Dear Prime Minister Imran Khan I wanted to reach out to you as a former journalist, US foreign policy advisor, women’s activist, Pakistani citizen with dual nationality in the USA, but above all as a former acquaintance and supporter of you and PTI when you first entered politics and I reached out to you as a friend and professional working for the US Consulate Lahore. I have known you since the early 70’s when my father Prof M Rashid served in some senior key government positions as Education Secretary Punjab, Add. Chief Secretary Punjab and Principal Government College. I used to often cross paths with you socially as a Kinnaird student and we chatted about cricket, politics, international relations. We had some very pivotal discussions in Lahore when you visited me at the American Consulate. I remember when there was a visa issue for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who was helping you raise funds in New York for SKM Hospital and you visited my office to solicit some help. We were honored to be of service as we at the Consulate and I personally revered your benevolent efforts to start a free cancer hospital inspired by your mother’s memory. Fast forward thirty years and you are now the Prime Minister of Pakistan. I moved out of Pakistan over twenty five years ago and have since visited on occasion to keep in touch with family and friends. Let me start out by saying that the US is not a perfect country. I often think of returning home but any thoughts I have of returning are readily squelched by the continuing deterioration in Pakistani economy, politics, culture and society. However, I love my people and home and will always dream of returning one day if possible. Prime Minister Imran Khan, I have been following you on the news and have thought of addressing some key issues such as the treatment of minorities, the abuses against women and children, the continuing leniency shown by the nomenclature towards militant Mullah elements. However nothing has impelled a strong enough volition in me to pick up the pen. Today however I write to you about an issue that is very dear to my personal and professional experience. As a daughter of the soil, I was sexually abused from a very young age into my teen years and it deeply affected my mental and physical health to the extent that still to this day, I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and am on prescription medications. I do not consider myself unique at all. I know so many little girls and boys back home in Pakistan who are sexually abused and don’t live to tell their stories. Some years ago I wrote a book on my childhood to shed light on the menace of sexual abuse and its devastating effects on the lives of the children who helplessly endure the onslaught of perverted adults. You recently gave some local and international interviews in regards to the topic of rape, Pakistani culture and women’s and men’s roles in preventing this crime. I am reaching out to you today in the capacity of a Pakistani woman, journalist, and trained clinical psychologist to share some insights which I hope will provoke a response in you to look at this matter in more depth and amplitude. Prime Minister Imran Khan, rape is a result of mental and physical dysfunction, stemming from the psyche of the perpetrator. Rape happens in cave like societies where women are bundled up in burqas and kept in confinement. Rape happens in Western societies where men have ample access to express their sexuality in a healthy way but choose not to do so because they express a deep shame and hatred of the human body, their own and their victim’s and choose to attack innocent subjects. Rape happens when its dark and you can’t see a naked woman, and it happens in daylight when you see a woman approaching, regardless of her apparel. Rape happens because the rapist is a sick individual. Sick individuals are found all over the globe, from strict societies to lenient ones. It happens because it is an illness borne of a mindset that sex is enjoyable via an act of criminal regression and aggression. A rapist does not discriminate between a thinly clad woman, a child, a young woman, a woman in the streets, or a woman in the four walls of a house. It happens because a sick male with a very warped mind set chooses to inflict pain. This pain is not caused by what the victim does, in terms of being out at night, or not being in a burqa. It happens because rapists are the product of a certain mental pathology which needs education, prevention, civil, and legal protection. It is common in Pakistan to blame the victim for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and somehow being responsible to a certain degree. The case of the gang rape of a young woman a few years ago in India on a bus is an example. The rapist made the statement that if she hadn’t been on a bus at 9pm at night, indicating it was wrong of her to be out at night, made her a deserving recipient of gang rape. So when you as my Prime Minister elect make a statement on the world media stage that it is “common sense” that in societies like Pakistan where men have pent up sexual urges, that women should dress in “humble rather than revealing clothing,” in order to prevent rape, I find myself impelled to call you out. Let’s talk about the issue in “I and Thou,” to bring it closer to consciousness. I was raped as a child, with no control over who was doing what to my body. Should my mother have “dressed” me differently to avoid male perverts from molesting me? You were raised in an educated home, where you travelled internationally, and sat across from the table with many thinly clad women. You never molested anyone or forced yourself as a Pakistani male on any of your companions. And neither would a majority of civilians in Pakistan because not every man who sees a nice looking woman with some bare skin jumps up and rapes her, whether they are western or eastern, conservative or liberal. So to state that rape is preventable if women dress conservatively is a misnomer and you as a world leader need to look deeper into the issue and correct this misnomer. The rapes in Pakistan occur mostly against young women and children not because they are roaming around in bikinis or shorts. They occur because rapists need to be understood in terms of being pathological criminals who need to be held accountable. Rapists are not ordinary people, they are sick people. It is like saying that if people ate healthy, they could cure cancer. You and I both know that cancer is a disease that takes a lot more intervention than drinking clean water. In the same vein, putting women away at night will not prevent them from being raped. I was hoping that a man of letters such as yourself with a wide world view would help shape Pakistan’s future to where we progress in terms of social science. Where we aim to garner our younger generations towards a decent homogenous, educated way of living and thinking. A trend of developing women’s rights to where women are seen as equal to men with a choice over their dress, their bodies, their rights to say no. I was hoping that after having been married to a western woman from England, and then a westernized woman from England, you would give us women the same benefit of the doubt, that we have a choice to be safe and free from criminals. Seeing that you have taken a different social direction of late concerns me for the fate of our younger generations, both boys and girls. Pakistani youth are at par if not superior to youth in western countries. They are bright, intelligent, full of potential, and ready to become part of the new global world order where men and women are equal, and reach their full potential via global knowledge, science and economic parity. To pigeon hole women as inciting rape by choosing a liberal dress code sets the tone of our development centuries back to when we lived in caves. This Neanderthal mind set must be corrected. You as my leader need to take a more evolved approach so that we follow in your footsteps rather than shun the direction you are fostering. Yours Sincerely