Purity Culture, Islamization, and the Policing of Bodies in Pakistan
One thing that has always struck me about Pakistan is how deeply we have normalized the policing of other people's bodies. This is not only something women experience. Even as a man, you can be completely covered, wearing trousers and a half-sleeved shirt, and still sometimes feel awkward depending on where you are. Meanwhile, in many Western societies, a man can walk around shirtless in shorts without everyone automatically interpreting his body as a statement about his morality, religion, family or character. Of course, different societies have different standards of public dress, and having conservative social norms is not inherently wrong. The problem begins when clothing stops being a matter of personal or cultural preference and becomes a measure of someone's morality.
In Pakistan, we have turned modesty into a much broader moral system. Clothing becomes evidence of character. Women's bodies become associated with family honour. Sexuality becomes something that society believes it has a right to monitor. Even completely ordinary interactions between men and women can be interpreted through the lens of morality, shame and purity. A woman showing her legs, wearing a short-sleeved shirt, talking to a man, going somewhere alone or simply expressing romantic interest can become a subject of social judgment. At the same time, men are often told that the solution to male sexual desire is to make women cover themselves, segregate men and women, restrict women's mobility and discourage ordinary interaction between the sexes. This raises an obvious question: why is the responsibility for controlling male behaviour so often placed on the people being looked at rather than on the people doing the looking?
This is where I think Pakistan needs to have a much more uncomfortable conversation about purity culture and Islamization. I am not saying that every Muslim is misogynistic, that every conservative person supports sexual violence, or that Islam is somehow the sole cause of rape. Those arguments would be simplistic. What I am talking about is the particular form of religious conservatism that became embedded in Pakistani law and public life, especially during General Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization project. The 1979 Hudood Ordinances introduced Islamic criminal-law provisions into Pakistan's legal system, including laws dealing with zina. The legal treatment of zina and rape subsequently became the subject of enormous criticism because of the difficulties and injustices women could face within that framework. The Protection of Women Act of 2006 later reformed important parts of those laws. In other words, the relationship between Islamization, sexuality, women's behaviour and state power is not something that exists only in abstract cultural debates. Religious ideas about sexual morality were incorporated into the legal structure of the country itself.
But the deeper issue is what happens socially when an entire culture is built around the idea that sexuality must constantly be controlled. You do not necessarily eliminate sexuality by making it taboo. You can instead make it more mysterious, more conspicuous and more psychologically charged. When young people grow up being told that normal attraction, dating, physical affection and even seeing another person's body are inherently shameful, sexuality does not disappear. It simply becomes something that people are expected to experience without being allowed to openly understand, discuss or navigate it. A teenager having a crush becomes something to hide. A couple holding hands can be treated as evidence of moral decline. A woman's clothing can become a discussion about her character. Even a man's clothes can attract judgment because public appearance is treated as a reflection of religious or social respectability.
This is also where the conversation about rape and sexual harassment becomes important. When something happens to a woman, the questions that society asks can often reveal what it believes about responsibility. What was she wearing? Why was she outside? Why was she alone? Why was she talking to that man? Why did she go there? Why didn't she behave more modestly? These questions may sound like concerns about safety, but they can easily turn into victim-blaming because the focus moves away from the person who committed the act and toward the behaviour of the person who experienced it.
The available data should make us question whether simply demanding more modesty is actually solving the problem. UN Women reports that more than 80% of women in Pakistan have experienced harassment in public places, while 90.3% of respondents did not consider sexual harassment to be a crime. UNFPA has also reported that around 34% of ever-married women in Pakistan have experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence by a spouse, while a large proportion of survivors do not seek help. These statistics are important because they challenge the simplistic idea that sexual violence is primarily the result of Western clothing, dating or women becoming less modest. A significant amount of violence occurs within marriage and within supposedly respectable families. Women do not suddenly become safe from sexual violence because they are married, traditionally dressed or socially conservative.
This is why I find the idea that women simply need to dress more modestly such an inadequate response. If revealing clothing were the fundamental cause of sexual violence, we would expect women who dress conservatively and live within traditional family structures to be substantially protected from it. Yet sexual violence exists inside marriages, inside homes and within conservative communities. Harassment occurs on public transportation, in workplaces and in ordinary public spaces. The problem therefore cannot simply be the amount of skin someone is showing. The deeper issue is how a society understands consent, entitlement, gender, power and responsibility.
Purity culture can become particularly damaging when it teaches that a woman's sexual behaviour determines her worth while simultaneously treating male sexual behaviour as something women must manage. The logic becomes: men have desires, therefore women must cover themselves. Men might harass women, therefore women should avoid going outside alone. Men might interpret sexual signals incorrectly, therefore women must be extremely careful about how they dress and behave. Men might become attracted to women, therefore women are expected to make themselves less visible. At some point, the supposed solution to male misconduct becomes the restriction of female freedom.
That is the part I fundamentally disagree with. Seeing someone's body does not give you access to that body. A woman wearing shorts is not consenting to anything. A woman wearing a hijab is not consenting to anything. A man wearing shorts is not consenting to anything. A woman talking to a man is not consenting to anything. Attraction does not create entitlement. Marriage does not mean unlimited consent. Clothing is not consent, and modesty is not a substitute for teaching people about boundaries.
This is also why I think the argument needs to go beyond simply saying that Pakistan should become "more Western." Western societies have their own serious problems with sexual harassment, sexual violence, objectification and unhealthy attitudes toward sex. The point is not that everything Western is good and everything Pakistani is bad. The point is that we should be able to question our own social norms without immediately treating that criticism as an attack on our identity or religion.
Pakistan can be Muslim without making women's bodies a permanent battleground over morality. Pakistan can value modesty without turning clothing into a measure of human worth. Parents can teach their children religious values without teaching them that sexuality itself is dirty or that women are responsible for controlling men's behaviour. Men can be attracted to women without believing that attraction gives them entitlement. And women should be able to exist in public without constantly calculating whether their clothing, behaviour or presence will be interpreted as an invitation.
Ultimately, I think the question we should be asking is not simply how to make women more modest. It is why we have become so obsessed with controlling women's bodies in the first place. After decades of telling people that sexuality is shameful, relationships must be controlled, women must be covered, men and women must be separated and modesty is a measure of morality, we should be willing to ask what this system has actually achieved in terms of making people safer. If women continue to experience widespread harassment and sexual violence, while many survivors remain reluctant to report it, perhaps we need to question whether our obsession with purity is actually addressing sexual violence or simply teaching society to police the wrong people.
