Saadia Toor Discusses Political History of Pakistan [incl. Robert Rozehnal]

Saadia Toor, the last speaker of the Mellon Foundation lecture series, spoke Monday on the wide ranging political history of Pakistan and the various movements the country has experienced.

Toor gave an overview of Pakistan’s political landscape from the late 1930s to present day. She spoke vigorously of what she called the “cultural cold war” in the 1950s and the ways in which U.S. policy helps shift Pakistan’s political structure.

Robert Rozehnal, professor from the university’s Center for Global Islamic Studies, introduced Toor and spoke of his gratitude both to the Mellon Foundation and Toor for making the lecture possible.

In Toor’s description, she depicted 1950s Pakistan as a period fraught with political uncertainty in regard to leftist movements and U.S. foreign policy. Eventually, Toor explained, Pakistan erupted from its political tension, experiencing a military coup in 1958. Following the years of Pakistan’s military rein, she went on to state the powerful ways in which its citizens spoke out in protest. One of the more emphasized methods of protest was surprisingly through the use of poetry.

Toor explained that many of Pakistan’s most prominent poets, like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, for example, were opposition leaders organizing against the newly formed regime in which they wrote subtle yet provocative poems in the context of their disdain toward the regime. She said that writing these poems were radical acts, as this was a time when no one else voiced their opinions.

Toor’s words revealed the truly courageous actions that these poets undertook in their writing in the pursuit of fairness and equality. She then jumped into the early 1980s and explained the true plight that the women of Pakistan were experiencing at the time in terms of their rights and the subsequent movements that followed.

Again she reintroduced the fact that poets were at the forefront of the pursuit for women’s rights. One such poet, Kishwar Naheed, was said to have written a particularly powerful poem entitled “Hum Gunahgar Auratein,” which translates into “We Sinful Women.”

“The poem functioned as a slap in the face to the orthodoxy,” Toor said.

In terms of modern day Pakistani oppositionists, Toor gave an example of a pop band named “Beygairat Brigade,” which has gained prominence in Pakistan and internationally, and has served to raise many eyebrows.

“They’re very tongue and cheek, and quite delightfully so,” she said in regard to the pop band and the younger generation in general.

Toor’s description of Pakistan’s political transformation served as an eye opener to various avenues of resistance that actually occur in such situations.

“When we look at the Middle East we don’t think about how the arts play a role as they do in the States,” said Joel Blaxland, a graduate student.

Indeed, stereotypical acts of resistance are what have been predominantly portrayed in history and mass media. It is in observing the details in which we can truly see what shifts the political landscape.

Toor is an associate professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island-CUNY and has since become a successful author after the publication of her book “The State of Islam.”

Story by Brown and White news writer Connor Timmerman, ’16.

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