FAMILY, RELIGION AND QANDEEL BALOCH

Some weeks ago, the world awoke to the news that Qandeel Baloch, the Pakistani model, had been murdered by her brother to protect the honour of her family [honour-killing]. The news got me reeling. I thought of my own brother and my close knit family, the trust and the closeness. I couldn’t help wondering about the kind of family Qandeel grew up in, as well as the relationship dynamics in her family. I also couldn’t help but replay the crime scene in my head. The fact that Qandeel entered the car with her brother meant that there was an element of trust at least; the probability that she was forced to enter the vehicle is quite low. So she entered this vehicle simply because she trusted her brother to some extent-and got stabbed in the back-or strangled as the case may be.

Traditionally, a family should be a safe haven especially for children but sadly, this seems not to be so especially in these times, and so many factors are responsible for it.

If we consider the influence of religion on the family, one can safely say without equivocation that religion has had both a good and bad influence on the family. While most religions claim to recognize the importance of a strong family system to the society, I daresay that many merely pay lip service to that claim and barely put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. In certain religions, for example, you don’t need to have clairvoyant powers to detect that while male children are celebrated by its adherents, females, both adults and children, seem to exist for the sole purpose of catering to the needs of the males in the household. Other than that, they seem to have little or no purpose for even existing in the first place. And it is in such a setting that Qandeel was raised.

Some parts of Christendom have also joined the onslaught against the family, but in a different way altogether. Taking Christ’s words out of context [‘A man’s enemies shall be the members of his own household’], they have resorted to prophesying to people with such words like-‘your father/mother/wife/husband/ etc, is behind your misfortune in life’. While in extremely few cases such prophecies may be true, majority of them are misleading and simply prey on the ‘victim’s’ need to find someone to blame for his/her misfortune. Harsh but true. It is imperative that one should carefully consider the wise course of action to take with such prophecies and be not hasty in branding the accused a ‘witch/wizard’.

I would like to conclude with this short scene from Chinua Achebe’s novel ‘Things Fall Apart’. In the story, a sacrifice needs to be made, and Okonkwo’s adopted son, Ikemefuna, has been earmarked as the sacrificial lamb- with Okonkwo pinpointed as the slaughterman. At this point, one of the villagers visits Okonkwo and makes a profound statement to him that I believe is highly instructional to us all in the present. The man says to Okonkwo-“That boy calls you father. Do not have a hand in his death”. Sad to say that Okonkwo did not heed the man’s advice and eventually killed Ikemefuna to avoid being thought of as weak, and eventually he himself did not die in a good way. In the Holy Bible, after Cain killed his brother Abel, the Lord said to him-‘what have you done? The blood of your brother is crying out from the ground………..from now on you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth’.  Both in nature and in religion, the curse of a lack of peace seems to follow those who betray the trust of a family member and cause harm to them. I would therefore like to end with the words of the villageman: That person calls you daddy/mommy/son/daughter/uncle/aunty, etc…do not have a hand in their death.