Mick Hartley

A very powerful piece from Maajid Nawaz on the murder of Qandeel Baloch:

[B]y her mere presence Qandeel Baloch was a one-woman revolution against religiously and culturally justified misogyny. This in a society where the cost of speaking out can be lethal betrayal by those who are meant to love you the most: your own family. So most of all let us remember Qandeel Baloch as a fearless Pakistani women’s rights campaigner who had zero fucks left to give.

For it is only by having zero fucks left to give that a woman in today’s Pakistan can be brave enough to post sexually suggestive videos of herself. It is only by having zero fucks left to give that a woman in today’s Pakistan could promise to strip online if her country’s national cricket team won against India. It is only by having zero fucks left to give can a woman in today’s Pakistan pluck up the courage to summon a leading member of her country’s mullah mafia to a hotel room, only to film him turning to putty in her hands, mesmerized by her flirtation as he allowed her to sit in his lap while she donned his religious hat. Apparently, Mufti Abdul Qavi even proposed to her in that fateful hotel room encounter.

This feckless mullah reacted to Qandeel’s murder by claiming it was a lesson to others. Apparently, no one should dare mock religious clerics in this way. Well, Mr. Abdul Qavi, Qandeel Baloch had zero fucks left to give about you.

What makes Qandeel’s emergence as a Pakistani rebel icon even more awe-inspiring is that she was not a wealthy scion of society who had the financial and social standing to country-hop every time the threats to her life became unbearable. Though rich in aspirations for herself and her country, Qandeel hailed from a poor village in Dera Ghazi Khan near Multan, in South Punjab. And it is only by having zero fucks left to give that a woman from Qandeel’s socio-economic background could stand up and stick two fingers up to the whole of society in the way she did.