The New York Times is running a full-blown puff piece on a Gay Muslim performance artist. Nothing newsworthy there, but what is newsworthy is this statement by the subject of the piece, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Mr. Bhutto is the grandson and namesake of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (P.P.P.), a left-wing political party that held power in Pakistan on and off since 1967. After leading the country for much of the 1970s, the elder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown in a military coup and nephew of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated by jihadis.
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Bhutto whines:
Mr. Bhutto, 27, began using visual and performance works to explore Islamic identity after coming to the United States, in 2014, to pursue his M.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute. Newly arrived in the city, he was shocked by a notorious series of anti-Muslim ads on city buses, paid for by Pamela Geller and the American Freedom Defense Initiative. “It made me want to hide who I was,” he said; at the same time, he added, the explicit Islamophobia “energized me in a way I wasn’t in Pakistan.” Alongside the Iranian artist Minoosh Zomorodinia, he began exploring acts that emphasized and embraced his status as a Muslim in America: together, the two developed “prayformances,” in which they completed the Muslim ritual of praying in public spaces.
More of the infamous “objective” reporting the New York Times is now known for. Below are the ads that ran in San Francisco highlight the Muslim oppression of gays.
The Scion of a Pakistani Political Dynasty Comes Out
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the grandson and namesake of the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (P.P.P.), explores the intersection of Islam, sexuality and masculinity.CreditJason Henry for The New York Times
The video, posted on the internet last summer, wasn’t supposed to be the coming-out story of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
It opens with the voice of a man wryly narrating a fictional encounter in which he is asked to leave an airplane for “speaking Arabian.” The words “Queer Muslim Proud” appear on the screen, followed by an introduction to the subject, in neon letters. As audience members in a dimly lit club cheer, Mr. Bhutto appears in a silky dress, dancing to the 1980s hit, “Disco Deewane,” by the Pakistani singer Nazia Hassan. He shimmies and sways, a pink scarf pinned to his hair, light-blue eye shadow reaching up to his eyebrows.
South Asian viewers might not have recognized Mr. Bhutto’s face but they certainly knew his name. In his native Pakistan, the news media voraciously covered the short film. The reaction focused, in a negative way, on him being a queer Muslim man.
Zulfikar Ali BhuttoVideo by The Turmeric Project
“Perhaps I was a bit naïve,” Mr. Bhutto said in a phone interview. “I had been under the radar for so long, I didn’t think people cared as much as they did.”
Mr. Bhutto was 6 years old when his father, Murtaza, was killed in a chaotic gunfight with the police outside the family home in Karachi; the exact circumstances of his death remain mysterious. Although Mr. Bhutto said that his immediate family has never pushed him to enter politics, he is considered by many Pakistanis to be the successor to the family’s turbulent dynasty. “Bhutto Jr steps into art world, raises hopes,” a headline in Dawn, one of Pakistan’s leading English-language newspapers, said. In a Facebook comment, one user pleaded to Bhutto, “You are doing nice job but please take lead party of your grand papa we all missing you.”
Equally impassioned but hostile reactions from overseas South Asians to the video centered on Mr. Bhutto’s sexuality, especially on the 10-second-long scene capturing his joyful drag performance. In Pakistan, same-sex sexual acts are prohibited by law, and there are no anti-discrimination laws to protect L.G.B.T.Q. citizens, although the Senate recently approved amendments to a bill that allows trans people to choose their gender without needing to appear before a medical board.
News reports of ostracism, legal threats and attacks against gay Pakistanis, or against those perceived to be gay, are not uncommon; in one highly publicized case, a transgender activist died from gunshot wounds after delays in her medical care. Homophobic comments on Mr. Bhutto’s video, both from media sources and social media users, employed derogatory terms and curses to condemn him and his art. “There was so much negativity when it came out, and the focus was on the drag part of it,” Mr. Bhutto said.
Drag is not openly accepted in Pakistan. The closest thing may be the performances by hijras — transgender or intersex people who were categorized as males at birth but who do not conform to traditional ideas of masculinity. While they do not fit the Western definition of drag queens, they dance and sing at public ceremonies while wearing women’s clothing. At first, Mr. Bhutto was reluctant to discuss his own use of cross-dressing. “But now the cat’s out of the bag,” he said. “Drag is an integral part of my practice; what point is there being shy and tiptoeing around it anymore?”
