Abstract

The contemporary age is of globalization that is engulfing smaller cultures and their local values into today's big Americanized fold of cultural and economic domination. Pakistan, after 9/11, has been the worst victim of cultural hegemony and economic depression besides loss of invaluable lives despite being front line ally of America in its global war on terror. Mohsin Hamid's is the strongest, unapologetic, and culturally rooted response to the multifarious crisis Pakistan has been experiencing. He is being realistic towards the cultural clash and overlap not only exposes how the Pakistani indigenous value system is being distorted as well as acceptance of the new technoscape. Himself a Pakistani Muslim, he fictionally and critically creates space for the voice of Pakistani Muslim margin against the westernized framing of the overseas media for the global center. This article studies how he has addressed the challenges to Pakistani, cultural, national, ethnic, and religious identity in his imaginative and factional works.

Key Words

Pakistan, Globalization, Civilization, English Literature, Representation, 9/11, War on Terror, Media

Introduction

Mohsin Hamid, a “globally elegant, piercing and often funny writer” (The Chicago Tribune, 2015), with his four fictional and one factional text, has contributed to the boom of writing by Muslims. Hamid's fourth book, Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London, through his personal thoughts and experiences of childhood and love, education, and fatherhood, presents the situation of Pakistan and South Asia in the era of globalization. Global economic policies and geopolitical consequences of war on terror are major reasons for Pakistan's problems and also of Hamid's discontent with the present global order, and this discontent, for Raggio, denotes civilization (2016). Hamid considers civilizations’ illusions “pervasive, dangerous, and powerful” because “they contribute to globaliztions' brutality" (2014, p. 16). Under this spell, we come to believe in simultaneous belief in "global free markets and … impossib[ility of] the global free movement of labor” (p. 16). Globalization cannot be understood without understanding the global power relations in the 21st century as a legacy of imperialism. Questioning the role of Pakistan that has been compulsorily following the ‘do more’ narrative of America, Hamid criticizes Pakistani generals like Ayub Khan for being "a steadfast American ally against the Soviet Union and the recipient of large amounts of weaponry and aid" (Hamid, 2014, p. 105) and also General Zia who in the 1980s was a "mustachioed dictator with dark bags under his eyes and a fondness for dystopian social reengineering" (p. 9). Zia was also a steadfast ally of the US, and so was General Musharraf, the most zealous of all, but in his time, Pakistan fought a proxy war for global powers against Afghan brethren resulting in frequent suicide bombings in Pakistan (p. 107). 

Hamid’s claim that intermingling the source of creativity (2014) refutes Westphalia as the origin of civilization; civilization, for him, originates from global connectivity: East and West amalgamate daily through five scapes of globalization theorized by Appadurai (1990) and gone are the days when Kipling's claim was valid that "East is East and West is West, and Never the twain shall meet" (1889). Not that our civilizations engender clash; it is the clash that makes us "pretend that we belong to civilization" (Hamid, 2014, p. 105, the west denies humanity and "allocate[s] power, rights and resources in ways repugnantly discriminatory" (p. 125). Hamid exposes the divisive Western agenda implicit in the "clash" functioning for ulterior western motives: 

Individuals have commonalities that cut across different countries, religions, and languages – and differences that divide those who share a common country, religion, and language. The idea that we fall into [global] civilizations … is merely a politically convenient myth. (Hamid, 2014, p. 124) 

