Imran Khan is the former Prime Minister of Pakistan against whom a non-bailable warrant was issued in the Toshakhana corruption case. However, Khan has claimed that the Islamabad police do not want to arrest him, but their ‘real intent’ is ‘to abduct and assassinate’ him.
The former cricket player was ordered by the court to surrender and cooperate with the police. The Pakistani court ordered the police to hold Khan’s arrest. However, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan has been arrested today (May 10). Following his arrest, protests have erupted in the country causing unrest for citizens. Accoridng to reports, the Radio Pakistan building in Peshawar was set on fire. In the wake of protests, the Islamabad police has enforced Section 144 and said actions will be taken against people violating the rules.
The former PM has been known to lead a life surrounded by women. If we traverse the trajectory, we can witness how women in his life have influenced him and his ideologies. Here is a look at the cricketer’s life from a casanova to a misogynist.
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When Khan was exploring the world as a cricketer, he was labelled as a hedonistic bachelor, a playboy, who has had many relationships. He was known to be quite active in the London nightclub circuit.
The Times, a British newspaper, called his girlfriends ‘mysterious blondes.’ Rumours were rife about his links with veteran actor Zeenat Aman, Sita White, Goldie Hawn, Emma Sergeant, Kristane Backer, Marie Helvin and Liza Campbell among others.
His first girlfriend was reportedly Emma Sergeant, an artist and daughter of a British investor. They met in 1982, and she introduced him to socialites and subsequently visited Pakistan many times. The same year, Khan became the captain of the national cricket team.
This relationship might have given rise to Khan’s career as a politician, but at least he was able to make contact with some of the most powerful people in the world. She was spotted accompanying him on various cricket tours. They reportedly parted ways in 1986.
The year Khan met Sergeant, he also had dinner with Susie Murray-Philipson. Although she came into his life after Sergeant, their relationship was short-lived. She is known to have made various portraits of Khan while they were together. In 1992, he announced his retirement from cricket.
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Around 1987-88, Khan met heiress Sita White, daughter of the British industrialist Gordon White. They were together for about six years, and White claimed that Khan agreed to start a family with her in 1991. Tyrian Jade, White’s daughter was born in June 1992 in Los Angeles.
She claimed that Khan refused to accept Jade as his daughter when he came to know that White was carrying a girl. He even asked her to abort the child. In 1997, an LA court even observed in a judgement that Jade was in fact Khan’s daughter.
In 2004, Khan accepted Jade as his daughter and welcomed her to his family post-White’s death.
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In May 1995, Khan married Jemima Goldsmith, an English screenwriter and producer, in a small ceremony in Paris. She was 21-year-old at that time, while Khan was around 43. In June, they got married again officially at the Richmond registry office in England. She came to Pakistan, never followed the Purdah-Pratha (tradition of covering head) and attended social events with Khan. The world saw this liberal side of him, could be becuase of Goldsmith's background, and it suited his cause as a wannabe politician.
Goldsmith converted to Islam post-marriage. The couple soon became parents to two sons, Sulaiman Isa and Kasim. In June 2004, the couple announced their divorce. Goldsmith was quoted saying it was difficult for her to create a life and adapt to it in Pakistan.
Post-retirement, he made remarks against fellow cricketers. He even wrote many opinion pieces for a few British and Asian newspapers. In the 1990s, Khan also turned into a philanthropist. He headed several charity trusts that were known to have helped underprivileged people. In the 90s, he also started his political career. Some of his declarations included rededicating himself to Islamic values, promoting liberal economics, implementing anti-corruption laws and announcing a non-militant vision of a democratic Pakistan.
In 1996, he founded Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). He also came quite close to General Pervez Musharraf and supported his military coup in 1999. He claimed that Musharraf wanted him to be the PM of the country in 2002, but he turned down the offer. Interesting to note how after 2002, his marriage went down the hill and he accepted his white daughter whom he did not want to be born. Perhaps there was a change of heart, maybe he had evolved. .
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In 2007, Khan was put under house arrest when Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan. In 2011, he addressed about 100,000 people, challenged the policies of the government and claimed that he would bring a ‘tsunami’ of new policies if elected to power. By this time, he was a threat to the ruling party.
In 2009, Christopher Sanford, an English journalist claimed in a book that Khan had also been in a relationship with another former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto. They shared a close relationship with each other while studying at Oxford University. There were rumours that his mother wanted to arrange a marriage between the two.
In 2013, Khan introduced the citizens of the country to the Naya Pakistan Resolution during the election campaign. In 2015, he declared his second marriage to British-Pakistani journalist Reham Khan. She was around 42 years old, and Imran was around 63 years old. She was a bit of a conservative woman and hid her head with a veil most of the time. It may be her choice, but in one of the interviews later, Khan defended the Purdah system in Pakistan saying it was a means to stop men being tempted (by a woman) because not all men have the willpower to resist it.
