Under his administration, Islamabad continues to ignore the human rights violations perpetuated by Beijing.

On October 28, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted out a letter to his fellow Muslim leaders urging action in the face of “ridicule and mockery” of the Prophet Muhammad and “increasing Islamophobia in European countries where sizeable Muslim populations reside.” At issue is populist outrage at France where President Emmanuel Macron defended freedom of expression and France’s traditional laicism. Macron defended those freedoms in the wake of the beheading of school teacher Samuel Paty by a Chechen immigrant outraged after word spread online that Paty had shown a caricature of Muhammad in a lesson about freedom of speech. Khan’s letter continued to lament the suffering of Muslims “from Bosnia to Iraq to Afghanistan… [and] to Kashmir.” He continued to compare the desire by religious Muslims to ban expression criticizing or ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad with European laws banning Holocaust denial.

Just a couple hundred miles across the Pakistan-China border lies Kashgar, once the cultural capital of Uighur Muslims. The U.S. State Department estimates that China has imprisoned three million Muslims, some in camps within sight of the mountains of northern Pakistan. Chinese doctors forcibly sterilize Uighur women for the crime of being Muslim, rape others, and sell hair forcibly shaved from Uighurs to make wigs and other products, some of which are then transported via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to outside markets.

If Imran Khan truly cared about Muslims and the honor of Islam, he would condemn the Chinese communist regime for its sustained campaign of cultural genocide. He does not. Perhaps diplomats could excuse Pakistani silence on the eradication of a millennium-old Muslim community next door in realpolitik calculations. But Khan has gone farther than that and actually endorsed China’s mass detention of Uighurs.

Khan’s hypocrisy runs even deeper, however. He laments the feelings of Muslims living in Europe, but presides over a system which destroys mosques belonging to the Ahmadi sect, kills Christians for alleged blasphemy against Islam, and celebrates murders of minorities in courthouses.

Khan, a famous cricketer with a larger than life public image, can seek to latch onto events almost 4,000 miles away in order to rally Muslims around the banner of Islam. If Khan were a true leader, however, he would recognize that the best way to counter so-called Islamophobia would be first to condemn terror conducted in the name of religion, whether outside Paris or in Nice or in Pakistani courtrooms. He might also recognize that the greatest threat to Islam is not in the calls of a leader like Macron who demands that all citizens, regardless of their religion, must respect the law of the land as they practice their faiths freely. Rather, Khan should realize the greatest threat is in the genocidal campaign against whole Muslim communities led by Chinese President Xi Jinping, a man whom Khan actively enables. Indeed, if Imran Khan truly wants to fight Islamophobia, he might look into the mirror because his own behavior endangers Islam far more than any European leader does.

30 Oct 20/Friday                                              Source: nationalinterest