Zero Dark Thirty released in Dec 2012 |
Now we as citizens of Pakistan know how cool and exciting Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad are. Unfortunately these westerners have absolutely no iota of an idea about their awesomeness and they have depicted them as terror havens with burqa clad women, turbaned mullahs, and terrorists roaming around as if they are on vacation. In Sherlock for example, Sherlock Holmes actually saves someone from getting beheaded in Karachi. In Homeland, Lahore is depicted as being a breeding ground for terrorists, and Islamabad is depicted as having safe houses of terrorists. And in Shameless, well they pretty much bulldoze the entire country in to the ground.
Homeland is instrumental in depicting Muslims in bad light |
And this leads me on to my second point. It's all about the image perception. Even though India has some dramatic domestic problems, the world does not get to hear about them. What they do get to see and hear instead are the "Incredible India" ads that show what a classy, true to its roots eastern, modern, vibrant, happy and colorful country it is. Which makes me want to ask this question: Why can't we do the same? Where are our image managers? Oh that's right, we don't have any because nobody cares. What we do have however is a President who is tainted with corruption charges and who refuses to acknowledge those blemishes, we have a Prime Minister who goes to the Supreme Court for disobeying its orders, we have an army that is constantly berated for harboring ties with the militants, we have an administration that is repeatedly told to do more because inadvertently the majority of terrorists are found to have visited Pakistan and most importantly we are the country where Osama bin Laden was found.
We really need to pull our act together and fix our faults. Because even though all of the aforementioned things are true, we know what a great culture and a beautiful country we have. We can't let the world's idea of us ruin our heritage and our pride like this. This propaganda needs to be countered because these festering notions about Pakistan will lead to a greater scrutinization of Pakistan which considering how many problems we already have with the world, will hurt us even more. It's time to show the world what Pakistan really is. It's time to take this cause into our own hands because our elected leaders are incapable of projecting our image the right way.