The existence of Pakistan as an Islamic state since the 1956 constitution has led to the large-scale injection of Islam into most aspects of Pakistani culture and everyday life, which has accordingly impacted the historical values and traditions of the Muslim-majority population. Marriages and other major events are significantly impacted by regional differences in culture but generally follow Islamic jurisprudence where required. The national dress of Pakistan is the shalwar kameez, a unisex garment widely-worn,[40][41] and national dress,[42] of Pakistan. When women wear the shalwar-kameez in some regions, they usually wear a long scarf or shawl called a dupatta around the head or neck.[43] The dupatta is also employed as a form of modesty—although it is made of delicate material, it obscures the upper body's contours by passing over the shoulders. For Muslim women, the dupatta is a less stringent alternative to the chador or burqa.
Languages
Urdu, or Lashkari (لشکری ),[44] an Indo-Aryan language, is the lingua franca of Pakistan, and while it shares official status with English, it is the preferred and dominant language used for inter-communication between different ethnic groups. It is not believed to be a language affiliated with any ethnicity and its speakers come from various backgrounds.[45][46] Although Indo-Aryan in classification, its exact origins as a language are disputed by scholars.[47] However, despite serving as the country's lingua franca, most Pakistanis speak their ethnic languages and the lingua franca as second. Numerous regional and provincial languages are spoken as native languages by Pakistan's various ethnolinguistic groups, with the Punjabi language having a national plurality as the first language of approximately 45 percent of the total population. Languages with more than a million speakers each include Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki, Balochi, Brahui, and Hindko. The Pakistani dialect of English is also widely spoken throughout the country, albeit mostly in urban centres such as Islamabad and Karachi.
Irreligion, agnosticism, and atheism are present amongst a minority of Pakistanis, the majority of whom belong to the newer generations.[50][51][52] According to a 2005 Gallup World Poll, 1 percent of Pakistani respondents identified themselves as atheists. By 2012, the figure had risen to 2 percent. The same poll also surveyed 2,700 other people in Pakistan, of whom 54 were self-declared irreligious.[27]
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^ a b"Unknown". Retrieved 6 April 2019.[dead link]
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^ a b c"Statement showing number of Overseas Pakistanis living, working and studying in different regions/countries of the world, as on 31st December, 2017 - Region-Wise distribution" (PDF). Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development. 31 December 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 August 2019. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
^(2017)"Population of Qatar by nationality - 2017 report". priyadsouza.com. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
^EBRAHIM AND ARSHAD MEHMOOD. "Governments Alarmed as 50-100k Pakistani Workers Flee To Live in Iraq". themedialine.org. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
^"2021 People in Australia who were born in Pakistan, Census Country of birth QuickStats | Australian Bureau of Statistics".
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^"Govt keen to cut Malaysia's dependence on foreign labor". Asia Times. 10 October 2018. Retrieved 6 April 2019.
^"Home Ministry says there are 1.7 million legal foreign workers in Malaysia as of June 30". Malay Mail. 27 July 2017.
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^令和5年6月末現在における在留外国人数について
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^Mariam, Durrani (2012). "Banishing Colonial Specters: Language Ideology and Education Policy in Pakistan". University of Pennsylvania.
^"Pakistan - People | Britannica". britannica.com. Retrieved 13 April 2023. With the exception of this educated elite, English is spoken fluently by only a small percentage of the population.
^Singh, Shashank, and Shailendra Singh. "Systematic review of spell-checkers for highly inflectional languages." Artificial Intelligence Review 53.6 (2020): 4051-4092.
^ a bHusain, Irfan (27 August 2012). "Faith in decline". Dawn. Archived from the original on 4 December 2012. Retrieved 16 December 2012. Interestingly, and somewhat intriguingly, 2 per cent of the Pakistanis surveyed see themselves as atheists, up from 1pc in 2005.
^"Announcement of Results of 7th Population and Housing Census-2023 'The Digital Census'" (PDF). Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (www.pbs.gov.pk). 5 August 2023. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
^"Pakistan, Islam in". Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 18 June 2013. Retrieved 29 August 2010. Approximately 97 percent of Pakistanis are Muslim. The majority (85–90)% percent are Sunnis following the Hanafi school of Islamic law. Between (10–15)% are Shias, mostly Twelvers.
^"2.43 million Pakistanis working in Europe". The Express Tribune. 23 April 2017.
^"2011 Census: Ethnic group, local authorities in the United Kingdom". Office for National Statistics. 11 October 2013. Retrieved 28 February 2015.
