Preacher apologizes to media but ignores women’s grievances during PM’s coronavirus telethon

KARACHI: Popular Pakistani preacher Tariq Jameel apologized on Friday for his remarks against media on the Prime Minister’s coronavirus telethon a day earlier, but stopped short of tendering an apology for his controversial statements about women being responsible for the surging pandemic.
Jameel, a leading cleric and public speaker followed by millions around the world, is a prominent figure in Pakistan’s biggest missionary group, the Tablighi Jamaat. On a talk show Friday evening, Jameel offered an unconditional apology for a ‘slip of the tongue,’ that led him to accusing Pakistan’s media houses and journalists of being “liars” during his 16 minute address to attendees at the Prime Minister’s house.
But the cleric did not redress the grievances of Pakistan’s women and the social media uproar that followed his live comments broadcasted around the country, where he pinpointed the immodesty of Muslim women in Pakistan, including their clothes and behavior, as a contributing factor to the global pandemic.
Pakistan People’s Party’s parliamentary leader in the senate and Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Sherry Rehman, blasted Jameel’s remarks as “slanderous and unacceptable.”
The cleric was right to apologize to members of the media, she said, but asked why he had not yet apologized to the country’s women.
“Maulana Tariq Jameel has hurt more than 50 percent of the population through his slanderous statement,” Rehman told Arab News.
“He should immediately apologize. He is blaming this pandemic on Pakistani women’s alleged immodesty. This is grossly slanderous on many levels and totally unacceptable,” she said.
During his uninterrupted address to the Prime Minister and senior members of the press, Jameel had alleged that some of the primary reasons the country was afflicted by the coronavirus, an act of God, included the lies of its media and the behavior of its women.
Award-winning activist Nighat Dad, said that if Jameel could seek an apology from the media and call senior journalists to clarify his position, the politically influential cleric owed an apology to women as well.
“By connecting the pandemic to women’s bodies, he in fact, has confirmed the centuries old stereotype and discrimination against women and tried to brush off our years of struggle against patriarchy and misogyny,” she said, and added that Islam as well as the Constitution of Pakistan gave equal rights to women.
Jameel did not respond when requested for comment. His spokesperson said the cleric was unwell and unable to talk.
In March, Jameel’s Tablighi Jamaat came under fire from the media when tens of thousands of its members gathered in the eastern city of Lahore despite official warnings amid rising rates of the virus. The event became a coronavirus super-spreader with thousands quarantined and hundreds testing positive.
Senior Tablighi Jamaat leader Maulana Sami-ur-Rehman told Arab News he felt the media coverage of the event had not been balanced.
“The media didn’t highlight major source of the virus from Iran but instead targeted Tablighi Jamaat,” he said.
“There may be cases, but media gave it unnecessary hype. When alerted we stopped our activities and cooperated with the authorities,” he said.
Around South Asia, and specifically in India and Pakistan, authorities cracked down on the popular missionary movement’s gatherings in major cities as reports of massive clusters emerged during sermons where the government’s social distancing orders were not practiced. In Pakistan, this exposed a rift between the popular missionary group’s supporters and some journalists.
“This is highly regrettable, when a scholar with a huge following in a generalized statement calls the entire community liars,” Mazhar Abbas, senior journalist and former Secretary General of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) told Arab News on Saturday.
Abbas said the Prime Minister had himself been unfairly critical of media reporting in his remarks on Friday.
Meanwhile, Hasan Abbas, President of the Karachi Union of Journalists said that despite Jameel’s apology, the damage his remarks had caused, had already been done.
“Journalists in Pakistan are working in very adverse environment. Many of our colleagues have rendered their lives for the sake of telling the truth,” Abbas said.
“When a popular preacher like Tariq Jameel says something, his followers believe it, no matter if he is wrong.”