Literature Review

Rather than a shared grouping of individuals, planned framing of the west, now organic and then purposeful, constructs western civilization that has produced severe headache for Pakistan. Global media has framed Pakistan as "a horror sub-industry within the news business" (p. 39). Pakistan is, "we are constantly told, a place where car bombs go off in crowded markets, beheadings get recorded in a grainy video, and nuclear weapons are assembled in frightening proximity to violent extremists" (p. 39). Shabir, in his article "Pakistan's Image Dilemma: Quest for Remedial Action," observes that "most overseas media, especially western media despite being "independent" serve as instruments to further the objectives, interests, and values of the states, the societies, and the corporate sectors in which the media are based" (2012, p.47). The result is that the world elite seems to be unanimous in the opinion that Pakistan is a 'risky' country: "… Pakistan has become the target of a global media war which it seems to be losing" (Jabbar, 2005, p. 51). The dominating western discourse about Pakistan is "alarmingly dehumanizing, simplistic and inaccurate" (Hamid, 2014, p. 173). In Musharraf's time, media, more powerful than Pakistan Government, served the global interests in Pakistan because free permission of the spread of diverse ideas compromises national goals. Global media coverage of Pakistan is consistently bleak, and ironically, Pakistan has not been employing a single global-level media weapon to counter this assault (Shabir, 2012). The result of this image constantly poured by the western media into public eyes and ears is that when Hamid was passing by Qatar Airport, BBC relayed the news that an American ambassador had been assassinated, Hamid's first thought was "Where?" and the second was "I hope not in Pakistan" (Hamid, 2014, p. 48). Media is more effective than nuclear weapons to defend ourselves globally (Shahid Hamid 2017)1 the reason being that, observes JavedJabbar, the former Pakistani Information Minister, “while not being physically destructive, the media war, in one sense, is worse. It erodes and diminishes the contours of our true identity in the minds of billions of people exposed to overseas media” (Jabbar, 2005, p. 51). Benoit’s Image Repair Theory claims that “an image might be improved but may not be entirely restored” (William, 2000, p. 40). 

Toquir (2005) classifies Pakistani responses to the contemporary global critical hegemony into three categories: pessimist, optimist, and realist. The first group's pessimism arises from the blast globalization gives to the smaller economies of the world, and the optimist group accepts the role of globalization in the incorporation of Pakistan with the world (cited in Zaheer 2018). The realist group is conscious of how international funding agencies are providing Pakistan opportunities as well as implicitly exploiting the Pakistani economy. With his Pakistani Muslim young protagonists, an expert in global banking and commerce – Shezad in Moth Smoke (2000) and Changez in Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) – Hamid has emerged as a spokesperson of the cultural exchange betwixt Pakistan, rising Asia, and the global world through global technologies and mass media. Hamid's is a mixed response covering all these shades of responses through his five texts, but his personal response has a better claim for realism. 

Pakistan is a good manifestation of the veracity of Khor's (1995) critique that "globalization is what we in the Third World have for several centuries called colonization." Ayaz Amir observes that Pakistanis' "lack [of] spirit [is] conditioned more by history than climate to bow meekly before authority" (2006. p.7). Foreign powers, though "far from being guiltless in the Pakistani context, have only secondarily contributed to Pakistan's ongoing crises, which remain primarily of Pakistan's own making" (pp. 13, 14). During the war against USSR and during 9/11, Pakistan fell victim to American ideoscape, technoscape, and financescape – in fact, all the five of them simultaneously because "all of them are interdependent and inseparably influence each other – but Pakistan's "lack of agency [is] at the heart of [her] failures" (Hamid, 2014, p.13) and she herself alone can solve her problems; she needs to " bring [her] own house in order" (2012, p. 51) and actualize her potential as a liberal economy, a forward-looking nation, a progressive state and a bridge between the Islamic world and the west coming to terms with globalization which is "a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions" (Held et al., 1999, p.16). 

Theoretical Framework

Appadurai's observation that "people from towns in India think of moving to Poona or Madras as well as of moving to Dubai and Houston, and exiles from Sri Lanka end up in South India just as in Switzerland" (1996, p.34) is one aspect of globalization. The other pointed out by McLuhan is more relevant to understanding how 9/11 alone, more than any other incident, globalized the world [which is tantamount to] interference into others' affairs (McLuhan 1992). US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2001 pressurized Pakistan as well to be part of the transnational coalition for the global 

War on Terror. 9/11 was an American issue, but it engulfed the whole world through global television of the crash of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, the most widely watched in the history of television. People from almost ninety countries fell victims to this attack. Attack on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon symbolized kicking off global military might and financial network. Bush Administration's war on terror used terror as an instrument to unleash unilateral US military power to establish American supremacy in the post-9/11 world (dis)order (Kellner, 2003). The war on terror policy equipped America with the 'right' of a preemptive attack on an enemy state or organization which is presumed to aid terrorism or has the potential to attack the US. This war between right and wrongdoers rationalized huge global military adventures directly against Iraq and Afghanistan and indirectly against Pakistan with complex, unsettling consequences (Shabir, 2016). 

