In 2004, the (now defunct) United Nations Human Rights Commission used its 60th session to debate a resolution that had been tabled the previous year by Brazil on "Human Rights and Sexual Orientation". This represented the first time that the world body had actively considered adopting a motion specifically aimed at ending discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Pakistan – along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Malaysia – proposed amendments to the resolution, demanding that the term sexual orientation be removed from the text entirely. As it had announced previously, the Pakistani delegation upheld the stance of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) by ultimately voting against the resolution.
While such a move was not entirely unexpected, what caught the world's attention was the insistence, by the head of the Pakistani group, that the issue of sexual orientation was 'not a concern' for the developing world. The rationale for such a statement was that homosexuality was, purportedly, an exclusively Western phenomenon. The subtext to this was that homosexuality did not exist in Muslim states due simply to the fact that Islam forbade such practices. Now fast-forward to October 2005, when Pakistan again hit international headlines with reports of the country's 'first-ever' gay marriage having taken place in Khyber Agency, between a 42-year-old Afghan refugee and a 16-year-old local boy.
Such glaring dichotomies are, unfortunately, quite representative of what can best be described as the ongoing identity crisis engulfing Pakistan. This tension is routinely played out between 'enlightened' moderates, who hope to showcase the country's 'soft face', and those who wish to safeguard its traditional conservatism. Yet these lines become blurred when the so-called progressive liberals talk of the need to modernise but not 'Westernise' Pakistan. This type of rhetoric is due largely to tendencies within the Muslim world towards projecting stereotypes of Western culture as being synonymous with sexual immorality and decadence, accompanied, in turn, by attempts to establish a contrived, and false, presumption that Muslim societies are immune to such excesses.
In recent times, much of the Western media has picked up on this disconnect. Perhaps fuelled by a desire to counter assaults on Western values, or the perceived lack thereof, the focus has generally been on 'decadent Muslim East' stories, aimed at deflating the myth of Muslim propriety. Almost inevitably, the primary focus has been on Pakistani women who are seen to defy conventional norms by adopting so-called Western lifestyles. This usually pertains to highlighting the prevalence of drinking and smoking, as well as of pre-marital sexual affairs, among the country's urban, educated elite. Likewise, a follow-on trend has been the emergence of 'exposés' on alternative sexualities in Pakistan. Yet coverage of both issues has been severely limited in both scope and understanding.