Akhtar Soomro for The New York Times
On Pakistani television, Ali Saleem, 28, portrays Begum Nawazish Ali, a flirty, teasing widow, to achieve both political and personal goals.
Posted on 01/03/2007 3:03:47 PM PST by mathprof
Ali Saleem may have devised the perfect, if improbable, cover for breaking taboos in conservative, Muslim Pakistan.
In a country where publicly talking about sex is strictly off limits, Mr. Saleem has managed not only to bring up the subject on his prime-time television talk show — but to do so without stirring a backlash from fundamentalist Islamic clerics.
And he has done so as a woman.
When Mr. Saleem takes to the airwaves, he is Begum Nawazish Ali, a coquettish widow who interviews Pakistan’s glitterati and some of its top politicians.
A real woman could not possibly do what Mr. Saleem does. In the unlikely event a station would broadcast such a show, the hostess would be shunned. And taking on the guise of a married woman — whose virtue is crucial to her whole family — would be equally impossible.
But apparently a cross-dressing man pretending to be a widow is another matter entirely.
It is something of a mystery why a man who openly acknowledges he is bisexual is a sensation here. Traditional Islamic teaching rejects bisexuals and gays, and gay Pakistanis have few outlets for a social life. The gay party scenes in Lahore and Karachi are deep underground.
Mr. Saleem has his own theory for his popularity: he thinks Pakistan has always been more open than outsiders believed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
On Pakistani television, Ali Saleem, 28, portrays Begum Nawazish Ali, a flirty, teasing widow, to achieve both political and personal goals.
Hmmmmm.
Could his day job be that of US Congressman from Massachusetts fourth?
Compare: Here's RuPaul, who became famous in my old hometown of Atlanta:
Hmmmmm.
They easier explanation is that his schtick is too complex for their pea-brains to figure out. Were he to use just one simple gimmick, he would be roundly damned; but he overwhelms them with so many quirky violations that they get caught up in the minutiae of what he is doing.
As an aside, homosexuals in many Moslem countries are now at the forefront of pushing the social boundaries, even threatening to cause a collapse of Sharia Law itself, and doing it craftily. For example, in Egypt, a large number of homosexuals will have a big party on a houseboat. When it is raided, they will act offended in that the police seem to be implying that they should have women there. And that, in turn, would be terribly immoral.
So no matter what we think of homosexuals here, there, they seem to be doing some good for everybody, especially women.
Oh behave!
This isn't that f****** Sacha Cohen dude again, is it?
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