No Man-Istan

Flipping through the channels recently, I noticed a new channel right before Al Jazeera called “God TV.” It turns out that it’s a Christian evangelical channel. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’m happy that there is now some religious diversity in the electronic media. And though I don’t necessarily share the viewpoint of the channel, at least they do not advocate violence, intolerance, or aggressive forms of conversion (at least as far as I can tell).

On the other hand, I’m worried about a backlash. With the already growing anger towards the West, and continued abuses and threats towards Christians, this could be seen as another form of imperialism.

Then again, if channels are going to come under fire, it will probably happen right across the board. One good thing Musharraf has done in the last seven years is lay the foundations of a more open media, with several new channels and stations bubbling up in a short period of time. However, after Geo TV and others broadcast the images of May 12 massacre, Musharraf has been cracking down on them. In addition to detentions and disappearances of individual journalists, channels have recently faced vandalism and intimidation. And Musharraf issued a new ordinance against broadcasting any criticism of the government.

I fear we’re sliding back into the Zia days.

One politician who was given a golden opportunity at national and international press was famous socialite and former cricket star Imran Khan. Like many interviewees on CNN, he gave trite, but nonetheless accurate, observations of the Musharraf regime regarding the May 12 massacres. A few days later CNN had a whole special on him, portraying his heroic life-journey. If he’s as popular as he seems, and he can avoid some of the current leader’s mistakes, fine; I don’t mind if he’s elected as the next prime minister.

I remember when I first saw him on television, speaking on several Urdu channels. My first impression was that he looked like an old, frumpy version of Mark (“Marky Mark”) Wahlberg. Whoever this guy is, he sure gets a lot of attention, I thought.

Is he more hype than substance? I don’t know enough about him to make a valid judgment on that. I wonder whether he can really get elected. He has credibility because he’s a Pathan, pretty much the bottom rung of Pakistan’s social ladder, but has a British education. He’s known as a star athlete who helped Pakistan win a World Cup, and is also a lauded philanthropist. He has a reputation as an uncorrupt and honest congressman. One minus is that his ex-wife is a wealthy British Jew (she converted to Islam) and his opponents used the all too pervasive paranoia and anti-Semitism in Pakistani culture as a weapon to seriously tarnish his image. Worse, while he was married it turned out that another woman claimed that he was the father of her child. Lastly, his reputation as a Westernized playboy could make Pakistanis suspicious of him aligning too much with the West, despite his Urdu/Pashto speaking, shalwar kamiz wearing persona.