LUMS has never been far from controversy. The epitome of Eurocentric education in Pakistan, it has been hailed a liberal hub, a bubble of naivete, the antithesis of Pakistani Islamic values. We are no stranger to our share of ill handled sexual harassment cases, declining financial aid as LUMS continues to admit more students at a higher tuition and a rise in authoritarian administration. But those are issues for another article. Of course these controversies pale in comparison to the true evil that plagues us… girls dancing! Read your Astagfirullahs and shake your heads in shame. We have let down our culture.
A video was widely circulated, originated by a fake twitter account under the name of Irshad Bhatti, a journalist, I assume to give it a modicum of authority. It showcased our senior batch donning pink clothes and dancing (if you can really call it that because let’s face it, yall cant dance to save your lives). The primary practical attack against this video was that the sanctity of Ramadan was being violated by this display of music and dance. This was immediately countered with the fact that Pink Day was celebrated well before Ramadan but do you think that helped? Of course not. The rumor mill had started churning and Pakistani Twitter and other social media was outraged. LUMS was attacked for being a playground for the Western whims of the upper class (not entirely untrue but I’m getting off topic) and this as an example of why coeducation should be struck down. Zaid Hamid even somehow brought the army into it. How dare we “party” while they work so hard to “defend this land”. How do we always come back to that?
When words like “ghairat”, “morality” and “values” are thrown about, there emerges a pattern. When LUMS has had a long-standing tradition of Attan on Fridays but that never makes the rounds on Twitter because that is a primarily male dominated activity, there emerges a pattern. When Hamza Ali Abbasi can belittle a girl for dancing to a Pakistani item song when he has engaged in similar “immoral acts” on television, there emerges a pattern. It is not so much about respecting Ramadan as it is about the outrage that LUMS can be a safe haven for women to exercise their agency without the judgmental eyes of society and family.
Ironically, this moral policing also exists in a vacuum. It only extends to calling the women in LUMS anti state agents and the corrupters of our innocent men. The fact that a creep made a video of these women without their permission and uploaded it to the internet is casually ignored. It is also deeply disappointing, although not surprising, that websites like Mangobaaz cash in on these incidents. Having no regard for the privacy of these women, they continue to plaster their articles with screenshots of the video clearly showing the identities of the students, blissfully ignorant of the possible repercussions this might hold for them. We really need to hold our media to a higher standard of journalistic ethics and integrity.
What is needed now is a stricter filtering of who LUMS allows inside its premises. People like those who uploaded this video need to be kept out of the campus. This does not represent fear or us being in the wrong. It is simply the acceptance that the cards are stacked against our women and we need to do whatever we can to give them a safe space, even if it is in a bubble.