Fukuyama (1992) conceived the developments of the decline of Soviet communism, dominance of Western capitalism and democracy of the 1990s as the end of history: "[T]he endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and universalization of Western liberal democracy [is] the final form of human government" (Fukuyama, 1992). Huntington rejected Fukuyama's "one world euphoria and harmony" model in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) because, for Huntington, the future holds a series of contradictions in "the West and the Rest." Against 'chaos model', he asserts that today's world consists of conflicting civilizations – Islam, China, Russia, and the West – competing on the basis of religious and cultural differences. This fabricated clash of civilizations, Martin Amis's words, manufactured the west's confrontation with "an irrationalist, antagonistic, theocratic/ideocratic system which is essentially and unappeasably opposed to its existence” (cited by Gray 2008). Rooted in this new Orientalizing binarism vision, John Updike's literary license awkwardly manipulates orientalist texts through a young Muslim protagonist. Hamid's work not only anticipates this shift and need for honest perspective but also offers this missed marginal voice speaking globally. 

Analysis

Hamid's response to globalizing technoscapes is mixed. In Pakistan, above 110 million cell phones and 30 million internets connections connect Pakistanis to the global world. 90% Pakistanis are estimated to be the regular consumers of online social media (Gallup 2016). Hamid himself has "a group of friends [he] turn[s] to for breaking news, political commentary, and gallows humor” (2014, p. 48). Social media’s reliable and innovative connectivity helps Hamid continue “liv[ing] pretty much the same life [he] had lived … in London or New York" (p.46), and he can "visit the same websites, follow the same news, and correspond with the same friends and agents and publishers “(p. 46 He remains connected to his wife Zahra in Lahore and his friends abroad. Although IT services in Pakistan are unaffordable (Poushter, 2016), Pakistanis are busy using operating networking sites, instant messaging, and downloading (Roberts &Foehr, 2015). Pakistan is so big an IT industry that Google "collects 5-billion out of 40-billion of its revenue from Pakistan" (Hamid, 2014, p.49), and in 2019 Google has earned 8 billion dollars from Pakistan. But when it comes to the issue of Pakistani Muslim identity, one harmful effect of globalization, Hamid points out, is that the world is transformed into monolithic, homogenous collectivity compromising individual identities. Changez in The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) fights against this homogenization throughout the text. Metamorphosis of a liberal Pak-American character into a religious zealot and 'Islamic fundamentalist' is a misreading of the text for Hamid, who comments on this misnomer: 

… There’s no real evidence that Changez is religious. He never quotes from scripture. He never asks himself about heaven, hell, or the divine. He drinks. He has sex outside of marriage. His beliefs could quite plausibly be those of a secular humanist. And yet he calls himself a Muslim, and is angry with US foreign policy, and grows a beard – and that seems to be enough. Changez may well be an agnostic or even an atheist. Nonetheless, he is somehow, and seemingly quite naturally, read by many people as a character who is an Islamic fundamentalist. (2014, p. 224) 

Nor does this homogeneity characterize Pakistan, the sixth-largest populous country on the globe, and as a nation, for Hamid, "ours is a nation of minorities: a patchwork of ethnicities, cultures, sects, languages and since independence we have used Islam to unite us together" (2014, p.127). 

Hamid exposes the western frame that molds Changez’s originality. He stuck to business fundamentals (Hamid 2007), not to religious fundamentals. As a true lover of America, he "felt more like a New Yorker than someone from Islamabad" (2014, p. 26), but still, he is branded as a fundamentalist because of his Pakistani heritage, hence the discontent of civilization. West's Islamophobic refusal to acknowledge that "Islam is not amonolith" serves to "justify the unequal distributions of equal respect that plague the globe" (p. 220). 

