Pakistani actor Sadia Faisal has stepped in to defend her mother, veteran television star Saba Faisal, after a fresh wave of backlash over Saba’s comments on marriage, daughters-in-law and life inside joint-family homes. The controversy grew after Saba’s appearance on Good Morning Pakistan on December 8, 2025, where she spoke about bridal clothes, household adjustment and the need for women to be, in her words, “deaf and dumb” in their in-laws’ home to maintain peace.
The remarks spread quickly online and were widely criticised as outdated, controlling and harmful, especially by younger viewers who saw them as reinforcing patriarchal expectations. Dawn’s Images reported that actors including Fiza Ali, Hira Khan and Javeria Saud publicly pushed back, while social media users described the advice as the kind of thinking that pressures women into silence.
Sadia, however, argued that her mother’s message was being read without context. According to Daily Times, she defended Saba online and urged people to look at the full discussion rather than isolated clips. That same theme has come up before in the family’s public responses to criticism: when Saba drew heat in 2024 for saying having sons brings a sense of security, Sadia again accused critics of taking her mother’s words out of context and asked for more respect toward a senior artist.
Saba later tried to calm the row with an Instagram video, saying many people had not watched the complete interview. She apologised for using the phrase “deaf and dumb,” and said what she really meant was that family life sometimes requires forgiveness, patience and letting smaller matters go. Still, she partly stood by the broader sentiment, saying her views came from the customs and domestic values of her own marriage more than four decades ago.
That explanation hasn’t ended the debate. For many younger Pakistanis, the issue is bigger than one celebrity soundbite. It taps into a wider generational clash over gender roles, obedience, boundaries and what marriage should look like now. The Express Tribune noted in a separate January 13, 2026 report that Saba Faisal has increasingly become part of a broader conversation about tension between senior and younger generations in Pakistan’s entertainment industry, where advice from elders is often received by younger people as judgment or condescension.
In that sense, Sadia’s defence of her mother is also a defence of a worldview shaped by another era. But the backlash shows how little patience younger audiences have for ideas that seem to ask women to absorb discomfort in the name of peace. What Sadia sees as misunderstanding, many Gen Z viewers see as a clear reading of the words themselves. And that, really, is why the story has lingered: it’s no longer just about Saba Faisal. It’s about who gets to define “values” in modern Pakistani family life.
