Mr Minister, 50,000 Pakistanis have been killed by the Taliban, and not by the prevailing Islamophobia.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: One may presume that Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar must have enjoyed the week-long break from office while attending the Counter-Violent Extremism forum at the White House, as well as his meetings with US government officials. It doesn’t matter much if during that week he had missed the depressing news of renewed attacks on religious minorities and people belonging to certain sects in his native country. However, one would have thought that he might have learned something new to re-orient his direction on real targets in the fight against terror in Pakistan. But all that was just wishful thinking — you cannot expect any change from those people who are ideologically aligned with religious extremists.
Then came Chaudhry Nisar’s press conference in London on his way back home. From the three-day long forum, he had only one point to tell the journalists that Islamophobia in the West was the biggest hurdle to the fight against terrorism. Apparently, this was the only gem Chaudhry Nisar got from the forum proceedings at the White House
Mr Minister, 50,000 Pakistanis have been killed by the Taliban, and not by the prevailing Islamophobia. Moreover, is it not Islamophobia, but al Qaeda, the Taliban, Daesh, al-Shabaab and Boko Haram that have murdered, maimed, burned and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims across South Asia, the Middle East and Africa?
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 2nd, 2015.
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