When Zia's fascist radicalization of Pakistan bogged the country into a global political crisis, Haqani endorsed the generally held western view that Pakistan Army is in a compact alliance with extremist Islamists. This global proxy war led Pakistan to terror. In How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), an anonymous hero at his mother's demise aligns himself with a pack of students: Hamid observes that "[t]hugs belonging to the student wings of religious parties seized control of many college campuses. Heroin and rifles flooded the streets … [it was a] blowback from Pakistan's alliance with the United States against Soviets in Afghanistan" (Hamid, 2014, p. 10). America promoted right-wing ideology in Pakistan to fight against leftist Russia. Hamid remembers from his childhood reminiscences that the adults of the family were watching the news, and he was told that "we are now allied with America against Afghanistan" (p. 99). It was their conviction acquired from media that "[w]e were with good guys and we would win. I had seen enough cartoons and films to have no doubt about it" (p. 99). General Musharraf admits that he handed over to the US countless suspects who were imprisoned and tortured in Guantanamo Bay (Musharraf 2006). But when Hamid reached Princeton, he realized that – like Changez’s love for Erica (2007) – Pakistan’s was a one-sided love affair: in Princeton, "few Americans [he] met seemed to think of Pakistan as an ally. Fewer still knew where Pakistan was" (2014, p. 99). But the fact is that Pakistan has been a tremendously valuable US ally in the global war on terror, and AfiyaSaddique is still in an American prison. Pakistan has suffered "direct and indirect economic losses of 68 billion dollars over the last ten years" (Hamid, 2014, p. 138). Pakistan received only 20.7 billion dollars funding from 2002 to 2012, 14.2 billion dollars allocated for Pak-Army; only "6.5 billion dollars assistance came, less than a third of the total" (2014, p. 138), and civilian share was insignificant. American Government Accountability Office Report says that only 11% of 1.6 billion dollars allocated for Pakistan was disbursed in 2010. Hamid comments that independent calculation by the Centre for Global Development suggests that 2.2 billion dollars of civilian aid budgeted for Pakistan is currently undisbursed, meaning that total economic assistance actually received from the US over the past nine years is in the vicinity of 4.3 billion dollars, 480 million rupees per year. (2014, p. 138) 

Pakistani annual foreign remit, 12 billion dollars, sent by Pakistani families living abroad, is 22 times more than the US economic aid. Despite all this economic loss and despite immense contribution to GWOT (global war on terror), and despite becoming the heart of extremism, losing the image the world over, and plunging into severer and severer instability decade after decade, mistrust is still thought the appropriate attitude by "hostile media and … policymakers internationally dealing with Pakistan" (Hamid, 2014, p. 46). 

After GWOT was over, American love for Pakistan became obsolete, and Pakistan once again was framed as an ‘other’ in the global world to manufacture viewers' anti-Pakistan perception. Hamid critiques this motivated framing of Middle East, and Asian countries meant for divisive western agenda and unevenly distributive globalization. At JFK airport, he faced discriminative questioning about whether he "had ever been to Mexico or received a combat training" (Hamid, 2014, p. 123). The questioning officer, too, might have been an unconscious tool in the hands of the system and questioning only according to his job description, but the system itself is not unconscious. Tearing off this conscious and unconscious misrepresentation, Hamid presents the true picture of Pakistan: 

I never believed the role Pakistan plays as a villain on news shows. The Pakistan I knew was the out-of-character Pakistan, Pakistan without its make-up and plastic fangs, a working actor with worn-out shoes, a close family, and a hearty laugh.” (2014. p. 41) 

