Muhammad Ilyas Khan

A friend writes in an email : "At stone's throw from my house a very young man has been shot dead ~~his fault, loving a girl, perhaps related to him, in another village. I am sure the girl will also be disposed off sooner than later. The weaker vessel is generally so treated here. ....If this is how we treat love, the fountainhead of all that is good in human nature then Nature has a good case for emptying its reserve of calamities.... [on us as a society]." And hence he argues we are not in the eye of the storm for nothing. We deserve the deep pit, we are in for we are brutal, senseless and irrational in our thoughts and deeds.

My response: "The problem is not the 'treatment of love', I am not generalizing it to every Pakistani, as educated and enlightened sections in our soceity would think and act differently but the real problem is our false concept of honour, our male chauvinism and most of all our 'hypocricy' and double standards. So a male chauvinist, would take pride if someone else's sister falls in love with him and will readily boast about it in the circle of his friends. But if his own sister made the lethal mistake of falling in love with someone else (another male in the society), he will consider that as a dishonour to his ego and might go to the extent of taking her life and the life of her lover/beloved. Clearly he has one standard for himself and another for someone else when it comes to issues of love and honour.

This mindset is added by the myopic vision prevalent in the society and hence by killing his sister or her lover the male chauvinist, in the process, ironically instead of restoring his or his family's honour, foolishly exposes himself in front of others on the one hand and becomes a murderer on the other. The motive is an irrational, false sense of honour and the result social degradation and legal liability, a total loss on all counts . I feel only an education which develops rational thinking and the consequent individual and social transformation, is our way out of this ignorance."

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