It was only a matter of time before a Pakistani cleric blamed the Covid-19 outbreak on women. It just happened that the allegation came on national television. Pakistan’s most popular Islamic cleric, Tariq Jameel, claimed ‘immodest women’ caused the pandemic in a telethon broadcast throughout the country as prime minister Imran Khan watched on.
The day after the telethon, Khan decided to speak at length on ‘vulgarity’ spreading in Pakistan owing to inspirations from ‘Bollywood and the West’, as exemplified by the growing divorce rate in the UK. This was hard to take from a man with a personal divorce rate of 67 per cent, who has spent much of his adult life living as a playboy.
While Khan didn’t go as far Tariq Jameel, he has nonetheless objectified nurses even after becoming prime minister, and has condemned feminism for ‘degrading mothers’. However, where Khan’s understanding – or consistency – over Islam can be gauged by his drawing of parallels between the Medina
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