Pakistan
PM Imran Khan urges Muslim states to confront Islamophobia
Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday said that Muslim nations should jointly raise their concerns against Islamophobia and should come forward against West for associating Islam with violence.
The prime minister during his address at the Ulema and Mashaikh Conference in Islamabad claimed that since he understands the West better than others so he has raised the issue of Islamophobia on all international platforms.
The premier explained that terrorists live in all societies, but when western countries started using terms like "radical Islam," "Islamic extremism," and even started linking suicide bombing with Islam.
He said in irony that Muslim leaders did nothing to counter this disinformation campaign against Islam and the problem worsened.
"Before 9/11, suicide bombings were majorly carried out by the [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] in Sri Lanka, a group comprising Hindus, but nobody ever associated Hinduism with terrorism," he said, adding that before the World War II, the Japanese also carried out suicide attacks in American ships but no one associated their religion with terrorism.
"The West conveniently associated Islam with terrorism but in the last 20 years, Muslim countries unfortunately, did not respond to this narrative," he said. "Muslim leaders should have stood up to the West and made it clear that there is no link between Islam, or any other religion, with terrorism."
The PM further stated that when people "forget the distinction between good and bad, society moves toward disintegration and destruction."
During the seminar, he also thought that religious scholars have traditionally played an imperative role in the making Pakistan and asked them (Religious Scholars) to make the masses aware of the model of Riyasat-e-Madina.