The party attacked a bicycling camp in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Islamic fundamentalists are concerned that riding a bicycle may break a girl’s hymen.
by Massimo Introvigne
Would virgin girls lose their virginity by riding bicycles? The bizarre question is being seriously debated in Pakistan after Islamic fundamentalist party Jamaat-e-Islami attacked a bicycling camp for women in Landi Kotal, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa organized by well-known Pakistani cyclist Samar Khan, who holds several records for riding bicycles atop the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and other high mountains.
Now she holds another record, one she would have gladly avoided. She is the first Pakistani sport celebrity who has been vilified and threatened by fundamentalists for allegedly teaching “anti-Islam” and “immorality.”
Khan hopes to prepare a new generation of Pakistani female athletes but also promotes bicycling as healthy and eco-friendly.
When she organized one of her camps in conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Khan took the precaution of asking the women participants to wear a hijab and dress in a traditional way. This was not enough for Jamaat-e-Islami, which asked the local authorities to ban the initiative as “indecent.”
The fundamentalist party insisted that virgin women riding a bicycle may break their hymen and “lose their virginity.” This is not impossible, Khan countered, but it is also possible to accidentally break the hymen by riding a horse, a traditional activity for women in mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one fundamentalists have never objected to.
In the debate that followed on social media, it became clear that Jamaat-e-Islami is stuck in an old-fashioned and purely physical notion of virginity, and regards women who ride bicycles (but not those who ride horses) as “Westernized.” Khan was accused of “promoting a Western agenda” incompatible with Islam.
That such a debate could take place at all, and was taken seriously by some local politicians, is a testament to the power of fundamentalist organizations, and their views on women, in present-day Pakistan.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
