KARACHI: To promote “Islamic traditions”, a university in Pakistan has declared that February 14 will be celebrated as ‘Sisters’ Day’.
According to Zafar Iqbal Randhawa, the vice chancellor of Agriculture Faisalabad, female students can be gifted scarves and Abayahs (clothes) as he believes it was “compatible with Pakistan’s culture and Islam”, said a report in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language newspaper.
The report quoted Randhawa as saying that, “Women are at a very high rank for us. Today the era of gender empowerment is here, Western thinking is being promoted. But the best gender empowerment and division of work is in our religion and culture,” the vice chancellor said.
February 14 — traditionally celebrated as Valentine’s day all over the world as the ‘day of love’. However, it has been a controversial subject in Muslim-majority Pakistan. Some believes in celebrating the V-Day while some are protesting against the celebration.
The Islamabad High Court in 2017 and 2018 imposed a ban on Valentine’s Day celebrations across Pakistan and the electronic and print media have also been told ‘not to give coverage to any promotion of the day’.
President Mamnoon Hussain in 2016 urged Pakistanis not to celebrate Valentine’s Day saying the day was not part of Islamic tradition, but a Western innovation.
With agency inputs