If anyone has assuaged the effects of jolt felt by everyone due to the unfolding of a horrifying dream of 'change' aka tabdeeli, it is the tik tok girls; Hareem Shah and Sundal Khattak, in the form of the discussions that took place after they posted a Tik Tik video from the Foreign Office. Since both of them need no introduction, I am going to get straight to the point.
The question that makes many curious about them is that how come they are able to access the most inaccessible of celebrities, dignitaries, offices and vice versa. Many anchors have even directly pointed this question to the Tik Tok girls. However, each time they evaded answering and that too quite snappily. So how are they able to do it all?
Some people tend to think that the Tik Tok girls may necessarily be having corresponding clients and that is the secret of their ingress. Judging women as such has and shall continue to remain a disease our nation suffers from. This mindset has made the life of many Pakistani women miserable. Only the women who work in the government sector are shown some respect by the men in general. On the contrary, women are more prone and vulnerable to be judged, criticized, tittle-tattled and vice versa in the private sector.
Regardless of everything, even if for the sake of argument we come to the conclusion that girls like Hareem Shah, Sundal Khattak and Qandeel Baloch are really 'bad', it gives any of us no right to judge them. Primarily because all these girls are very young. Even if they are doing something they shouldn't be, as Muslims we shouldn't judge them and cause hatred in the society. That hatred gets fueled over the time and in no time do we see one of these girls ending up in a coffin as a result of a killing by a bearer of so called ‘honour’.
I still remember the day when Qandeel Baloch came on TV for the first time on Mubashir Luqman's show, it struck my mind that now that she is on TV things are got to go the wrong way; unfortunately they did.
When God the Almighty has left open the door to atonement who on earth are we to intrude? Can the 200 million people of this country certify and swear that they are sure that had Qandeel Baloch not been murdered she would have stayed the same the whole of her life? Can they say the same about Hareem Shah and Sundal Khattak?
We have never understood the true spirit of Islam. The clergy made it all about the uniform and the prayers. The state made it all about songs, music, green colour, the meaning of Pakistan, and what and what not. Even Cricket: Islam for us is just a habit, we are far away from indoctrinating the real essence of Islam in our souls. It has mostly been about Muslims, rarely been about Islam. Even when we complain to the world about the fact that we are seen unfavourably, we tend to stress more on the fact that we are Muslims, though less on Islam.
Even the west admits Islam to be a religion of peace. However, what keeps them wondering is the unpeaceful attitude we Muslims tend to display in diverse quarters. For instance, the death of Khashogji, putting aside the power politics of states, people in the west would be thinking to themselves; how brutal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where exists the "Home of ‘their’ God". Acids are thrown at women in Pakistan.
Quite a few Pashtun female singers have been brutally murdered by their own husbands, many infant girls have been known to be buried alive in different parts of Pakistan.
Coming back to the point: How are the Tik Tok girls able to infiltrate the highest of offices and even get away with criminal acts such as aerial firing?
A friend of mine who lives in Britain was once summoned by the court to appear as a prosecution identification witness against an Iranian girl who was accused of having committed fraud by receiving money in the name of her look-alike sister. My friend used to work in that very money exchange and was asked to testify if this is the woman he saw 5 years ago.
“How can you be so sure that this is the woman you saw, despite that a considerable number of years have gone by?”, asked the accused's counsel from my friend. “I can never forget such a beautiful face!”, replied my friend, inadvertently leaving everyone including the Judge with a grin like a Cheshire cat.
Tik Tok girls are young girls, in their primitive stage, still exploring themselves, nothing more and nothing less. At the end of the day we are all humans and when God the Almighty has left open the door to enlightenment we should refrain from jumping to conclusions and should pray for all. At the least, we must show some empathy towards even those humans we do not like; apathy and revulsion are not the solution.
Henry David Thoreau, a famous American philosopher and essayist very rightly said, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” If we start giving one another just a little bit of space and give the hatred a break, only then can we make a progressive state. People will come to the right place if we let them.
The question that makes many curious about them is that how come they are able to access the most inaccessible of celebrities, dignitaries, offices and vice versa. Many anchors have even directly pointed this question to the Tik Tok girls. However, each time they evaded answering and that too quite snappily. So how are they able to do it all?
Some people tend to think that the Tik Tok girls may necessarily be having corresponding clients and that is the secret of their ingress. Judging women as such has and shall continue to remain a disease our nation suffers from. This mindset has made the life of many Pakistani women miserable. Only the women who work in the government sector are shown some respect by the men in general. On the contrary, women are more prone and vulnerable to be judged, criticized, tittle-tattled and vice versa in the private sector.
Regardless of everything, even if for the sake of argument we come to the conclusion that girls like Hareem Shah, Sundal Khattak and Qandeel Baloch are really 'bad', it gives any of us no right to judge them. Primarily because all these girls are very young. Even if they are doing something they shouldn't be, as Muslims we shouldn't judge them and cause hatred in the society. That hatred gets fueled over the time and in no time do we see one of these girls ending up in a coffin as a result of a killing by a bearer of so called ‘honour’.
I still remember the day when Qandeel Baloch came on TV for the first time on Mubashir Luqman's show, it struck my mind that now that she is on TV things are got to go the wrong way; unfortunately they did.
When God the Almighty has left open the door to atonement who on earth are we to intrude? Can the 200 million people of this country certify and swear that they are sure that had Qandeel Baloch not been murdered she would have stayed the same the whole of her life? Can they say the same about Hareem Shah and Sundal Khattak?
We have never understood the true spirit of Islam. The clergy made it all about the uniform and the prayers. The state made it all about songs, music, green colour, the meaning of Pakistan, and what and what not. Even Cricket: Islam for us is just a habit, we are far away from indoctrinating the real essence of Islam in our souls. It has mostly been about Muslims, rarely been about Islam. Even when we complain to the world about the fact that we are seen unfavourably, we tend to stress more on the fact that we are Muslims, though less on Islam.
Even the west admits Islam to be a religion of peace. However, what keeps them wondering is the unpeaceful attitude we Muslims tend to display in diverse quarters. For instance, the death of Khashogji, putting aside the power politics of states, people in the west would be thinking to themselves; how brutal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where exists the "Home of ‘their’ God". Acids are thrown at women in Pakistan.
Quite a few Pashtun female singers have been brutally murdered by their own husbands, many infant girls have been known to be buried alive in different parts of Pakistan.
Coming back to the point: How are the Tik Tok girls able to infiltrate the highest of offices and even get away with criminal acts such as aerial firing?
A friend of mine who lives in Britain was once summoned by the court to appear as a prosecution identification witness against an Iranian girl who was accused of having committed fraud by receiving money in the name of her look-alike sister. My friend used to work in that very money exchange and was asked to testify if this is the woman he saw 5 years ago.
“How can you be so sure that this is the woman you saw, despite that a considerable number of years have gone by?”, asked the accused's counsel from my friend. “I can never forget such a beautiful face!”, replied my friend, inadvertently leaving everyone including the Judge with a grin like a Cheshire cat.
Tik Tok girls are young girls, in their primitive stage, still exploring themselves, nothing more and nothing less. At the end of the day we are all humans and when God the Almighty has left open the door to enlightenment we should refrain from jumping to conclusions and should pray for all. At the least, we must show some empathy towards even those humans we do not like; apathy and revulsion are not the solution.
Henry David Thoreau, a famous American philosopher and essayist very rightly said, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” If we start giving one another just a little bit of space and give the hatred a break, only then can we make a progressive state. People will come to the right place if we let them.