Newsweek Pakistan’s editor Fasih Ahmed has come under fire, recently, for his disrespectful remarks regarding the rape and murder of Zainab, that has started a very constructive discussion on sexual abuse, in the country.

We published a post on the incident, capturing Fasih’s Twitter tirade and, with it, we tried to understand what he may be attempting to do

Our endeavor came out of the idea that he is a journalist associated with a progressive publication of great repute so his remarks may be aligned with the values of the said publication.

In our piece, we thought we would give Fasih the benefit of the doubt as the tirade was just unfolding by the time our post was published and we had yet to get any confirmation or clarification as to what may be happening for such remarks to come from a man of his standing.

His latest tweet appears to have made the clarification that he was in complete senses and tweeted his remarks, intentionally:

My account has not been hacked. Relax

— Fasih Ahmed (@therealfasih) January 23, 2018

Sadly, it seems that it was a moment of learning for us – despite the unraveling of similar stories at home and abroad, recently – that such remarks come from men (and women) of all standings because our culture has, historically, only trivialized such important topics as sexual abuse, rape and misogyny.

Certain readers were quick to point out how our post may have come across as a defense of the man’s remarks and that was never our intention

To those, who were offended by how our post was mistakenly defensive of Fasih Ahmed’s remarks – we apologize, unequivocally.

There's already a mangobaaz article defending Fasih. Bharway

— all time low (@strangefixation) January 23, 2018

Dear @mangobaaz , by calling a Rape Joke dark humour, you’re normalising it. Go have a hard look at yourselves and consider your own staff.

— smacula (@smacula) January 23, 2018

To further clarify, Fasih Ahmed’s remarks are not justifiable under any circumstances

His tweets are horrible and, if indeed “dark humor” (as we may have incorrectly implied), they are very ill-timed and extremely distasteful. His tweets are abhorrent and unjustifiable, whatever his intention and we, at MangoBaaz, did not intend to defend his disgusting comments.

We will, however, not take down the earlier post because it it’s important to show the backlash against the tweet to show how far the conversation around sexual abuse has come, when he chose to tweet such wildly inappropriate remarks publicly. Moreover, we own up to our mistake in the way our post came across as a defense and in order for us to learn from our mistakes we want to keep the post intact as a reminder. Finally, we don’t want to be misquoted about the original piece and for the ease of our readers to understand the complete context it is important that the original be available.

It has also come to our attention that from his track record on Twitter, Fasih Ahmed, has a shown a consistent pattern to such views and behavior and that’s not acceptable. At all.

Actress Meera hogged my gym instructor today. Vulgar whore. Meera as well.

— Fasih Ahmed (@therealfasih) February 28, 2012

We gave him the benefit of the doubt but that doubt seems to have been clarified, and to our respected readers, we apologize, once again.

Cover image via: pakmed.net