Benazir Bhutto whom she was a champion of democracy and women's rights. Bhutto was born on 21 June 1953 in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Her father was the politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and her mother was Begum Nusrat Ispahani, of Iranian Kurdish parentage. Zulfikar was the son of Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a prominent politician who had served as Prime Minister of the Junagadh State. The Bhuttos were aristocratic, wealthy landlords from Sindh. They were Sunni Muslims, although Nusrat had been born into a Shia Muslim family before converting to Sunnism on her marriage. The couple had married in September 1951, and
Benazir Bhutto family members had not covered their hair in this manner. The journalist Christina Lamb believed that in being raised in a wealthy and aristocratic family, Bhutto was unable to appreciate the struggles of Pakistan's poorest. The Islamic studies scholar Akbar S. Ahmed, who went to school with Bhutto, noted that she was a "pampered and precocious" child. Bhatia claimed that at Oxford, where he first met her, Bhutto was spoilt, self-obsessed, and prone to throwing temper tantrums, although at the same time was humorous and generous, willing to pay for her friends' meals whenever at a restaurant. Allen suggested that