by Nilesh Kunwar

It’s an established fact that Pakistani speakers at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) repeatedly serve the same old wine brewed by infusing the Kashmir issue with the Palestine problem with a generous sprinkling of institutionalised persecution of Muslims in India with Islamophobia every year. Consequently, people with little appetite or patience for listening to a litany of repetitive remonstrations may have skipped the live viewing of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s speech this year, and I was one of them.

However, news carried by Pakistani media that with a whopping 1.37million views, Sharif’s speech ranked topmost among the world leaders’ speeches at UNGA streamed live intrigued me to view the same on YouTube as I presumed it would be something extraordinary. That there was nothing ground breaking in what he said did come as a big disappointment, but it was still worth the trouble as what Sharif said and the events that followed exposed the hollowness of Pakistan’s much touted global ‘war’ war against Islamophobia.

In his UNGA address, Pakistan’s prime minister lamented “negative stereotyping of Muslims and acts of discrimination and violence against them,” and these are definitely matters of grave concern. However, who’s actually responsible for this is something that begs serious attention. Sharif would most certainly want the world to believe his unsubstantiated allegation that “the most alarming manifestation of Islamophobia is the Hindu supremacist agenda in India.”

Islamabad takes a lot of pains to project itself as a consummate and uncompromising anti-Islamophobia crusader. However, in what can be accurately cited as a classic example of cutting the nose to spite the face, Pakistan’s congenital animosity towards India blinds both its politicians and Generals so badly that they often end up promoting Islamophobia.

Readers would recall that in 2019, Pakistani politician Farhatullah Babar had posted a video on Twitter in which Gen Pervez Musharraf proudly accepted that "...In 1979, we had introduced religious militancy in Afghanistan to benefit Pakistan and to push (the) Soviet out of the country. We brought Mujahideen from all over the world, we trained them, supplied weapons. They were our heroes. Haqqani was our hero. Osama bin Laden was our hero.”.

Now, when a person who served both as Pakistan’s President as well as its army chief himself maligns Islam by directly linking it with unprovoked violence by coining the perverse “religious militancy” phrase, why blame others for spreading Islamophobia? Furthermore, by hailing Haqqani and Laden as Pakistan’s “heroes,” hasn’t he fuelled Islamophobic sentiments by linking these savage products of “religious militancy” responsible for murdering thousands of innocent civilians to jihad and thus maligned Islam?

Radical religious interpretation of Islam by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, especially its poor record as regards human rights and the atrocious treatment of women is responsible for conveying a completely distorted impression of Islam and is promoting Islamophobia. Hence, Sharif rightly declared that Pakistan shares “the international expectation that the Afghan Interim Government would respect human rights, including rights of women.”

However, by rolling out the red carpet for ultra-orthodox and controversial televangelist Dr Zakir Naik presently on a month-long visit to Pakistan for Islamic preaching , the Sharif government is only encouraging religious fundamentalism. At a time when Pakistan is facing an unending spate of macabre incidents precipitated by radicalised religious ideology, like people accused of blasphemy not only being lynched by mobs but also being subjected to extra-judicial execution by police while lodged in jail or in fake encounters, members of Ahmadiyya community being murdered solely for following their faith and their place of worship as well as graveyards being desecrated, a controversial preacher like Dr Naik is the last thing that the country needs at this point of time.

So, why did Islamabad officially invite Dr Naik? After seeing the extraordinary protocol courtesies extended to him, it’s apparent that since he’s a fugitive wanted by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) for his involvement in unlawful activities like funding terror and money laundering as well as promoting communal hatred, Islamabad’s invite was just to cock a snook at New Delhi.

Its puerile decision to mock New Delhi by according Dr Naik the status of a state guest has backfired and ended up as another incident of cutting the nose to spite the face for Islamabad. When asked to felicitate young orphan girls at an event organised by the Pakistan Sweet Home Foundation, Dr Naik created a scene by objecting to the foundation’s Chairman Zamurrad Khan referring to the small orphan girls as his ‘daughters.” The humiliation that the little orphan girls would have experienced on being treated as untouchables would wrench anyone's heart, but the visiting preacher remained unfazed!

Things didn’t end here. Saying that “You can’t touch them or call them your daughters” because for him these girls were “Na-Mahrams” (those with whom it’s lawful for a Muslim man to marry) Dr Naik walked off the stage without felicitating or interacting with them. During his meeting with Dr Naik after his arrival, Sharif had said, “Ummah-e-Muslima (community of Muslims) is proud of you.” But after his uncouth behavior during the Pakistan Sweet Home Foundation programme, one wonders how many Muslims would really be proud of him?

Doesn’t citing religious edicts by one who claims to be an authority on Islamic teachings to defend his insensitive behavior towards orphan girls of tender age, promote Islamophobia? To the unversed, doesn’t it also wrongly portray Islam as being a misogynist religion? And with the Government of Pakistan maintaining a stoic silence on this highly objectionable issue, isn't it apparent that the concern for the rights of Afghan women that Sharif expressed so glibly in his UNGA address was mere theatrics!

What Pakistan urgently needs today is not the likes of Dr Naik but someone who has the courage to spearhead a serious de-radicalisation campaign aimed at eradicating the deep rooted scourge of religious extremism that the Pakistan army introduced during the reign of dictator Gen Zia ul Haq. Apologists may out rightly deny that the army and its spy agency ISI sowed seeds of religious extremism in Pakistan, but didn’t Gen Musharraf himself proudly admit that “We poisoned Pakistani civil society for 10 years when we fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s”?.

Any form of stereotyping people on the basis of their religious faith is unacceptable as it promotes prejudiced thinking, creates divisions within society and justifies motivated discrimination of the target group. So, while taking up cudgels against Islamophobia is indeed praiseworthy, trying to get even with adversaries by playing the Islamophobia card (à la Pakistan) is not only counterproductive but also downrightly immoral!

Nilesh Kunwar is a retired Indian Army Officer who has served in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. He is a keen ‘Kashmir-Watcher,’ and after retirement is pursuing his favourite hobby of writing for newspapers, journals and think-tanks. Views expressed above are the author's own