One may presume that Pakistan's Minister of Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan enjoyed the week-long break from office while attending the White House summit on Countering Violent Extremism and meeting with US government officials. It doesn't matter much if during that week he missed the depressing news of renewed attacks on religious and sectarian minorities in his country. However, one would have thought that he might have learned something new to reorient his direction on the real targets in the fight against terror in Pakistan. But that was just wishful thinking, because while in Washington, he defended his government's refusal to arrest Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid, because according to the minister, the cleric has already submitted a written apology to the police. Regardless of the wisdom of accepting an apology from a person who attempted to justify the murder of 150 APS children and their teacher, Lal Masjid immediately refuted the minister's statement and said that no apology was ever submitted to the police. Then came the minister's press conference in London on his way home from the three-day summit in which he told journalists that Islamophobia in the West was the biggest hurdle in the fight against terrorism. Apparently this was the only gem he got from the proceedings in the White House! If he is right, does that mean that some 50,000 Pakistanis have been killed by Taliban and thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims have been murdered by Daesh, Al-Shabab and Boko Haram across South Asia, the Middle East and Africa due to Islamophobia in the West? Perhaps the minister missed President Obama's keynote speech which underlined the need to: 1. Stop terrorist groups from selectively choosing Islamic texts to justify their acts of terror or in other words Muslim governments and scholars need to come up with an alternate narrative. 2. Eradicate poverty and political victimization to open up societies. Don't let terrorists be the ones to fill the void by providing for the poor. 3. Protect family members from bloodthirsty sharks looking for vulnerable minds to brainwash. Cyberspace is the new front in this war and families, friends and schools all have an active role to play. Is it possible that during Obama's keynote speech, the minister was answering a long distance phone call from Lal Masjid!
