It’s rare for an individual to transition across a sociopolitical spectrum as stratified as Pakistan’s. Our membership of various clearly-defined sections across that spectrum is relatively easy to spot - exposed ankles, prayer bumps, absolutely nothing in the case of women, or ponytails and pixie cuts on the other end. And thus, our partisan loyalties are often difficult to transcend. Religiosity is largely worn on one’s sleeves, making any transition towards or away from it necessarily public. And when it is one of Pakistan’s biggest icons who moves across that spectrum, the transition is hardly subtle.
I can’t imagine it was easy. He risked alienating an embattled secular minority braving mosques and military dictators, a minority that saw him as that obliquely subversive antidote to the rest of the country falling apart around them. He risked losing the people who made him famous; the adulation of women - which friends say he had gotten accustomed to - and the love that kept him going.
JJ associated himself with an openly conservative version of Islam
There was the personal loss. After all he had to admit that a life of music, of joy, of celebrity - a life he loved living - was a life of sin. It must surely be a monumental task to so categorically disavow one’s very being, to dismiss it as mere hedonism and moral decay. “Slowly and gradually I started realising that I was leading a sinful life. What was I doing? This was something that was bothering me a lot,” he said in an interview.
But what he found went some way towards mitigating that loss. He found a new following amongst a rising urban middle-class that is unashamedly pious and deferential. They are crass but uninhibited and ambitious consumers of everything he offered: material or metaphysical. Couture, fragrances, travel, brand ambassadorships, CDs and cassettes (of an altogether different kind) - all of these meant that religiosity brought affluence a singing career never could. The proliferation of his lectures, naats and sermons meant that both his face, which was new, and his voice, which was not, never left the airwaves.
In his younger years, JJ ?achieved stardom as a pop icon and heartthrob
It must be a monumental task to so categorically disavow one's being, dismissing it as mere hedonism and moral decay
While his fame remained, the many faces in the audience changed. He moved away from teen angst and began dabbling in the holy mix of faith and capital. He did game shows with tickets to Makkah as the grand prize. He testified that Slantys were indeed halal and marketed Khulood, the alluring non-alcoholic fragrance by J.
A few eggs were cracked in the making of the halal omelette. He asked all men to do themselves a favour and never teach their wives how to drive. “A woman who gets used to going out would never be comfortable sitting in the house,” he posited. “A woman is a diamond. Diamonds are meant to be hidden,” he articulated. That he was the face of a brand that sold women designer clothes was beside the point. In one of the more bizarre turns even for him, his misogyny got him accused of blasphemy. Amir Liaquat, perhaps his most direct competitor, even managed to hurl abuse at his mother, live on air.
Seen here during pilgrimage to Makkah with Bollywood sensation Amir Khan and Tableeghi Jamaat icon Maulana Tariq Jameel
He moved away from teen angst and began dabbling in the holy mix of faith and capital
So from heartthrob to maulvi, how does his untimely death leave us? Some of the liberals that he lost are unforgiving. “The Junaid Jamshed I knew died a long time ago,” huffed an acquaintance. Others were more forgiving, remembering the good times. “The simple fact is that JJ made me discover something which I did not know existed in me. I did not know that I could play and sing and compose music. A discovery that became a lifelong love affair with music,” my uncle said - a member of the betrayed generation. Others remembered his current incarnation. They miss his calming presence on TV, his wisdom, the beautiful voice in which he praised Allah and His Rasool (pbuh), articulating his listeners’ own sentiments.
He ran a successful line of designer clothing for both men and women, which some saw as promoting brand-based consumerism
The focus on Junaid Jamshed tells us a lot more about us than him. It speaks volumes of our collective memories; our divisions and proclivities; and our aspirations and insecurities. He encapsulates the Pakistan we despise, whether it’s the morally decadent post-colonial godless land that vainly tries to mimic the West, or the theocratic totalitarian state that violently quashes individual expression in the name of piety. And the Pakistan we love, the one that wins world cups, that is talented and entrepreneurial and multifaceted and has the face and voice - and the success - that we want to show to the world.
In that respect, perhaps his transition wasn’t as unprecedented after all. He carried the contradictions of this country along with him unapologetically and in plain sight. Perhaps that’s another thing we can learn from him.
