WHO KILLED QANDEEL BALOCH?
This excerpt from Mehr Tarar’s new book on Pakistan looks at the honour killing of the selfproclaimed selfie queen
On 15 July 2016, Qandeel Baloch was killed in Multan, south Punjab, Pakistan. A coldness starts curling upwards in my body, from my toes to the roots of my hair. Her face expands and becomes the only picture in my mind. Why? Why was she killed? What made anyone strangle her?... Qandeel Baloch, the enfant terrible of Pakistan’s social media... the reckless young woman who picked fights on national television with the self-righteous brigade who appeared in the form of anchors on talk shows or their smug panellists who thought she was a toy to play with flippantly... I saw her on television a few days ago. Since March 2013, I’d stopped watching television, and notwithstanding the turmoil on all levels — personal, national, regional and international — TV viewing is something that is as scarce in my life as sleeping is for a lifelong insomniac. But that day I watched Qandeel, on national TV, getting embroiled in an altercation with a man whose words enunciated his power to lure his gullible audience to revere the halo around his holy head. Qandeel Baloch versus Mufti Abdul Qavi.
It was fascinating to watch her strip the mufti of his cloak of piety, her ‘naughty’ selfies with the staid mufti... peeling layers off his patina of self-righteousness, and her girly giggles landing like well-placed lobs in a game played between two unevenly matched players. And it was a bit infuriating to see her use a national platform to play out her ‘petty’ agenda of maligning a man without any real proof of what went on inside the four walls of that hotel room in Karachi that one, now fateful, day. That exchange set in motion a series of events that very quickly — ... with a great deal of outrage aimed at both Qandeel and Qavi — ended on 15 July when news of Qandeel’s murder flashed on the television, and appeared on thousands of timelines...
Qandeel Baloch was killed by her brother Wasim on the pretext of family ‘honour’... The clergy is revered in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and more so because religion is truly important to people. Most people... Qandeel defied it all. Qandeel locked horns — her ‘devil’ horns with the ‘saintly’ clergy. Qandeel, in that one fight played out in all its sleazy extravaganza, unwittingly walked into a field laden with moral IEDs. Qandeel became the woman who insulted the mullah. Qandeel crossed the line that marks the dark parameter: her against him. The bad against the good. The ‘whore’ against the ‘saint’.
It was the media that provided the forum, turned it into a mudwrestling ring and watched in glee, rubbing sweaty palms, adrenaline in overdrive, mouths puckered to tsk-tsk. Qandeel walked in, pouty and sexy, wisecracks in abundance, her hair perfectly styled, prepared to blow to smithereens all claims of piety the mullah solemnly mouthed. Superimposed with sneering misogyny and platitudes on good behaviour, the talk show anchors turned Qandeel into a freak show as the audience watched in dismay as all codes of journalistic ethics withered away. In her effort to expose the hypocrisy of those who chanted Allah’s name and lived a lie, she became a two-minute headline of mediocre talk shows...
Watching the televised debacle, I had an uneasy thought: this woman is treading a dangerous path. Not for the pictures she had posted... but about her open altercation with Mufti Qavi, a member of the Ruet-e-Hilal, the official moon-sighting organization, and a respected member of that huge entity known as religious scholars in Pakistan. The talk show hosts in their mad race for the highest TRPs pitted the twenty-six-year-old social media celebrity with Mufti Qavi who had legions of followers — invisible, intolerant, malleable and very easy to provoke into violence.
It did not take long. Qandeel was killed in her own house by her younger brother. Pakistan went into a noisy shock. Most Pakistanis may not have liked her, but her brutal death stunned everyone. Most of them derided her, but in her death, she became just another young woman to fall victim to methodical misogyny in the guise of honour.