms of being breadwinners. You can’t expect a woman who has spent the past eight or more years in undergraduate and postgraduate study to sacrifice all that,” he responded. “Even in Islam, we can see examples of women who were working and supporting their husbands, Khadijah, for example.”

Saleem, who trained as a lawyer and now owns a business, said, “Throughout the centuries, men have always been the breadwinners. Women stayed at home, but now everything has changed. Now the women are going to work and doing better than the men.”

However, the arrival of children complicates the roles of spouses. Wasim stated that while biologically only a woman can become pregnant, this does not automatically designate her as the caretaker of the children. “There is something to be said about mothers being able to ‘mother’ better than fathers, but does that mean that these women who are very successful in schools will be sitting at home after they have kids?” Wasim questioned. His proposal was that one parent should stay at home with the children, and it did not have to be the mother. “I know a number of couples where the wife is the breadwinner and the husband spends more time at home,” he commented.

On the other hand, Saleem stressed a woman’s duty as a mother and a wife as being of primary importance. He gave the example of a Pakistani woman he knew who graduated from Oxford, got married, decided to stay at home when she had her children. He believed that a woman could work “as long as she fulfills her duty—takes care of the kids and cook and cleans and takes care of her husband.” For him, this role of a woman was more valuable than her role as a working woman. Moreover, he felt that a woman who did not provide these things in a marriage was not fulfilling her duty. “If I work really hard and give my wife a really good lifestyle, and there’s no food on the table when I go home and she’s not home, it’s not a good feeling. Why do I work so hard to come home to an empty house? I might as well just be single.”

When asked about the myriad of influences that shaped their thoughts on gender, all of the respondents stated that their parents had primarily taught them, whether it was through example or discussion, about gender roles. In addition to parents, Sarah A. recognized that “everything around you shapes the way you perceive women’s roles. For example, when you’re growing up, your mom’s roles, you grandmother’s roles, your cousin’s roles, all these influence what you think about women’s roles. What you see around you, books you read, movies, TV shows—all these show that a good mom does this, and this is what a bad mom does. The first thing I thought about was the mom from [the TV show] “Leave it to Beaver,” who always was smiling, always had an apron on and was always making fresh cookies. That’s all she does. This was the good mom.” Media, the surrounding community, our families: all these are forces that affect the way we think. They define gender, and to varying degrees, we absorb these definitions and incorporate them into our lives.

However, gender roles continue to evolve. “This new generation is being raised differently, because a lot of the kids who are in elementary school now are 3^rd generation Pakistani-Americans,” Sarah K. stated. For these children, who are often raised by parents who also grew up in America, Pakistani traditions are more easily melded with American ones. Their parents have been affected by the hybridization of Pakistani culture, and as a result, the values they impart to their children have a distinct American flavor to them. It remains for the new generation to navigate its definition of gender in an increasingly diversified society.

Skirts and Stethoscopes

11/1/07

In 1847, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to be accepted to medical school in America. Nineteenth-century Americans viewed medicine as a man’s job, but by refusing to allow cultural norms to constrict her ambitions to become a doctor, Ms. Blackwell allowed me and all female medical students in America to fulfill our ambitions. I had taken her sacrifice as granted and believed that my generation of Americans had been influenced by the feminist movement to consider women as intelligent, rational, capable individuals worthy of economic, intellectual, and political independence. Gradually, I have realized that perhaps the women’s movement has not done enough to change culture even in twenty-first century America. This realization has been forced upon me by fellow students and doctors who have demonstrated just how difficult it is to change mentalities shaped by centuries of misogynistic tradition.

One of my first medical school classes required us to analyze patient-doctor relationships and to distinguish between inappropriate and appropriate behavior. The students were divided into small groups, and each of the groups discussed ways to demonstrate an inappropriate physician-patient interaction. Someone suggested one inappropriate behavior was a physician flirting with a patient, and a young man, attempting to build upon that idea, leeringly suggested analyzing a scenario similar to one he had read in a pornographic magazine. The other men in the room recognized exactly what magazine he was referring to and began to laugh, making further comments about what the magazine had been depicting.

On the surface, this scene may just seem like young men being facetious, but the implications of these men’s words and actions underscore an alarming sexist attitude. Well-educated, intelligent men just admitted that they read magazines that violated and humiliated women. And not only did they admit to reading these magazines, but they actually appreciated something that was inherently degrading towards women. In doing so they endorsed the misogynistic attitudes these magazines propagated. What really disturbed me is that despite all of their education, which would supposedly have broadened their minds and exposed them to different ways of thinking, these future doctors were just as patriarchal as those nineteenth-century men who scoffed at the idea of a female physician.

Little incidents began accumulating.

One of my friends was told by a doctor with whom she was training that the only reason a female patient liked her was not because of her great interviewing skills, but because she was a woman. To this doctor, my friend’s gender trumped all of her other qualities—her intelligence, her sympathy, and her ability to understand patients. It is true that female patients are likelier to open up to a female physician, but they are also willing to open up to a physician, whether this physician is male or female, who demonstrates a genuine care for the patient. Instead of being one of many contributing factors to the interview, gender became the only factor.

One day, in the middle of class discussion of alcoholism, one male student stated that wives drove their husbands to become alcoholics because marriage was so terrible for men. I’m sure that he meant it just as a joke, but jokes based on gender are completely inappropriate in an academic and professional setting. Intimating that women drove men crazy in front of female colleagues did not seem sexist to this student, but this was precisely the problem: these sexist statements were accepted as a societal norm!

Two days later, the joke was repeated, and both men and women laughed at it. When I noticed my female colleagues laughing at something that humiliated women, frankly, I was embarrassed for my gender. I was also embarrassed by myself, because although I did not laugh, I did not say that this behavior was unacceptable.

When women do not respond to inappropriate behavior, we cannot hold men responsible for sexist attitudes. The comments that men make are part of the problem, but so are we. Women are silently endorsing sexism because they refuse to defend themselves. Afraid of confrontation, we do not vocalize our problems with patriarchal attitudes. We feel that sexism is a cultural issue of the past, one that was dealt with during the feminist revolution of the 1960s and 70s. We believe that being allowed to wear whatever we want, do whatever we want, and vote for whoever we want constitutes equality. It does not. Receiving the respect we deserve and having our contributions to medicine and society acknowledged are a step to equality.

In 1849, Ms. Blackwell became Dr. Blackwell as she graduated with her M.D. degree at the top of her all-male class in Geneva College. Since then, medicine has become less dominated by men, but still more cultural attitudes remain to be changed in the struggle for female physicians to establish ourselves.