I look at this way I will never really be an "American" in a true sense nor am I proud or like where its going either ,even though I was born in raised in the outer bourughs of NYC and in the northeast I would argue I am just of Pakistani extraction with a American Passport the problem I have with Pakistanis in Pakistan and Pakistanis abroad is they are confused bunch it does not help that Pakistan is stagnating thankfully its not a failed state but being stagnant does not make you proud what makes me proud is the what will it be in the future I want to tell my kids when I have them or grand kids that their country of their fore fathers isnt some backwards craphole but a respected nation on the global stage
It's good to hear your perspective.
I think as a community, steeped as we are in village tradition and culture, we are afraid of what the future holds for our coming generations as regards culture and values.
What we are not willing to contemplate is that values and culture changes with time, geography, education, environmental influences.
I often think about when my father and his generation decided to emigrate to the UK what would have been crossing their mind?
All they were thinking of was £s. They never even considered the possibility of cultural change. They weren't equipped mentally or educationally to consider it. It never crossed their minds.
To be fair to a lot of them, most only wanted to come over here, earn enough money to set themselves up in Pakistan and live their lives out there. Basically how the Saudi Arabia model works. However, once here, the lure of a better living environment caused them to forget this and they started to send to Pakistan for wives and children to join them. As their children started to grow up they began to feel the challenges of bringing up children in a Western society while trying to preserve Eastern culture.
They battled the best they could but it was always going to be a losing battle.
To combat this they started to import spouses for their children from Pakistan, this worked for a while but gradually it started to cause unhappy marriages and downright rejection of the parents wishes as the culture gap became wider. I have seen the culture of our young people change to where they are marrying partners of their choice, albeit other Muslims but I can see a change coming here as well where young people are wanting to marry other nationalities. It can only be a matter of time. Realistically, it's to be expected.
In the past many first generation parents decided to relocate their families back to Pakistan. The result of which was that they went back, spent their money, couldn't adjust to the culture/ got fleeced by relatives, came back, still here.
We need to accept the reality of our situation. The more we force our children to live culturally schizophrenic lives the harder for them it'll be before the inevitable happens