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| March 9, 2003 | Sunday | Muharram 5, 1424 |
West’s policy produced terrorism: Benazir
ABUJA, March 8: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Saturday urged non-Muslims, particularly the Western world, not to confuse Islam with terrorism.
Constant clashes between the West and the Islamic world were a bad omen for the future of the world, she said at a lecture given here in memory of former Nigerian vice military head of state, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua.
“These clashes threaten to eclipse our future,” said Ms Bhutto, here as a guest at the commissioning of the Olusegun Obasanjo Research Library on Saturday at the Yar’Adua centre.
“It is challenging for non-Muslims, the West in particular, to distinguish between Islam and terrorism,” she said.
Terrorism was a product of the contradiction in foreign policy of the West which, she said, encouraged dictatorship in Afghanistan when it was under Soviet control.
“If we had established democracy in Afghanistan, terrorism would not have had a sway and Osama bin Laden would not have had a refuge,” she stated.
She slammed the West for allegedly establishing 2,500 schools in Pakistan to train activists from which emerged the likes of Osama.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said his country would fight for the release of Ms Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari.
He warned against any attempt to equate Islam with terrorism. “I feel alarmed about gross misunderstanding of Islam by most leaders of the West,” he said. “We are about the only country in the world evenly divided between Islam and Christianity and if we can pull together in peace, then we have something to teach the world: that it does not matter what faith you proclaim, you can live together,” he said.—AFP
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