The map of the Pan-Islamic World, drawn by Dr Muhammad Iqbal, an Islamic philosopher and poet — whom Pakistan owns as its national poet and visionary of its existence — categorically included Kashgar when he says in one of his famous couplets:
“Aik ho Muslim haram ki pasbani ke liye,
Neel ke sahil say le ke taba Khak-e-Kashgar.”
(Become one for guarding of Muslim sacredness.
From the banks of the Nile up to the soil of Kashgar.)
Unfortunately for Iqbal, his map is only partly upheld by his brainchild nation, as Pakistan has die-heartedly supported all Islamic causes starting from North Africa and the Middle East up to Afghanistan and Kashmir, but is not willing to go beyond that as from there onwards the boundaries of its best friend, China, start. Kashgar, of course, is located in Xinjiang, the only Muslim majority province in China.
In the wake of violence in Kashgar, perpetrated by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), and China’s having found its links with militant outfits in Pakistan, the government of Pakistan has pledged its full support to Beijing. It denounced the ETIM as a terrorist organisation and the epitome of evil, which, it hoped, China would succeed in eradicating. This is not consistent with its views about similar guerrilla warriors active on the Indian side of Kashmir. For a long time, both Pakistani officials and the media kept calling them “freedom fighters”. Pakistan does not think that the Muslims in China are worthy of freedom too. It is a different rule for one and a different rule for another. Currently, the Pakistani government has withdrawn its vocal support to any Islamist militant movements in any part of the world, including Kashmir. However, both religious-political parties and the media, particularly the Urdu newspapers, in Pakistan have been maintaining their previous stance for all such organisations. Even today, Hafiz Saeed holds public meetings in Lahore, in which he proudly owns his outfit’s continued involvement in the Kashmir jihad. He lives and moves freely without the slightest hindrance. This underscores Pakistan’s a la carte approach to terrorism. The reason is pretty obvious. China is its bosom buddy, while India is its asli dushman or eternal enemy as the Urdu columnists remind us day in and day out. Quite ironically, neither the media nor the religious-political parties in Pakistan — with the possible exception of Hizb-ut-Tahrir — have ever shown any sympathy for the ETIM. The limits of their Islamic universalism go as far as from where the boundaries of China start. To them, it seems, all Muslims are brothers but some are stepbrothers.
China has vowed a heavy crackdown in Xinjiang to tighten it’s the existing iron clamp on Muslim Uyghurs. In the rest of China, there is restriction on the number of children that a married couple can have. However, the ethnic Chinese who relocated from other parts of China to the Xinjiang province are encouraged by the government to have as many children as possible. This is part of the plan of the Chinese government to change the demography of Xinjiang, converting the majority of the Uyghurs into a minority there. However, all these developments have gone unnoticed by even champions of Islamism like the Jamaat-e-Islami.
This is completely consistent with Pakistan’s sensitivity level for Kurd Muslims. While, for the last 60 years, there has been full-blown coverage of the oppression of Palestinians at the hand of Israeli forces, the Pakistan media has never had space for the plight of Kurd Muslims because on such occasions the oppressors too were the four Muslim states, i.e. Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. These brother Islamic states have carried out a series of genocides on Kurd Muslims, which most people in Pakistan are not even aware of, as our media has never reported them as significant events. In 1988, Saddam Hussein killed and wounded over 100,000 civilians in one single attack using mustered gas on the Kurd population. This was roughly 10 times worse than Ariel Sharon’s massacre of Palestinians in the 1960s. Saddam was still hailed as a hero in Pakistan, because of his anti-American rhetoric. Probably the blood of Palestinians is much thicker than the blood of Kurds. The standards of oppression, brutality, high handedness, human rights violations, liberation, Islamic brotherhood etc change geographically and demographically on a case to case basis for Pakistan’s media and religious-political parties.
Here it seems apt to mention that Pakistan’s religious-political leaders and Urdu columnists have failed to take notice of the fact that, on August 14, 2011, the Chinese military chief started his first ever visit of Israel. Two months earlier, the Israeli defence minister had already visited China. Our leaders and media pundits are silent on these developments. Imagine the media’s reaction in Pakistan if the Indian military chief had visited Israel. It would have been immediately seen as a deep-laid and sinister conspiracy by Yahood-o-Hunood (Jews and Hindus).
The arrests of many Chinese nationals, having links with local militants outfits, from various parts of Pakistan and their subsequent deportation to China by Pakistani authorities, ensuing the violence in Kashgar, has confirmed Pakistan’s sincerity in its unstinting co-operation with China in eliminating Islamist militancy there. Pakistan did the same in 2009 too. These are very commendable steps as their purported purpose is to cut the strings of terrorism going out from Pakistan to another country. In a sharp contrast to this, it took Pakistan many months to acknowledge the fact that Ajmal Kasab was indeed a Pakistani citizen.
While Pakistani trueness of efforts to eliminate terrorist support in China from here is beyond doubt, similar earnestness for its immediate neighbouring countries on the East and West remains under question.
The writer’s areas of interests are history, religion and cross-cultural conflicts. He can be reached at [email protected]