Safdar's remarks on women draw criticism, Maryam Nawaz calls episode heartbreaking

Captain (retd) Safdar, husband of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, has drawn criticism on social media over his remarks about women at a Khatm-e-Nubuwwat conference in Chiniot district, and the chief minister described the episode as heartbreaking in a post on X.

Express News reported that Safdar addressed the conference in Chenab Nagar and called the 1973 constitution sacred. He asked the gathering whom they had sent to parliament to defend the finality of prophethood and the constitution apart from Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

He said a woman had recently said something about the Maulana while he was in Abbottabad, and that he had replied that Fazlur Rehman was like a father to him. He drew an analogy with prayer behind an imam, saying the imam stands in a father's place, and said he had told the woman that he and his family were to the Maulana what his own sons are.

Safdar then recounted a message he said he received at night from a woman who asked how Fazlur Rehman came into the matter when his identity card records him as Muhammad Safdar son of Muhammad Ishaq. According to Express News, he called the sender "maloona" and said that had she studied at a seminary, her body would not have been under her own control.

He went on to say that the woman who gave her birth, the one who gave her a daughter's place and the one who educated her would all sit on a single throne on the Day of Judgement, and that all three were like her father.

Express News reported that the remarks brought sharp criticism on social media. Maryam Nawaz wrote on X without naming her husband. She called the matter heartbreaking and referred to "the silent battles a woman, a wife, fights behind closed doors", saying a woman must find strength even when she feels she is breaking. Some battles are fought in silence and some wounds are invisible, she wrote.

Safdar's address centred on the defence of the finality of prophethood and the 1973 constitution, and his remarks about Maulana Fazlur Rehman came in that part of the speech, according to the report. The conference was held in Chenab Nagar, in the Chiniot district of Punjab.