Adil Najam
According to a news item in The News, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is going to implement a ban on growing beards – except for French beards – on all male cabin crew:
In a recent notification, PIA administration has announced to have reviewed its policy regarding beards, and said now male cabin crew could not grow beards and they could only have French-cut beards.
Not surprisingly, religious scholars and ulema condemned PIA for this, calling the ban a violation of constitutional and fundamental human rights. Whether this is or is not the most important constitutional violation of our age, the ulema are, in fact, right.
Unless there is a sound technical reason for it (and there seems not to be), forcing someone to take off their beard is deserving of condemnation as much as forcing someone to grow a beard. Especially if either of the act is ideologically motivated; no matter what the ideology. Of course, forcing someone to grow a beard on threat of death or violence is particularly disturbing. But, frankly, a threat to one’s livelihood is also reprehensible.
Right now, I myself do not have a beard. And that is not an ideological statement one way or the other. But my own position remains unchanged from October 2006 when I had commented on facial hair for cricketers:
By way of disclosure I should add that I occasionally sprout facial hair of my own but am mostly clean-shaven. But as a deep and committed adherent of people’s right of expression (how can a blogger not be that!) I stand committed to defend people’s right to facial hair, whether they are grown for stylistic elegance or religious expression.
More pertinent was the June 2006 decision by Habib Bank to ban shalwar kameez and facial hair (by the way, can someone please confirm if that policy was ever implemented). In that case the issue had focused more on the wearing of shalwar kameez to work and the argument that this somehow made the person look less “trustworthy” and less “presentable.” Facial hair were also targeted for the same reason. On the issue of beards, trustworthiness and presentability, my argument was rather simple:
Dr. Abdus Salam? Abdul Sattar Edhi? Sir Syed Ahmed Khan?
Presentable? You bet.
Trustworthy? More than any banker I ever met.
As a rather frequent traveler on PIA – in fact, I read this news item on a PIA plane retruning from Karachi to Islamabad, and one of the cabin staff was supporting a huge beard – I too have noticed that the number of crew members with facial hair, especially large beards, has increased dramatically over the years. But that is a factor of what has been happening in society. PIA has plenty of big problems to deal with, and this seems to be the least of them.
At least in my experience, the quality of service one gets is not at all dependent on the amount of facial hair. Maybe the management should focus on that before it starts following the example of the Swat Taliban in judging people by the length of their facial hair (or not)!
@ Asim
You are basically saying that the Qur’an is only applicable 1400 years ago, and so we can ignore it now. You say that beards were a “fashion” then. Well guess what. So was worshipping idols. It was the biggest of all fashions. Yet the Qur’an came and demolished that because it is wrong then and is wrong now.
As for your explanation of why they had beards then (you said “poor shaving techniques”) – you have made me laugh. Shaving was common in those days amongst the Persians – but the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasalam forbade the Muslims from looking like them by telling us to grow our beards. And he sallallahu alayhi wasalam had the thickest, most beautiful beard.
Bottom line is, Islam did not come to “fit in” with all the prevalent jahaliat around it. Islam came to uproot that jahaliat and guide people to the Straight Path. One last reminder for you from Surah Ale Imran:
“Truly, the religion with All
Yarjami,
(Yep, now I am going totaly off the topic)
Burqa!…hmmmm…its like you have a beautiful garden and you want to wrap it up under cover so noone could see and appreciate it except yourself.
I live in America and I see beautiful women everyday, there are in abundance here, I dont stare or drool at them…ok for couple seconds maybe every now and then, but, nobody gets hurt. I remember being in Pakistan in my teens we used to chase and harrass girls for miles/hours when we saw one, whether she was in sheets or not, I guess we expected a lot from our imaginations.
My point is, this sharam and hayya thing among men and women will always keep us serveral steps behind other nations….which might earn us a spot in jannat…but none in the world. So, for people who are only living to find a spot in jannat, they should stop complaining when the people make negative comments on the way muslims live.
The regulation makes total sense to me for two reasons: the first is obviously hygienic. Most of the airline crew is indirectly in the food service business. While most of us have grown up around people with beards preparing our foods, a lot of foreigners would freak out if they found a beard hair floating in their lentil soup.
Secondly, unmanaged beards are unfortunately synonymous with extremism/terrorism. Terrorism is unfortunately irrevocably linked to airplanes. One plus one equals…….I can’t think of it right now and obviously a lot of you can’t either.
we are human being we are muslim we are pakistani.If that is the fact then we have to think and decide according to our tradations, our religious values and priciples and then our local culture. The Holy prophet said that you like for your brothers what you like for yourself.
problem in our socity is that we like our wives and sisters to be in proper BURQA and others wives and sister in bikini and skirts. Now the dicision I leave it my readers.
We should not behave like monkeies what ever they see they try to adopt that we must use our mind and then act accordingly
Adil:
On February 23rd, 2009 9:21 pmm you wrote, “Have you ever fly with any Indian Airline, they have airhostesses supporting