Actress Saima Qureshi, known for her roles in the dramas Amanat and Bandhay Aik Dor Say created controversy when, on a podcast, she said that a woman earning money was not blessed.
When asked why she was working if there was no ‘barkat’ in a woman’s earnings, she said that she is a single mother and has to work and despite working so hard, she still lives in a rented house.
The host responded to say that if a man earned money, would he have been able to make his own house, to which Saima said yes, it was possible and she believes that men’s earnings are blessed.
He countered by saying that what about the women who run businesses and make money, can they not make their own houses, to which she asked which woman had done so. He replied that actress Mahirah Khan had been able to do it, to which Saima said that Mahirah had her family’s support and is now married.
The host brought up the example of Hazrat Khadija RA, the wife of The Holy Prophet (PBUH), stating that she was a successful businesswoman before and after she married him (PBUH) to which Saima said, ‘Well, that’s Hazrat Khadija RA and she got married. She should’ve prolonged her work, why didn’t she?’
Actress Frieha Altaf responded to Saima in another podcast. When asked about what she thought about Saima’s views, Frieha said, “working has blessing, it is a form of worship’, adding that, “Hazrat Khadija RA worked, how can you say this, when The Prophet’s (PBUH) wife was working, you’re saying there was no blessing in her work?…She hired someone because she needed help, she needed a trustworthy person and found him to be trustworthy. It wasn’t that she couldn’t work.”
Frieha went on to talk about how we have examples in Islam of women that worked like Hazrat Khadija RA and Bibi Fatima RA and that she was “flabbergasted that Ms. Saima Qureshi has said this.”