Hamid’s is the Pakistan from where Changez rises as an optimist and brilliant young man but despite his par excellence contribution, is crushed and dismayed by the country of his romance since childhood, and rejected by the society he always considered to be a part of. Hamid is Changez in part2, the protagonist of Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). Hamid wanted to go to Italy from America. His good dress, New York residence, necessary documents like employer’s letter, bank statement, insurance evidence, an airline ticket, hotel booking receipt, “[a] navy suit, pinstriped, three-buttoned. White shirt, blue tie, brown face, brown eyes” and freshly shaved face (2014, p. 21) did not suffice to make him acceptable to American consciousness because his shave had “missed a patch beside [his] chin. The stubble there, though short, [was] dense. Fundamentalist stubble.Ayatollah, Hezbollah stubble” (2014, p. 21). His attempted smile of sincerity ironically creates the feeling of insincerity “as attempts of sincerity tend to be” (2014, p.21). However, the Visa Officer was “almost friendly in return. We [we]reboth young, after all, healthy members of the same species and of breeding age” (2014, pp. 21-22, emphasis added). The italics show Hamid’s placement of both himself, a Pakistani, and the officer, an American, on equal human footing. But in this unequally global world they were not equal, not equally human. Although he had secured an Italian visa in the past, now he is declared a terrorist and fundamentalist because of his Pakistani heritage because of the stereotypical understanding that “even common Pakistanis are easily susceptible to become suicide bombers” (Syriana, 2005). A Pakistani’s interest in living in Italy was seriously suspicious though his reason for that was simple and sincere: “Love, I say. My girlfriend is Italian” (2014, p.22). But the consultant says: “I am afraid we will need proof: a notarized letter and a copy of her passport” (p. 22). All this was superfluous for an American but necessary for a Pakistani. Hamid laments: “Other visa officers in other consulates regularly reject my kind for far less”

(p.22). 

Scholarship after 9/11 has been partial in depiction of Islam and the Muslim world (Abdallah & Rane 2008). Any terrorist act is associated with the Muslims and Pakistan resulting in stereotypical image of the Muslims (Nurullah, 2010). This academic construction seethes into the common white mind as well. This is the answer to Hamid’s critical question: “Why [Pakistani] 

and Arab get all the credit” (2014, p. 33) when the attack on the Twin Towers was carried out by 19 men of various nationalities, from AL-Qaida, a global organization comprising committed men of fifty countries. Hamid’s essay “Down the Tube 2006” describes a bus event. On a hot day of June, he gets into a bus amongst a crowd of people standing and one seat. No one moves to take the seat because in the next seat was sitting a Pakistani Muslim “wearing a free kurta, with a petition top, extraordinary eyes, and the kind of moustacheless facial hair that the west associates with Muslim-fundamentalists” (2014). Hamid satirically exposes the crowd’s baseless suspicion: that this Pakistani Muslim man could have “hidden detonator built into his sleeve … [or he would] reach beneath his kurta and push a button on a bomb itself" (2014, p. 35). Everybody avoided him, adds Hamid as if he were to slaughter them. After this treatment, they still wonder "why Muslims in Britain feel alienated" (2014). This Pakistani Muslim migrant passenger was "on medication" (p. 34) but, Hamid reminds the British, “[y]our law calls us alien” (Hamid, 2014, p. 88). 

