After Londoners elected Sadiq Khan of Pakistani origin as their mayor, citizens of Germany’s Baden-Württemberg state elected Muhterem Aras of Turkish origin as speaker of their parliament. A lot of media attention went into Khan’s victory here while Aras could not grab much of it back home in Turkey, much less Pakistan.
Representing the Green Party, also known as Greens, Aras defeated a candidate of Alternative for Germany (AfG) in the parliamentary polls. Each state of Germany has its own parliament so readers in Pakistan may not confuse German parliamentary polls with Pakistani. Since Greens are allied with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), it would be not unfair to say that Aras has indirect support of one of the most powerful leader of Germany.
Greens are center of the left party but are unlike those leftists who still envy Hitler era and fan Islamophobia. Accounting for about 10 per cent votes, Greens take social diversity as environmental diversity, which is essential for our existence.
At this stage when we are through contextualisation of the topic, two statements are very important. One of Aras’s principal rivals, Jörg Meuthen, who leads the AfD in the Stuttgart parliament and serves as the party’s federal spokesman, said upon her victory: “We’ve always said that millions of people of Muslim faith are a part of Germany, who live here peacefully integrated. One of them is now speaker of the state parliament – so what?”
Compare it with Aras’s statement: “We wrote history today.” She went on to dub her win a message of “openness, tolerance and successful integration”. The more you think through her statement, the closer you get to the Idea that Muslims continue overrating their religion wherever they live. Writing-history sort of statements smack of that overrating and do not go down well with a Europe that strives to blur the lines drawn by religions.
Her statement and the brouhaha raised by national and international media on her and Sadiq Khan’s victories in European capitals raise a serious question: Are these victories of Labour and Green parties or of Islam? If Islam’s, then overplay of victory of Khan and downplay of Aras in the media of Muslim countries raise another serious question: Is the victory of Aras less Islamic than Khan’s?
Familiarity with Sadiq Khan’s matter and the knowledge that he stands for all things liberal, including gay marriages – for all things the Mullahs hate – do not stop us from celebrating his win. In his, we see ours chance to rise. This situation dwarfs chances of future surge of Mullahs in a modern society.
In case of Aras, we are not interested in knowing the details. A Pakistani woman can be in her place. After WW2, Germany asked Ayub Khan to send Pakistanis for rebuilding the country but Khan scoffed at the idea of sending people as labourers, recalls Prof Dr Muhammad Zaman, head of Department of Sociology, Quaid-e-Azam University. They then turn to their ally Turkey, which is why now four million Turks live in Germany. They could be four million Pakistanis today had Ayub seen the potential in that offer.
Germans do not like Turks as they stick to their Turk nationalism. Nonetheless, one of them has made it and it surely is a victory for Greens. Meuthen is right commenting on her win: “So what?” The time for us is to remove our religious lenses and look at these developments.