Benazir Bhutto: A Wilful Muslim Woman

ABSTRACT Media has stripped Muslim women of agency by promoting the stereotype of a “submissive” Muslim woman. My essay seeks to build a counter archive of wilful Muslim women by tracing the moves of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. I argue that Benazir’s wilfulness became a catalyst for collective action that not only overthrew a tyrannical regime, but also expanded the borders of possibilities for Muslim women. Using Sara Ahmed’s theoretical construct of wilfulness, I develop three themes: how Benazir became a marked woman, how wilfulness spread amongst Pakistanis, and how Benazir’s wilfulness empowered female leadership in the Muslim world. I conclude with some autoethnographic remarks on what Benazir’s legacy means to me as a Pakistani Muslim woman.