Smokers’ Corner: It’s a shame
ICC Note: While this story shows that many Pakistani Muslims are horrified at the anti-Christian violence in Gojra 2 weeks ago, it is terrifying that mainstream Pakistani TV would host radical Muslim evangelists who claim that anti-Christian violence is a Western conspiracy to get rid of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.
By Nadeem F. Paracha
08/16/09 Pakistan (DAWN.com) - Hardly a week had passed after the shameful attacks on the lives and livelihood of the besieged Christian community of Gojra, that a well-known Islamic televangelist appeared on his show on a local TV channel and freely exhibited the audacity to explain this attack by vicious Islamic sectarian organisations as a conspiracy by the West to make Pakistanis question the contentious Blasphemy Laws.
First of all, as usual, before spouting this claptrap, such TV hosts have absolutely no substantive proofs ever to back their demagogic finger-pointing rituals.
But utmost is the fact that the tongue-wagging gentleman had himself been embroiled last year in a stunning controversy where he was directly accused by his former party, the MQM, and some bold journalists, for initiating and encouraging attacks against Punjab’s Ahmadiyya community through his show.
Thus, what moral right does this highly animated fellow has to even address the issue of the attacks in Gojra, let alone offer bizarre and thoroughly unreasonable theories, pointing fingers at the usually elusive and unsubstantiated conglomerate of conspirators?
His self-righteous and delusional take on the said issue must have come as a hurtful bolt of insensitivity to those who lost their loved ones in the insane fires of fanaticism that almost completely burned down the Christian community in Gojra.
I would also like to question the mainstream TV channel he is a part of; a channel that usually loves to harp about its love for democracy, tolerance and justice, but continues to give wide open spaces to so-called ‘experts’ and ‘Islamic scholars’ who have actually turned religion into a licence to rationalise hate and half-truths... [Go To Full Story]
