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)!
Shall this ban also apply to the facial hair of the weary air hostesses of PIA?
If forcing a Muslim man to grow beard is Talibanization, then obligating a man not to grow beard is also an act of Talibanization. I wonder what will happen if PIA starts using Hooters argument that its waitress
It is called liberal extremism ,i think there is much more extremists of this type in our country than those who are renowned all over the world,we must have to fight them as well because it is even greater danger to our society.
This is absurd.
Being presentable is fine, but there are plenty of presentable people with beards and plenty of unpresentable without. As Adil Najam points out Sir Syed and Salam were plenty presentable!
The matter is one of principle. PIA has every right to want its crew to be presentable, but no right to dictate things like this. This is just a gimmick and a bad one at that.
Well played, ATP. You have raised the right issue and are on the right side of the issue.
Pakistan – Muslim Country and its International Airlines PIA
if someone is muslim and cant have beard at work, its very
difficult to say we are working in muslim country.
Someone want to have beard or not its totally different issue
but local companies must understand, any person working
in pakistan have right to do things it own way.
US air crew will not wear Shalwar Kameez and have beard
or will say Asalam-o-Alikum, because they are not muslim
nor its their culture. People who are pakistani will say these
things because we all muslim and have our own culture.
Pakistan is suffering due to these issue, we dont make our
own standards and want to follow other people standards
and later face problems.
With past history of PIA. I see very less good decisions are
done by the airlines. I travel in PIA and many other airlines
and i find that.
1) PIA have sometime good food
2) PIA is not comfortable and consider may be sometime
cheap flight
3)PIA getting huge amount during HAJ flights but people
are suffering during Haj and Umrah times, as high cost
and very bad customer services
4) PIA airline crew uniform is not much upto the current
market standards.
5) PIA staff is earning huge amount of money especially
management but return is far less
6)PIA ticket charges are averagly higher then the services.
7)PIA aircrew staff behavior is good on flight