Mr. Bhutto, 27, began using visual and performance works to explore Islamic identity after coming to the United States, in 2014, to pursue his M.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute. Newly arrived in the city, he was shocked by a notorious series of anti-Muslim ads on city buses, paid for by Pamela Geller and the American Freedom Defense Initiative. “It made me want to hide who I was,” he said; at the same time, he added, the explicit Islamophobia “energized me in a way I wasn’t in Pakistan.” Alongside the Iranian artist Minoosh Zomorodinia, he began exploring acts that emphasized and embraced his status as a Muslim in America: together, the two developed “prayformances,” in which they completed the Muslim ritual of praying in public spaces.
Photo
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto performed during Gay Pride month last year.CreditZulfikar Ali Bhutto
It was another act of hatred that spurred Mr. Bhutto to also weave his identity as a gay person into his art. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, an American Muslim man, killed 49 people at a popular Orlando gay club. The tragedy, and unsubstantiated rumors that Mr. Mateen may have been a closeted gay man, opened up a rare mainstream discourse, both in United States and in the Muslim world, on queerness in Islam. It became clear to Mr. Bhutto that “people think you’re either queer or you’re Muslim, and that somehow those two things are in opposition to one another.”
During that period, Mr. Bhutto attended his first drag show. “If you aren’t used to it, it’s very impactful: the makeup, the costume, the performance, the songs,” he said. He first tried his hand at drag a few months later, at a local bar. Over time, he began building his performances around music and spoken-word sections that address his religion and cultural background — “which can be surprisingly jarring and political to the audience,” he said.
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The left support the muslims and the gays, lol. Now in the greater scheme of things, these 2 groups are arch enemies right? So they push them closer and closer together, with the intention that each will destroy the other.
I’m sure “Disco Deewane” events are completely sold out of Islamic States tour tickets; to include prestigious venues in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Qatar, UAE and a fundraiser for rebuilding Christian homes in Syria. I’m sure the charts will be BLOWN UP and all the events will be quite SMASHING. Jihad On my Queer Bro.
… at the same time you(?) are hurting others believe, infuriating them, abusing them, there are many who lives their life by following GOOD(?) side of Prophet Mohammad and all the GOOD(?) attributes of Allah as mentioned in (genocidal in slow motion, if Iran has the A-bomb then faster) Quran (4:89, 9:5) so why abuse them, why challenge them, what will be achieved by this?
THERE IS NOTHING GOOD IN muh. aka allah -> monster’s ‘best example’https://quran.com/33/21, ‘… the Prophets ordered that their hands and legs should be cut off and that their eyes should be branded with heated pieces of iron, and that their cut hands and legs should NOT be cauterized, till they die.’Bukhari Volume 8, Book 82, hadith 794
Mahou Shoujo
6 years ago
A gay muslim, how rare
With lots of facial hair
Looks like genitalia female
On the face of a male
The scrotum is located elsewhere.
L.O.L!!!!! I wouldn’t be surprised if next time you write that the earth is flat, that the moon is made of cheese and that the sun is made of butter, that…pigs fly and that fish in the sea sing opera because it’s the will of Allah!!!
The Mecca gig should take place at a certain time of the year when the town is packed full of tourist. After they’ve been for a stroll around the stone and thrown rocks at the devil there’s very little to do of an evening and I’m sure he would go down a bomb!
Ziggy46
6 years ago
Wow, this is surprising, a Gay jihadi criticizing Pamela Geller. I hope this guy enjoys his trip from the 12th floor without a parachute. The NYT should be indicted, not for being imbecilic but faking its journalist professionalism. Journalism is such a joke when it comes to its progressive out-house news. if one wants to be imbecilic, in want of a brain retread, read or watch the MSM as one’s sole news source.
the nytimes is merely a brand that was sold off. it hasn’t had anything to do with actual journalism for two decades. there are no journalists only pundits. it is anti semitic and anti American. it is a toilet bowl and we need a mercy flush.
CanadaGoose1
6 years ago
Even his famous name won’t protect him. Does the article mention armed guards?
IzlamDownpressesHumanity
6 years ago
Why doesn’t this lying muslum rat try being gay publicly in Dearbornistan instead of NYC?
Investigate Gov Corruption NOW
6 years ago
Benazir Bhutto: Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment — a route to making a nuclear weapon.
