Mira Sethi Religion and Beliefs: Inside the Pakistani Star's Candid Views on Faith and Culture
By Robert Thorne
To understand Sethi’s perspective on faith, one has to look at the household in which she grew up. She is the daughter of two of Pakistan’s most prominent liberal journalists: Najam Sethi, former caretaker chief minister of Punjab and founder of The Friday Times, and Jugnu Mohsin, a veteran editor and former member of the Punjab provincial assembly. Her brother is international music sensation Ali Sethi, whose boundary-pushing art carries a similar cultural lineage.
Growing up in this environment meant that political critique and spiritual inquiry sat at the dinner table together. The family practiced mainstream Sunni Islam within a broader Punjabi cultural tradition that celebrated Sufi poetry, pluralism, and intellectual freedom. It was an environment often targeted by the state and hardline religious factions. Her father was arrested multiple times throughout the 1980s and 1990s for his uncompromising reporting, exposing Mira to the friction between state-enforced orthodoxy and democratic free expression at an early age.
Sethi has often reflected on how this upbringing shielded her from reactionary dogma while instilling deep respect for the mystical, humanistic roots of South Asian Islam. Faith in the Sethi household was never weaponized to restrict women. Instead, it was an ethic centered on intellectual honesty, civic responsibility, and tolerance.
Robert Thorne covers electric vehicle innovations, autonomous driving systems, global mobility trends, and automotive engineering developments.