Ironically, Pakistan has been a much more bloody battlefield since the American invasion of Afghanistan and "tens of thousands [of Pakistanis] have died in terror and counter-terror violence, slain by bombs, bullets, cannons and drones … America's 9/11 has given way to Pakistan's 24/7/365" (p. 133). Pakistan has been a merciless target of the Americanized version of globalization. American CIA-led drone attacks initiated in July 2004 to implement "terror for terror" policy escalated this crisis: "Before the drone strikes, it was as if everyone was young. After the drone strikes, it is as if everyone is ill" (Hamid, 2014, p.168). Hamid mourns that the way "flying robot from an alien power regularly strikes down from the skies and kill Pakistani citizens, such a claim in America would be paranoid or science fiction but it is real in Pakistan" (2014, p.172). He figures out in his essay "Why Drones Do Not Help" (2013) that drones have "killed between 2541 and 3586 people in Pakistan" (Hamid, 2014, p. 165), most of them innocent: only 2 % of deaths were of militants (Hamid, 2013). "Obama administration has attempted to make drone strikes more discriminated" (2014, p. 169), but drone attacks simplified and legalized murdering people in remote areas though they had nothing to do with terrorism (Alston, 2010). Drone attacks disrupted Pakistan's social life and spread fear and sense of insecurity: "Parents [were] getting their offspring from schools just because of fear of their safety … Social gatherings have been deeply affected, as many interviewees … were afraid even to gather in group form or receive guests in their residences" (Hamid, 2014, p. 168). Jirga3 chiefs in FATA stopped holding cultural Jirga meetings because of drone attacks on Jirgas. A drone attack on a Jirga in DattaKhel, Waziristan, killing 44 innocent civilians (Shah, 2012), showed that America deliberately meant diminishing of inherited cultural patterns. These drone attacks violated Pakistan's regional space sovereignty as well as state supremacy (Shah 2010) against the UN charter on self-defense (United Nations 51). The policy was the result of a homogenizing neo-orientalist view of Taliban whom only Hamid could differentiate: "a militant who is a member of Taliban, planning to strike on American troops, is not the same as a militant who normally herds live-stock, carries a rifle and today is sitting with other members of his clan to discuss a [drone] threat" (Hamid, 2014, p. 168). Hamid observes that "97 percent of Pakistanis who were aware of strikes were opposed to them" (p. 168). In October 2012, Imran Khan held a long march with millions of protesters against American drone strikes on Pakistan (Masood, 2012). But despite all Pakistani criticism of the irrationality of this technology, US continued this program with a narrative of eliminating terrorism from the globe, and Obama even declared it effective and lawful (2013). Obama’s “administration’s apparent definition holds that any man of military age who is killed in an area where militants are thought to operate (and where, therefore, drones operate) will be counted as militant if killed" (Hamid, 2014, p. 167, emphasis added). Since president Obama took the charge, "412 to 885 civilians have died in American drone attacks in Pakistan, including 169 to 198 children" (p. 167), but the world was misinformed that drones rarely struck civilians, thus seriously damaging the image of Pakistan as well. America was killing innocent people naming them as militants and promoting terrorism: TTP and al-Qaida, in retaliation to continued drone attacks, expanded and intensified the network of terrorist attacks in Pakistan (Jaeger, 2012). Nineteen people, for example, were killed when a police academy in Lahore was blown up in 2009 by a suicide bomber. The chief commandant of Tehreek Taliban Pakistan accepted the responsibility of this attack: "the suicide attack was in revenge of American strikes on TTP in Pakistan" (BBC, 2009). 34 people were killed when an army check post was blown up by TTP in 2013 near FATA in reaction to Pak-Army's cooperation with NATO and the American drone strike program (Tribune, 2013). Both America and militants were killing innocent Pakistanis. Such attacks were unknown in Pakistan before 2004. The retaliation spread to Europe and America itself besides Pakistan. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, declared in the court in June 2010 that he planted a bomb at Time-Square in retaliation of American drone strike exercises in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When the Justice questioned him about innocent people's killing, he responded: the drone attack program in Afghanistan and Pakistan is also regularly killing innocent civilians, destroying their life and property, leaving them helplessly injured and they do not care for anybody (Shifrel et al, 2010). Hamid also mourns life deaths of ordinary Pakistani people "the destruction of their houses, the loss of wage-earning relative with many dependents who need to borrow to pay for the treatment of injuries has left their families destitute after a drone strike" (Hamid, 2014, p. 168). United States of America's "terror for terror" policy has escalated the terrorist activities rather than diminishing them out of the globe, as the suicide attacks in Pakistan, Europe and also in America are the aftermath of drone strikes. 

Indigenous cultural values are under erosion in contemporary monolithic homogeneity of the world, a degenerative consequence of globalization: “[F]ly from Lahore to Madrid and you will find that the words for shirt and soap are virtually the same in both places" (Hamid 2014, p. 124). Tariq Ali also mourns the prevalence from New York to Beijing of "the same language, same junk food and same television shows" (cited in Hayat 2016). So much so that losing one's mother tongue has become a normalcy. One of Hamid's American playmates asked his mother whether he was a retarded. She responded: "[N]o. He is newcomer in America. He is not much aware of English yet" (Hamid, 2011). Within the next six months he acquired fluency in English and "over the next seven years he did not utter a single Urdu word" and when he returned to Pakistan, he had "completely forgotten the Urdu language" (2014, pp. 6, 7). Likewise, when Hamid goes to a Pakistani cinema to watch Avatar movie, he finds "hot dogs and Coke" (p. 47) and realizes these elements in the “modern Hollywood dependent cinema anywhere” (p. 47) constitute what Yergin and Stanislaw call globality, “the end state of globalization” (2002). 

