Faith is something that cannot be forced: PM Imran Khan
The second episode of Salman Ahmed’s docuseries on Prime Minister Imran Khan titled Spiritual Democracy recently premiered on YouTube. In the episode, the PM sheds light on his thoughts on “military solutions” as well as how Jinnah’s philosophy is perfectly in line with that of Islam when it comes to freedom of religion.
When asked about the strained relationship between India and Pakistan, the PM shared, “I do not believe in military solutions. You use military action to solve one problem and you create a host of other problems. Unintended consequences of military actions. I try my best to have a relationship with India which is of civilised neighbours. I know India better than others. I know most of the Indians I know do not think like Narendra Modi.”
Drawing parallels between Modi and Altaf Hussain of MQM, Khan continued, “People do get carried away by these heady concepts of racial superiority and Hindu superiority. If you appeal to people’s nationalism, human beings get carried away, and a lot of people like Narendra Modi and Altaf Hussain, who was doing the same thing in Karachi to the Urdu speaking people.”
On the othering of certain ethnic groups, he added, “First, you raise that nationalistic fervour in a people and then you transfer hate on some other human community. Like Hitler blamed the jews for all the problems of Germany, Altaf Hussain blamed all the other ethnic people for the problems of Karachi. Similarly, Modi blames Muslims for all the problems India faces and to a lesser extent, Christians.”
Citing the example of genocide in other parts of the world, the PM asserted, “You look at the massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia, you always had someone standing up and saying, ‘We are superior and all problems are because of some other human community.’ I did not realise in the beginning that [Modi] is an ideologue who believes in racial superiority.”
Speaking about Jinnah and his desire for communal harmony, Khan explained, “What [Jinnah] said is completely in line with what Islam is. There is no coercion in religion.”
He added, “In the state of Madinah, minorities were equal citizens. Faith is something that cannot be forced on human beings. It’s one of the greatest gifts of the Almighty. God only told the Prophet to give the message. Whether people believed or not wasn’t even in the Prophet’s hands. People who force others into religion are actually going against religion.”
The PM also spoke about India’s reaction towards Pakistan following the Pulwama attacks. He said, “I went on media to say that we had nothing to do with [the Pulwama attacks]. It was a Kashmiri boy, radicalised and brutalised by the Indian security forces who blew himself up. We said that if you can provide us with any evidence of Pakistan’s involvement, we will take action. Instead, they bombed us. I warned them that if they bomb us we will retaliate.”
He added further, “We had their pilot, he was a prisoner of war. We were gonna give him back. The whole idea was to give a signal to India and to the rest of the world that Pakistan did not want any escalation.”