Kunwar Khuldune Shahid in The Spectator:
Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan has once again blamed women for an appalling rise in rape cases. Khan used a televised question and answer session this week to say that sexual violence was a result of ‘increasing obscenity’. Women in Pakistan should remove ‘temptation’ because ‘not everyone has willpower’, he added, urging females to cover up to help reduce the sexual violence which has plagued our country.
Khan pointed the finger of blame at Bollywood and Hollywood, for spreading ‘vulgarity’. He also repeated the growing divorce tally of the UK as evidence of the ‘ethical plunge’ of the West, which he said is messing up the moral compass of the Muslim world and Pakistan. ‘World history tells when you increase vulgarity in society, two things happen: sex crimes increase and the family system breaks down,’ Khan said.
All this is hard to take from a twice–divorced former playboy, who appears to see his life prior to taking charge as prime minister as evidence of societal immorality, without saying, or realising, as much. Since coming to power he has upped the ante on his misogynistic views, objectifying nurses, condemning feminism, and hurling sexist abuses at his political opponents. Even more worryingly, born-again Muslim Khan is now upholding a merger of his personal chauvinism and the wider Islamist marginalisation of women in Pakistan.
More here.