In a Multan college, a conservative ‘Saudi girl’ who stood out

That university has come into the spotlight in recent days as one of the few known way points for Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani-born woman who along with her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, took up assault rifles and, police say, killed 14 people last week in San Bernardino, California.

Pharmacy student

During Malik’s time as a pharmacy student at the Multan university, starting in 2007, as Taliban attacks shook Pakistan, the area around Multan and her nearby hometown gained notoriety as centres of radical sectarian activity. Teachers describe Malik as a polite and driven student who was visibly devout, always wearing the niqab and avoiding contact with male students.

But that hardly made her unique in southern Pakistan, particularly after she had spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia, and the timing and circumstances of her shift into militancy remain a mystery to investigators.

Still, in the turbulence of that moment, and in the broader generational tensions stemming from Pakistani families who, like Malik’s, go to Saudi Arabia for opportunity and return practising a more conservative brand of Islam, there are clues to the cultural and religious way stations of her apparent transformation.

Culturally, Malik (29) straddled several worlds, having been born in Pakistan, raised in Saudi Arabia and married in the United States. Her family, which comes from the remote Layyah District of Punjab province, moved to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in 1989, according to interviews with some of her relatives and former neighbours in the area.

From 2007 to at least 2012, Malik studied in Multan, the main city in southern Punjab, famed for its sparkling religious shrines that mark it as a historical centre of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam.

Deeply rooted

Although Malik obtained her place under a quota system that reserves places for the children of expatriate Pakistanis, she quickly impressed professors with her diligence and ability. Some thought she might eventually become a lecturer.

“We felt she could be an asset to the university if she joined the faculty after completing her studies,” Khalid Hussain Janbaz, a former lecturer, said in a phone interview.

No male lecturer knew what she looked like, however, because of the niqab. And though conservative Muslims were not unusual there, Malik developed a reputation as someone who purposefully avoided making friends with men and who was deeply rooted in her Saudi upbringing.

“I would call Tashfeen a Saudi girl,” Syed Nisar Hussain Shah, a university staff member, said. “She had just come to Pakistan for her degree.”

In recent interviews in the U.S., some of Farook’s male relatives spoke of Malik’s conservative ways with suspicion, saying they had never seen her face and noting that she chose not to drive.

Mr. Shah, of the university faculty, said he was shocked by the news that Malik was suspected of committing a mass killing. He said he did not think she had become radicalised at the university, because it does not have a reputation for extremism.