!
Benazir Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, carried critical nuclear data on CDs in her overcoat to Pyongyang in 1993 and brought back North Korea’s missile information on her return journey, says a new political biography of the late leader.
The shocking revelation about Pakistan’s alleged role in North Korea’s illicit nuclear weapons programme is chronicled in detail in veteran journalist Shyam Bhatia’s “Goodbye Shahzadi”.
That sounds plausible but North Korea had such a shite missile program that they were exploding on take off and their war heads contained such crap grade nuclear that they must have read her instructions wrong.
The little rocket man doesn’t look the sharpest tool though!
Dagonet
6 years ago
Why the F- isn’t Mr. Bhutt-hole practicing his “art” in Mecca or Tehran?
If Bhutt-hole is offended, he can go back home to Pack-his-can and take ALL of SF with him, including former 49er QB Colon Krapperneck.
This must be the kind of S- BHO envisioned for America, he must be the devil.
I believe this guy, when he was a boy, got butt-ucked too much by the elders. That is why they turn up queer (no pun intended).
Many societies where the mother is mean and domineering and have absentee fathers the sons often become gay. The daughters promiscuous.
That is, sons longing for the father they never had and thus get a boyfiend. And the daughters search out their fathers in their boyfiend and why so many end up marrying a boy that looks like their fathers. We see this in Paris Hilton as one example. We live in a FATHERLESS world and why it is SO MIXED UP!!
Started when Adam refused to be a man and led by a woman to lead him to eat the forbidden “fruit” and at that moment; both lost their Father in heaven.
That is part of it, especially in today’s time (though that aspect of domineering mothers and absentee fathers did hold way back when). A bigger part of it today is proselytizers for the LGBT lifestyle in our schools (as aggressive as pro-Islam proselytizers) brainwashing and indoctrinating children into it, actively working them over to convert them to homosexuality or even transgenderism, and even working (without parents’ knowledge, showing just how dependent on Soviet-style secrecy this all is) to “transition” them. And it’s all to increase their numbers by conversion and recruitment, as they do not procreate or reproduce naturally. And their views are not unlike in the Mafia or Islam, i.e. once you join you’re in for life and can never leave. This is why they seek to outlaw so-called “conversion therapy” (a misleading term in and of itself, which would be comparable to branding services designed to encourage people to leave Islam safely as “Islam conversion therapy” or “Muslim conversion therapy”) while inflicting dangerous “hormone treatment” drugs onto our children and working to plunge them further and further into the abyss of depravity, degeneracy, perversion and degradation. Not to mention “reassignment surgeries” that are to that community what FGM is to Islam: a given and an obligation. All of which are having an even more upward tilt in spiraling medical costs.
David Glynn
6 years ago
Homosexuality is rife in Pakistan and the whole nation lives in denial. Queer porn is viewed online in Pakistan (along with animal porn) more than anywhere else in the world.
They are in a serious self hate situation which shows by their ultra orthodox attitudes to anyone openly flaunting their homosexuality.
It’s truly a sick nation and this Bhutto twit should bugger of back there.
PROSCRIBE ISLAM!
Randall Anderson
6 years ago
A ‘Gay Muslim’ is a DEAD MUSLIM…just as a Jewish Nazi is dead Jew…how can a man be this ignorant of his own ‘religion’. The Cult of Islam condemns him to death…does he not know this? I would recommend him to read ‘Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus’ by fellow Pakistani, former Muslim Nabeel Qureshi – not gay – but facing the same death penalty as an Apostate. He, like Nabeel, probably never read his own ‘holy’ book Quran…until he questioned the faith/cult of Islam. Then he will see the reality of Islam…as a Gay man myself, I am astounded by the ignorance of most Gays…victims of Lib/Socialist/Progressive/Communist propaganda, all collaborators with Islam in the murder of Western Civilization.
Randall Anderson
6 years ago
I submitted my comment below to NY Times in the story comments….I doubt they will print it, as comments are ‘moderated’ ie: subject to CENSORSHIP.
Deb M
6 years ago
This muslim queer needs to take his drag performance back to his homeland, the view from the edge of the building might attract a big audience especially the push, wonder why he’s not wearing a hijab or burka? He would look better in one as it would hide his ugly bearded face, nothing uglier than a drag queeronic muslim nutter.
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