Another dimension of the erosion of the traditional Pakistani cultural values is that Pakistan carries the top position in search for nymphomaniac and porn substance (Fox News, 2016). Hamid points out in a satirical-mourning tone: “We Pakistanis are amongst the world top leaders in searching online for porn” (2014, p. 49). Facebook and WhatsApp groups of academic institutions too reflect sexual sharing among Pakistani students (Pak parenting 2016). Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had to block 71000 sites. Still, people use fake accounts to buy unethical material and sometimes Pakistan’s secret data websites are also hacked (Tariq 2012). 

West’s economic and military interests have grown greater in the present neo-colonial era than it was under direct colonial control (Grovogui 1996 & Duffield 2009). Giddens observed it in 1998 that “instant electronic communication shakes up local institutions and everyday patterns of life” (p. 31). After the turn of the century and as a consequence of 9/11, many more modes of communication were added to TV in Pakistani context to worsen the corrosion of indigenous culture. Innocence of Muslims, an anti-Muslim movie produced by Nakoula (2012), and Blackberry Messenger, Facebook and Twitter promote it in the name of simple dissemination of information of “anti-film protests raging across Pakistan (2014, p. 48). The movie disturbed the ideoscape of the Muslim world and in particular of Pakistan. The consequent riots in Pakistan led to the announcement of a holiday on Friday. Personal and family life was also seriously hampered: “… we did our grocery shopping on the Thursday evening, the streets were packed and the traffic was terrible. My driver, a Christian, asked me if he could stay home from work and the birthday party of one of my daughter’s class fellow was cancelled” (2014, p. 52). On Friday, the country went aflame because of horrible fight between police and protesters. Closure of shops and offices, people’s staying at home, and disconnectivity of people because of government’s “turn[ing] off mobile phone services” (p. 52) had economic repercussions as well: Pakistan’s stock exchange index fell from 54.7 to 49.3 (PSX, 2012). The situation also cost human life: “approximately twenty people had been killed across the country, rioters, police, a TV cameraman were standing among my Lahori friends and there was an air of sadness” (Hamid, 2014, p.51). And as all this was because “someone ha[d] made a hateful film in the United States of America” (p.51), people attacked all that symbolized Americanness: “The demonstrators … also ransacked and burned banks, shops, cinemas and western fast-food restaurants such as KFC and Pizza Hut (Bangash, September 21, 2012). As the film was hosted by American-run You-Tube, “Pakistani boycott of Google [was meant to] bring Google to its knees” (Hamid, 2014, p.49). 

Conclusion

America used 9/11 to wage war on terror to actualize its global agenda in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the name of civilization and advancement. Pakistan’s economy, culture, civil rights, and writ of the state suffered immense loss in this war but despite being front line American ally, her image was also globally tarnished in the minds of 7.7 billion people on the globe. President Zardari stated that “the Government of Pakistan has to face a bulk of criticism for not abstaining drone attacks on Pakistan, which engenders loss of wealthy property and precious lives … [They] are counter-productive and arduous to explain by a democratic government” (Hamid, 2014, p. 172) generating a credibility gap (Williams, 2010). Globalization viciously brought to Pakistan mass displacement, terrorism, xenophobia, inequality, war and climate change and the most important Pakistan was branded as a fundamentalist terrorist country. Pakistan is very bleak image of how, in Sassen’s view, “globalization consists of an enormous variety of micro-processes that begin to denationalize what had been constructed as national – whether policies, capital, political subjectivities, urban spaces, temporal frames, or any other of a variety of dynamics and domains” (2006, p.1). Pakistan needs to engage its 15 million social media users to protect and promote its positive image at the global level through prompt, sustained and logical image building. 




Notes 

This article has been derived from HEC’s NRPU Project No. 5709 titled “The Ideology of Nationalism in Pakistani Literature in English”

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