Lecture: British Pakistanis divided on ethnic and sectarian lines, says scholar

ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistani diaspora settled in England, nearly 1.3 million people who constitute more than half of Britain’s Muslim population, are divided on ethnic and sectarian lines.

This was said by Dr Muhammad Ahsan, a research scholar visiting Pakistan on Thursday. He was delivering a lecture on the “Role of Pakistani Diaspora in UK” at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute.

“The sectarian divide is more serious as most of the 1,500 mosques in UK have become fiefdoms of illiterate imams imported from Pakistan, who are fighting their battles of faith from those sectarian pulpits,” he said. As a result, the new generation of British Pakistanis are totally disenchanted and have little interest in their ancestral country, he added.

Dr Ahsan lamented the lack of coordination and cooperation between Pakistani intellectuals living in the UK and the small organisations that are working to promote the image of Pakistan.

He said that the Pakistan High Commission has no interest in promoting national causes and its officials are mostly concerned with “how much money they would be taking back home on return”.

This has allowed separatist movements to gain prominence in the British-Pakistani political sphere, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2012.