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| July 29, 2005 | Friday | Jumadi-us-Sani 21, 1426 |
Bombings shouldn’t be used to malign Muslims, says envoy
ISLAMABAD, July 28: Pakistan has cautioned the world community that recent spate of terrorist attacks in London and other places can be used as ammunition by peddlers of hatred against Islam and Muslims to further fan flames of terrorism, says a message received here from Geneva on Thursday.
In a statement at the 57th session of the Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Geneva, Ambassador Masood Khan, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said that terrorists were criminals who spoke for no religion or ideology.
“Do not treat them as ideologues,” he warned.
Condemning recent terrorist attacks in London and Sharm- el Sheikh, Mr Khan cautioned against the tendency to tar nations and civilizations with the terrorist’s brush.
“Muslim nations or communities are not terrorists’ backyards or captive constituencies. Muslims abhor them,” he said.
Talking about terrorist bombings in London, he said that the alleged terrorists were born, bred and educated in the UK and had Pakistani lineage. “Their philosophy of hate belongs neither to Pakistan nor to the UK or another civilized people”, he said, adding that attention should be focussed on fixing the problem together rather than finding scapegoats.
He said that it was not religion but susceptibility to indoctrination that turned young people into sentient bombs. Yet, he pointed out, those keen on triggering clash between civilizations would use terrorist attacks to spread Islamophobia and demonize Muslim societies as a whole.
Quoting research, he said that most of suicide bombers or assassins in the past were non-Muslims.
“Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian terrorist. Blessed by a pastor, Serbian paramilitary police killed Bosnian prisoners, an act captured on a videotape. They were terrorists, not Orthodox Christian terrorists. Have you ever heard of Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist terrorism? Terrorism is a crime against humanity. You do not baptize it,” he said.
Quoting an American scholar, Mr Khan said that terrorism was a societal, not a genetic disease. “Those using the term Islamic terrorism are doing a disservice to humanity by sowing the seeds of hatred, swelling the ranks of fanatics and preparing the ground for the killing of innocent men and women.
The ambassador called on the international community to fight the twin menaces of terrorism and extremism collectively and not allow the terrorists to divide them.
In his statement on human rights situation in Pakistan, he said that President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz were spearheading the advocacy for human rights. “Our focus is on political will, mainstreaming human rights, standard setting and implementation,” he added.
Mr Khan said, “New legal and administrative infrastructure has been put in place. Civil society and the media are free. Lawmakers, political party functionaries and government officials have become defenders of human rights. A key part of Pakistan’s policy is empowerment of women and minorities.”
He highlighted President Musharraf’s strategy of enlightened moderation to root out the causes of terrorism and extremism. He said that the multi-pronged strategy envisaged that Muslims shunned extremism, practiced tolerance and focussed on education while the West helped to redress political injustice targeting Muslims and social and economic deficits in Muslim countries.
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