Shah Rukh Khan's blockbuster movie "Raees" had Pakistani actress Mahira Khan in it. But I liked this movie because of its dialogue "dharam ka dhanda nahi karna" (do not make religion your business).
This is what we should promise with ourselves on March 15. This business is the conspiracy we are cooking against ourselves. And we can stop it.
"There is no conspiracy against us; we are the conspirators ourselves,” Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives said in a conference held in the Institute of Art and Design in F-11/1 sector of Islamabad.
National Rehmatul-lil-Alameen Wa Khatumun Nabiyyin Authority had organised the National Conference against Islamophobia on Friday to mark the UN International Day to Combat Islamophobia.
Islamophobia is a product of the fear and hate people in non-Muslim countries feel about Islam as a religion. At the start, it was almost negligible. Gradually, money was put in this idea and it burst into a major populist theme.
Populist political parties, either in Muslim or non-Muslim countries, feed and feed off this fear and hate of 'others'. These parties have swept through Europe, the US, and some Muslim countries where elections are held.
Pakistan has made meaningful progress in distancing itself from a populist regime. We have in government saner voices like Ahsan Iqbal. But a lot remains to be done as Islamophobia is a global phenomenon.
At a time when Ahsan Iqbal was speaking on "Combating Islamophobia through Character Education" in Islamabad, Under-Secretary-General Miguel Ángel Moratinos, High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC), was addressing nations of the world in General Assembly Hall in New York.
First sentence of his speech was "I would like to start by thanking the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation for their consistent efforts and commitment to address and combat Islamophobia."
These remarks are meaningful for Pakistani youth who have been on a high dose of propaganda that Imran Khan brought the UN down to accept Islamophobia as a reality.
Many world leaders, Muslim and non-Muslim, have been making speeches on Islamophobia at the UN halls. Imran Khan was one among many who made such speeches back in 2019 when the wave of hatred against Muslims was on the rise in Europe and the US.
On the broader canvas, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed bin Salman, launched big diplomatic moves to stem this wave of hatred. Saudi Arabia took this debate to the next level, including Islamophobia in the causes of terrorism.
Muslims were dubbed terrorists in Western capitals because the fanatics from Muslim countries who filled Western capitals would shout and shoot at or knife anyone whom they declared an enemy. However, dubbing Muslims terrorists was a deception Western leaders had created to escape their responsibility to protect their people.
These Western leaders never adopted a proactive approach to explore who should land on their soils. They heavily, if not solely, relied on complicating visa processes and attracting easy bucks. Their visa processes are too complicated for a normal person to get through.
People with abnormal urges would opt for completing these processes; hence, these abnormal people land in western capitals and universities. They engage in violence and fanaticism taking benefit of the same principles of liberty and democracy they actually work against.
Those who fail to do something reasonable are systematically emptied back into Pakistani universities, where they massage their bruised egos convincing young students that Western societies are too bad for Muslims to live in. Hence, another generation of Westernophobic zealots are prepared.
There is a direct proportion between the rise in Islamophobia and the rise in Westernophobia. Since both are products of fear and hate, it is logical to conclude that both are produced in the same factory.
Populist parties in the US and Europe would have taken a long time to resurge had it not been for thriving Westernophobic Muslim populations in our midst. Same is true for populist leaders in Muslim countries.
Before Pakistan's populist leader's speech touching upon Islamophobia in the UN, higher volumes of news on incidents of hatred against Muslims in Western countries were collected in Islamabad. This hate material was then molded into different media products and spread through the country.
The US embassy did not have an ambassador then. But the hate factory was working in double shifts. Hatred against the west was rising. The then prime minister, Imran Khan, was making public speeches at such far off places as Vehari district in Punjab lambasting European ambassadors.
Khan knew well that the audience in Vehari's public gathering did not even know who were the ambassadors from Canada, France, or the EU for that matter in Islamabad.
Government ministers, especially minister for human rights who had a background in American studies and others, whose families were settled in the US and other western countries, were uploading tweet upon tweet to criticise these democracies for one reason or the other.
At the same time, the ruling party was getting much of most of its funds from these very western democracies.
Islamophobia is mainly a curse for Western societies. It is a global phenomenon, requiring global reaction. Pakistan represents OIC in the UN on this matter. At the same time, it keeps in step with Muslim World League (MWL), whose Secretary-General Sheikh Dr Mohammed Al-Iissa told the UN this Friday that Islamophobia is not acceptable.
The country is a member of the grant Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition where it can diplomatically pursue policies to counter Islamophobia and other causes of terrorism. There are many other platforms, mostly put in place by Saudi Arabia, which need to be exhausted to counter this menace.
We need to be mindful of the networks that churn out hate against the West and guise it as research or free speech. These networks sell their venomous products to all available buyers, be it the US, China, or the Gulf countries.
The government should be mindful of this hate business as Westernophobia and Islamophobia are two sides of the same coin. Countering this hate has to be on the national action plan. Spreading hate does not serve any religion. “What kind of Islam is this where, if someone insults Islam, we end up burning down our own country? Do the Jews and Christians tell us to litter our streets, adulterate milk with water, indulge in corruption, and practice fraud?” Ahsan Iqbal questioned during the conference on Islamophobia.
He said, “I, too, was attacked in an assassination attempt in the name of Islam, and that bullet remains lodged in my body.”
It is about time our youth understood Ahsan Iqbal's message. It is about time that we all pulled together, shedding our political differences aside, for the sake of our survival.