What It’s Like Being a Pashtun Woman on Social Media – Story 4: when men send you porn to try to silence you

Continuing our series on Pashtun women’s experiences with social media / what it’s like being a Pashtun woman on good ol’ internet. (The other stories are linked at the bottom of this post. PLEASE read the Introduction to the series so you understand why I choose to focus on Pashtuns and not on other people. No, harassment and intimidation have no race, I know that.) Note that one of the following ladies’ harassers has been identified and his Facebook is linked; another of her harassers, a Hamza Jahed, is also linked with his Facebook – and a quick visit to Hamza’s FB page proves the man’s hypocrisy: he’s got pictures of the Qur’an with Allah’s name here and there! I believe in naming and shaming to death all men like this.

Quoting verbatim in italics.

What It’s Like Being a Pashtun Woman on Social Media – Story 3: on public identity, marriage proposals, unwanted requests

Continuing our series on Pashtun women’s experiences with social media / what it’s like being a Pashtun woman on good ol’ internet. (The other stories are linked at the bottom of this post. PLEASE read the Introduction to the series so you understand why I choose to focus on Pashtuns and not on other people. No, harassment and intimidation have no race, I know that.)

What It’s Like Being a Pashtun Woman on Social Media – Story 2: indecent exposures, demands for massages, and orders to be quiet

Source: http://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/events/event_IAP33842

Ramadhan mubarak, everyone 🙂 I hope you’re all having a wonderful and spiritually enlightening month! God be our Light, always, aameen!

This morning, when I checked my Facebook, I was greeted by an incredibly unsettling and disgusting message from someone named Sargand Ghazi  (the link is to his Facebook profile – this is probably not his real name): He had sent me a naked picture of himself (private part) – no face showing, of course, because he’s so profoundly brave – with the message, all caps, “I LOVE YOU.” (?)

What It’s Like Being a Pashtun Woman on Social Media – Story 1: intimidation, indecent photos, and threats of no-husband-for-you

The firs story in the series of being a (Pashtun) woman on the Internet. (Be sure to read this, folks – I’m afraid someone brilliant is going to come up and say, “But it’s not just Pashtun women who face these problems! Why are you targeting Pashtun men as harassers only?!” Because you didn’t read.)

The following person shall remain anonymous. Whatever I am sharing has been approved by her. It is told from her perspective.

What It’s Like Being a Pashtun Woman on Social Media

Source: http://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/events/event_IAP33842

This is going to be a series, and I am not going to promise it’ll be as regular as I’d like it to be. I’ve asked several Pashtun females to share their online experiences with me for this series — whatever stories they’d like to share, however, detailed or un-detailed, whether they use their real name or fake names or remain anonymous, whether they choose to expose the men and women and others who harass them online. Many have responded, and I’m grateful. If you’re a Pashtun woman reading this and would like to share your thoughts, experiences, observations as well, please feel free to do so. You can email me at orbala1@gmail.com.

Pashtun Personality of the Week: Samar Minallah Khan – anthropologist and human rights activist

Samar Minallah

Pasting the following brief intro to Samar Minallah from my old blog:

Continuing our discussion on Pashtun leaders, both past and contemporary, we present to you – – – Samar Minallah. I’ve been meaning to write about her for over a year, but I think she’s so important that I’m afraid of not introducing her fairly enough. So please remember that these biographies of Pashtun leaders are intended to be only a glimpse of their lives and achievements and are not intended to be complete sketches of their lives. Thanks! 🙂

Pashtun Personality of the Week: Bushra Gohar – A Remarkable Leading Politician

Bushra Gohar

The following is being pasted from my old blog; click here for a discussion on the post.

And at last, we continue on with our Pashtun leaders series … I’m going to stop apologizing for the delays in being consistent with this series because writing these out really does take a lot of time 🙂

Bushra Gohar

Bushra Gohar is one of my personal favorite women in contemporary times. It makes me so proud that she’s Pukhtun, too, because she’s quite an accomplished woman, and whenever I lose hope in my people, I think of her to feel hopeful again. What makes me happiest, though, is that she’s really easy to talk to and interact with. Very humble and down-to-earth. I know too many people, when they make it big, start feeling so big that they refuse to interact with us “smaller” people then. Gohar isn’t like that. In fact, I sent her a few questions in preparation for this post that I wanted her to answer, and she got back to me right away. There wasn’t any “I don’t have time for this average human blogger random Pukhtun girl to write about me” kind of responses, and she certainly didn’t ignore me.

Why Malala Yousafzai Deserved the Nobel Peace Prize – and stop simplifying her story, folks.

Because today, December 10, 2014, is the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony, and Malala is there along with many other Pashtuns.

The post below is basically copied and pasted from my Facebook status about the matter. Since it wasn’t intended as a formal write-up and was written in a rush, there may be many typos and disjointed thoughts. Apologies in advance for those.

SO INFINITELY PROUD that Malala has won the Nobel Peace Prize!! I was thinking and thinking about reasons why people might suspect she doesn’t deserve this thing, but I have come to find none. There are a couple of points, though, and specifically in response to those who’ve been asking me what I think about Malala and the fact that she’s become the youngest person in the world to win the Nobel Prize (and the first Pashtun person, let alone woman, to do so, and the first Pakistani woman to do so). So here.

Who is the Bibi Shirina in Sardar Ali Takkar’s new song, “Ta Bibi Shirina Ye”?

Left to right: Mian Iftikhar Hussain, Malala Yousafzai, and Sardar Ali Takkar

I’ve just found out that Sardar Ali Takkar, one of the most beautiful, most important musicians of all time, will be performing at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony tomorrow, December 10th; Malala Yousafzai personally invited him to sing this song along with the unofficial national anthem of the Pukhtuns–Ay Zama Watana (I know, I know – it bothers me, too, that it’s basically all men in this song as though the Pukhtun nation(s) belong to men alone or as though they alone have built it. I’ll deal with this issue another time). This post is about the song he will be singing, one that’s very close to my heart and that brings me peace and hope every time I hear it–and I hear it a lot. It’s called Ta Bibi Shirina Ye, sung and composed by Sardar Ali Takkar, written by Behroz Khan, and dedicated to Malala Yousafzai and all other Pashtun girls. I’m going to explain something before translating these words because they mean more than just “you’re a sweet lady” – it actual has no translation because it’s a concept.