Ayesha Nasir, I Am Sorry

Dear follower of this blog,

Before reading the below, maybe you should read this.

And now:

Ms. Ayesha Nasir, I am sorry.

I am sorry that all Pakistani Muslims don't have two Masters degrees from Columbia and know how to pronounce obscure French terms correctly. Clearly, we are barbarians.

I am sorry that you "scrawled your signature on the most important contract of your life without reading a word." Clearly, the ability to read doesn't presuppose the existence of the ability to reason.

I am sorry your family and your husband's family considered you extraneous to quite possibly the most significant ceremony of your life. Clearly, you need to take this issue up with your family and your husband's family, NOT with the entire Muslim world in some Western tabloid.

I am sorry you had to sit a mile away from your fiance during your wedding ceremony. Perhaps you could have taken a cue from EVERY OTHER WEDDING that has taken place in urban Pakistan in the past fifty years, and sat together.

I am sorry that you have a group of friends who suffer from the same victim syndrome you do. Perhaps all that money spent on those expensive educations and global opportunities would have been better invested in someone who was actually going to use them.

I am sorry that your rights were signed away in your marriage contract. Perhaps that is not your fault. But it is not the fault of Pakistan either. Or of Islam. Allah gives women all the rights you have stated in your article. It is the fault of your family. And your husband's family. You may wash your dirty laundry in public, but don't pretend it isn't yours.

I am not sorry that you have a joyous marriage (far from it), but I am sorry that you felt the need to point out how horrible things could become for you, despite your good fortune and (apparent) happiness. There are serious gaps to overcome in women's rights in Pakistan - I am not denying this - and there are some interpretations of Islam that are unfair to women as well. I do not take issue with the fact that you wish to draw attention to these issues. I take issue with the fact that you make sweeping generalizations about a religion and a nation in your writing. The title of your article itself implies that "Islamic marriage contracts" inherently limit the rights of women. You know as well as I do that this is not true. A good marriage contract, of any faith, will adequately protect the rights of both parties. A bad marriage contract, of any faith, will not.

What has publishing an article in Slate done for the women you want to help? Nothing. It has only given more ammunition to those who wish to beat Pakistan and Islam down every chance they get. The women who don't read their marriage contracts are still not reading them. Are they?

I agree. You should have read your marriage contract. The fact that you didn't though, is not a problem with the Islamic faith nor with the Pakistani nation. It is a problem of cultural awareness and an unwillingness to break with tradition even when it serves the greater good. You'll find this problem everywhere in the developing (and in some cases, the developed) world, not just in Muslim countries, not just in Pakistan. And Ms. Nasir, it falls to people like you and me, with our Masters degrees and our impeccable diction, to do what we can to fix things. How? By encouraging our countrymen and women to think for themselves and providing them with outlets for unique expression and opportunities to learn. Not by selling a sob story to a rag.