Huma Abedin, an aide to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, heads to a meeting at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi June 9, 2011. Abedin is the wife of U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner. REUTERS/Susan Walsh

As his enemies on both sides of the aisle of American
politics continue to revel in New York Congressman Anthony Weiner’s admitted
misbehavior, the real world is left to wonder about his young Pakistani-Indian
Muslim bride.

When the headlines hit that a lewd photograph was sent from
Weiner’s account to a young lady who was not his wife, very few people were
convinced of his total innocence. In the minds of many people, something fishy
was going on. There was also the known fact that many of the few people Weiner
followed on Twitter were young women who were not even residents of his
congressional district, and at least one was a professional sex worker.

It did not take a congressional investigation or a detective
to figure out that Mr. Weiner had a great deal of interest in women other than
his wife of less than one year — one Huma Abedin, close personal assistant of
Hillary Rodham Clinton since the mid-1990s.

She is an American Muslim of South Asian descent — her
father, an Iran expert, was born in pre-partition India and her mother, a
professor of sociology in Saudi Arabia, was born in Pakistan. She was born in
the United States but raised primarily in Saudi Arabia, where her mother still
resides, nearly 16 years after Huma’s father passed away.

U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) reacts as he speaks to the media in New York in this June 6, 2011 file photo. Calls for Weiner’s resignation, including from some fellow Democrats, mounted on June 8, 2011, two days after he confirmed details of an online sex scandal. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Beyond the small sphere of her personal friends and family,
the public could only wonder at why she married Anthony Weiner — a man whose
current scandal is not a great leap from the playboy image he held before he
married her.

But now that the confirmation of his post-marital
philandering has been admitted to by himself — the exchange of sexually
provocative imagery and conversations with women who are not your wife does
constitute some kind of marital dishonesty — there are those who no longer
wonder at her motives or motivations for marrying him, but outright demand that
she step away.

“Don’t be another Pakistani Good Wife” one
Twitterer posted after Weiner’s confession. Don’t follow your boss’s advice,
said countless others, referencing Hillary Clinton’s well-known history of
standing by her man even after the fact of his cheating was beyond doubt.

What is interesting in Abedin’s case is that despite a public
image that puts her allegiance to the United States and its foreign policy in
little doubt — she could, after all, have pursued a political career in any
number of other places considering her heritage, linguistic skills and cultural
knowledge — she is still viewed as somehow foreign, even by Americans with a
similar heritage.

Though her boss, a white woman, stood by a cheating husband,
if Abedin were to do it, it would be the South Asian wife in her — that
traditional notion of a woman who will put up with anything simply because
society demands it of her — that will have compelled her to stay, so this
argument goes.

There is very little discussion about the reasons she is
where she is today and the choices she made to get there.

She works for a Secretary of State who has presided over a
Pakistan policy that has been anything but beneficial to the people of
Pakistan, a Middle East policy that has seen or expanded wars in the
predominantly Muslim nations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya, and a
Saudi Arabia policy that continues on the American government tradition of
avoiding any discussion, let alone criticism, of the kingdom – most recently
failing to address the very serious issues to do with women’s rights there. And
she is married to a previously reputed playboy twelve years her senior who,
until last week, had a very promising career as a possible mayor of New York,
or even higher office.

There is very little discussion about how her overall
political trajectory and life decisions might play into her staying with this
man after he clearly has shown little regard for their marriage.

If she stays, the Hillary parallels would suggest political
motivations — but even Hillary’s behavior, after decades of marriage, could
have at least partially been chalked up to sentimentality. If she leaves, she
would prove that she is human, contrary to Weiner’s famous comment that
“there’s some dispute as to whether Huma’s actually human or
not.”  She would carry more
clout, both with her fellow South-Asian and American Muslims, and with her
political supporters.

Either way, judging by her past life choices, her heritage
would have very little to do with it.