When a person of a certain standard and position of power says extremely misogynistic and altogether creepy and disturbing things it makes you wonder what use is all his education, designation, and awards?
Fasih Ahmed, Editor of Pakistan edition of international media company Newsweek, is trending across the internet for his highly disturbing and morally, ethically and on all grounds wrong tweets that he has been making since yesterday, tirelessly (someone has a lot of time on his hands, we see)!
Let us take a look at what the entire issue here:
On 23rd Jan. Ahmed tweeted in response to the Zainab rape and murder case:
When someone replied to his tweet saying it was in poor taste, this exchange happened:
Which then lead to him tweeting this:
And this:
He even clarified that his account was not hacked since a few people commented whether a hacker was sending out such absurd tweets:
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Now after seeing all that preposterousness, one has to wonder who this Fasih Ahmed is and why is everyone shocked over his words.
Well, Newsweek Pakistan Editor, Fasih Ahmed, previously has been a reporter for Wall Street Journal and Newsweek and in 2008 he also won the New York Press Club Award for Newsweek’s reporting on the gruesome assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani Prime Minister.
While Newsweek which is now The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC has been available in Pakistan for about 50 years, the Newsweek Pakistan edition replaced the earlier Asia Pacific edition in 2010. And the parent company itself has been around since 1933 which makes it a good 84 years old.
Even their following on Facebook is a solid 1.3 million, so just imagine the kind of impact the publication has and the kind of weight the people it is associated with, hold.
Thus it makes it even more surprising that an international brand like Newsweek that has to uphold its editorial policies and stands on different world issues whether they are regressive or progressive, would allow one of their editors to put out something like this. It is also shocking that they cannot hire an editor even in a country like Pakistan before making that sure that he concurs with their line of thought and what kind of ideology he comes from.
Even if he’s used his personal Twitter, the fact that he is a verified account due to the virtue of being an editor at the Newsweek, he needs to understand that the lines get extremely blurred between a professional and personal comment.
We usually deal with a lot of regressive comments from various areas, politicians, babas, and was this coming from a Maulvi who are known to issue misogynist and extremely backward, male favouring fatwas, we wouldn’t have been as surprised.
But this not just anyone, this person is a well educated and travelled Editor and here we are not talking about his country, religion, ethnicity or even gender, we are only talking about his position of being a senior journalist at an international media house.
And it seems as if the person in question has entirely too much time on his hands to respond to every individual reply that came on his initial tweets. Not to dismiss his first tweet had a homophobic nature.
Ahmed has already parted ways (or was made to) with the Lahore Literary Festival of which “he was one of the original Board of Governors”.
The big question that remains is what is Newsweek doing about his this conduct.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Twitter account of Fasih Ahmed, Wikipedia, Lahore Literary Festival Twitter
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