^Pakistan Population. (28 August 2019). Retrieved 2019-09-14, from http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/pakistan-population/
^"Muhajir | people". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
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^"Ethnic Groups In Pakistan". WorldAtlas. 30 July 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
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^Hurst, Christopher O. (1 January 1996). "Pakistan's ethnic divide". Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. 19 (2): 179–198. doi:10.1080/10576109608436002. ISSN 1057-610X.
^Ahmed, Feroz (1996). "Ethnicity, Class and State in Pakistan". Economic and Political Weekly. 31 (47): 3050–3053. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4404794.
^Marsden, Magnus (2005). Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier. Cambridge University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-139-44837-6. The village's men and boys largely dress in sombre colours in the loose trousers and long shirt (shalwar kameez) worn across Pakistan. Older men often wear woollen Chitrali caps (pakol), waistcoats and long coats (chugha), made by Chitrali tailors (darzi) who skills are renowned across Pakistan.
^Haines, Chad (2013), Nation, Territory, and Globalization in Pakistan: Traversing the Margins, Routledge, p. 162, ISBN 978-1-136-44997-0, the shalwar kameez happens to be worn by just about everyone in Pakistan, including in all of Gilgit-Baltistan.
^Ozyegin, Gul (2016). Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures. Routledge. p. 222. ISBN 978-1-317-13051-2. What is common in all the cases is the wearing of shalwar, kameez, and dupatta, the national dress of Pakistan.
^Rait, Satwant Kaur (14 April 2005). Sikh Women In England: Religious, Social and Cultural Beliefs. Trent and Sterling: Trentham Book. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-85856-353-4.
^Singh, Shashank, and Shailendra Singh. "Systematic review of spell-checkers for highly inflectional languages". Artificial Intelligence Review 53 (2020): 4051-4092.
^Ramkrishna Mukherjee (2018). Understanding Social Dynamics in South Asia: Essays in Memory of Ramkrishna Mukherjee. Springer. pp. 221–. ISBN 9789811303876.
^Economic and Political Weekly. Sameeksha Trust. 1996.
^Qureshi, Omar. "Twentieth-century Urdu literature". Handbook of Twentieth Century Literatures of India (1996): 329-362.
^Singh, Dr. Y P (2016). Islam in India and Pakistan – A Religious History. Vij Books India Pvt Ltd. ISBN 9789385505638.
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^"Year Book 2017-18" (PDF). Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 August 2019. Retrieved 18 March 2020.
Further reading
Abbasi, Nadia Mushtaq. "The Pakistani diaspora in Europe and its impact on democracy building in Pakistan". International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (2010).
Awan, Shehzadi Zamurrad. "Relevance of Education for Women's Empowerment in Punjab, Pakistan". Journal of International Women's Studies 18.1 (2016): 208+ online
Bolognani, Marta, and Stephen Lyon, eds. Pakistan and its diaspora: multidisciplinary approaches (Springer, 2011).
Eglar, Zekiya. A Punjabi Village in Pakistan: Perspectives on Community, Land, and Economy (Oxford UP, 2010).
Bano, Sha. "Role of museums in Depicting history of cultural heritage of Pakistan". (2019).
Marsden, Magnus. "Muslim village intellectuals: the life of the mind in northern Pakistan". Anthropology today 21.1 (2005): 10–15.
Mughal, M. A. Z. "An anthropological perspective on the mosque in Pakistan". Asian Anthropology 14.2 (2015): 166–181.
Rauf, Abdur. "Rural women and the family: A study of a Punjabi village in Pakistan". Journal of Comparative Family Studies (1987): 403–415.
Origins of Pakistanis
Vasil'ev, I. B., P. F. Kuznetsov, and A. P. Semenova. "Potapovo Burial Ground of the Indo-Iranic Tribes on the Volga" (1994).
Ahsan, Aitzaz. The Indus Saga. Roli Books Private Limited, 2005.
Mehdi, S. Q., et al. "The origins of Pakistani populations". Genomic Diversity. Springer, Boston, MA, 1999. 83–90.
Balanovsky, Oleg, et al. "Deep phylogenetic analysis of haplogroup G1 provides estimates of SNP and STR mutation rates on the human Y-chromosome and reveals migrations of Iranic speakers". PLoS One 10.4 (2015): e0122968.
Allchin, F. R. "Archeological and Language-Historical Evidence for the Movement of Indo-Aryan Speaking Peoples into South Asia". NARTAMONGÆ (1981): 65.
Ahmed, Mukhtar. Ancient Pakistan-an Archaeological History: Volume III: Harappan Civilization-the Material Culture. Amazon, 2014.