They reportedly had a private Nikah at his residence in Islamabad. However, in her biography, Reham mentioned that the two got married in 2014 but broke the news in 2015. The marriage was short-lived as the couple filed for divorce in October 2015. However, around this time, he was spotted promoting Islamic traditions and rituals. He was a religious man now because he needed to create a vote bank for the upcoming General Elections in 2018.
In the year of his second marriage, Khan formed an alliance with Canadian-Pakistani cleric Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri to mobilise their supporters to change the regime of Nawaz Sharif.
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Around the middle of 2016 and late 2017, reports claimed that Khan married his spiritual mentor, Bushra Bibi. However, he rebuffed the news, and his party filed a complaint against the newspaper that carried the headline.
In the General Elections of 2018, Khan emerged victorious, though opposition parties alleged ‘massive rigging’ in his favour. In January, PTI issued a statement that Khan had proposed to Bushra Bibi but she had not accepted the offer. In February, Khan’s party confirmed that the two were married. Several reports claim that the two got married six months before he took over the Prime Minister’s office. He did not have the spine to accept that he was married for the third time until it suited his image and helped him secure votes in the elections.
Bushra Bibi’s first husband, Khawar Maneka, was a part of the cabinet of Bhutto. Khan claimed that it was Sufism, a religious practice among Shia and Sunni followers, that connected him with his wife.
In 2018, Khan’s second wife Reham Khan alleged in her book that he had four kids out of wedlock, including Tyrian White. She also claimed that some of his kids had Indian roots, and his eldest child was 34 in 2018.
When asked, Reham said she did not know the identities of his kids. She alleged that one cannot tell when Imran Khan was telling the truth and when he was lying. Since the book came out a few days before the General Elections commenced, many publication houses claimed that it was a publicity stunt to destroy Imran Khan’s image. After 2018, Imran Khan has been quoted several times giving sexist statements.
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Imran Khan was termed a playboy with a liberal mindset when he was a cricketer. He decided to have a child, reportedly more than one, out of wedlock with a British woman. He went out of his way to marry a white woman.
In a country like Pakistan where Islamic radicalists (Iranian women oppose Islamic radical laws) are often seen controlling the lives of women, Jemima Goldsmith never wore a burqa, and Khan seemed to be okay with it. With Goldsmith in his life, his political and social inclination was a little towards the left. His showcased his liberal side becuase it suited his cause and image. The inclination was out of convenience. By the time they got divorced, he even accepted his daughter.
Post his first marriage, Khan drove himself to create a successful political career. He made new and powerful connections and carved his way to becoming the Prime Minister. Though his second marriage had a short life, he was still focused on doing good for the country, working on poverty, ending corruption and broadening welfare schemes for the improvement of society.
Cut to 2018 when Khan married a religious extremist Bushra Bibi, it seemed like she brought out the true colours in him. She has hardly been spotted without a burqa and is known to have influenced Khan immensely.
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Imran Khan might have been an Islamic radicalist, but his true ideologies and misogynist thinking only got highlighted after he became the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Things went a little out of hand when in June 2021, he faced backlash for one of his statements.
While having a discussion on rising rape cases in the country, Khan said it was about ‘common sense’. He said in an interview with the HBO that women wear ‘very few clothes’ which would instigate men unless they were robots. Being in the company of a regressive woman has impacted the political decisions of Khan too. From being inclined towards the left to being a misogynist, Imran Khan’s spouses played a huge role in how his political thinking and public image was built. As his choice of partner got regressive one after the other, so did his ideologies.
Trying to justify his remarks on covering the head with a veil, he said in the Axios interview, "We don't have discotheques, we don't have nightclubs, so it's a different way of life here. If you raise temptation in the society to a point and all these young guys have nowhere to go, it has consequences in the society." A man who spent several nights of his youth in discotheques and nightclubs does not have the right to give a lecture on morality, especially when he was questioning the morality of women.
In one of his interviews, he spoke about the ordeal of women in Afghanistan. However, from his point of view, the ordeal was part of the Islamic culture. He said that educating women was not a part of the country's culture. A man who wants to abort his kid because she was a girl speaking about culture as if he followed every word of the Quran throughout his life.
In an interview with Geo TV, Khan said women's rights are violated because of increasing vulgarity in society. Consider if someone tells a modern woman that she faces gender bias, or her rights are curbed because she prefers to wear a short skirt or a sleeveless top. A man who enjoyed being with British women as opposed to a traditional Muslim women in his youth became a guru on clothing when came to the power.
However, the sad thing is that Imran Khan is not the only man of his kind in the world. There have been, there are, and there will be many like him. Since aeons, men have enjoyed the company of women, irrespective of their class, caste and clothes preferences. However, when it comes to the wife or lifestyle of sister and daughter, men have a list of a 'good woman' that they must adhere to.
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