Soha Nisar
In this age of social media, to ascertain the seriousness of an issue, one must refer to the trending Tweets of the day. Yet another#ArrestTheCouple made headlines on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.The controversial photoshoot that caused much uproar illustrated two musicians from the band ‘Mystical Shayari’ wearing culturally inappropriate clothes. What stirred more resentment was that the pair was standing infront of Jinnah’s portrait, along Islamabad Expressway, with the slogans ‘UNITY’ ‘FAITH’ ‘DISCIPLINE’. However, the caption to the picture read ‘unity faith disco’. The citizens were so offended that soon after the pictures were posted on Instagram, a FIR was launched against them which was then highlighted by the Islamabad-based journalist, Ansar Abbasi, who took on to twitter to request Deputy Commissioner (DC), Hamza Shafqaat to arrest them for breaking the law and promoting “obscenity”. Within splitseconds, DC shared Abbasi’s tweet and publicly asked for information to accrue their identification and take further action. Consequently, Islamabad police has issued an arrest warrant against the couple.However, since then the individuals have disappeared into thin air. Soon after the whole fiasco, the official page and the accounts of the models were deactivated. Prior to shutting down, Mystical Shayari addressed the counterblastvia online posts. They alleged that they were receiving “hate messages, death threats and transphobic ridicule”. In their defense, theywere the representatives of the White in the National flag of Pakistan; as such they had a right to life and freedom of expression to pay “homage to values” of Pakistan. According to them, male patriarchal mindset was the root of all evil that had caused injustices to Noor, Qandeel and transpired various rapes and murder. Hence, in this fight against masculinity and spiritual decay, they were mandated to shoot a promo to promote pop culture, fashion, music, poetry, truth and joy. After analyzing the entire incident, I pondered the question of whether was this ‘photoshoot’ worthy of such hype? Especially when Pakistan is embroiled in considerable problems that need imminent solutions? I believe that our nation needs to get their priorities straight. The need of the hour is to focus on ‘real’ societal issues and arrest the ‘actual’ culprits that have somehow managed to dodge the laws of the book and now roam freely. I would like to admit that I also found the pictures quite absurd, childish and unconventional. More so, at first sight, Ifailed to fathom the true intention behind the photoshoot. To sum it up, I believe that it was definitely not the right way to promote justice and equality; however, they were immature youngsters who certainly did not deserve a backlash of such magnitude.
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