Muslim radicals and the government itself may prevent Erica Robin, who won Miss Pakistan Universe, to compete in November’s Global Miss Universe.
by Massimo Introvigne
We at “Bitter Winter” are no specialists of international beauty pageants, but those who are seem to agree that in November’s Global Miss Universe in El Salvador Pakistan will have a serious candidate, Erica Robin, who just won Miss Universe Pakistan. Unless she does not compete at all.
Beauty, a good career as a model, a college degree in Business Administration, an unimpeachable reputation: Erica Robin has everything. Except for one small detail: she is a Christian and does not hide it.
Islamic radical parties have protested that a Miss Universe Pakistan pageant was held in the first place, claiming beauty pageants in general are against Islam. However, as many netizens have noted, there have been other beauty pageants in the Pakistan and never has the protest been so loud.
Finally, the cat came out of the bag when conservative Muslim critics, including Mohammad Taqi Usmani, a leading intellectual of the conservative Deobandi school, regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on sharia, stated that Christian Erica Robin “cannot represent Pakistan.”
As it usually happens, the Pakistani government proved to be more scared of possible fundamentalist street protests than of international criticism, and promptly announced that the country’s intelligence will investigate the pageant and how it happened that Robin won—read that the secret services should have found a way to prevent it. Now the model may be prevented from competing in El Salvador.
A familiar scheme repeated itself: something not to the taste of Islamic radicals happens, they threaten street protests, and the government humors them.
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.
