Benazir portrait greets guests at official US iftar
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, Oct 20: There’s nothing irreconcilable between Islam and America, says Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns.
“We know this because we have Muslim classmates, teachers and colleagues, and because we share similar hopes, dreams and fears for ourselves, our families and our nations,” he said at an Iftar held at the State Department to honour Muslim women, eulogising their achievements in various fields.
Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen P. Hughes said Islam had become an important part of America.
“I believe the Muslim Americans are the country’s most effective bridge to the Islamic countries across the world,” she said.
For Pakistani guests the most notable feature of the ceremony was a large picture of a smiling former prime minister Benazir Bhutto at the department’s entrance. It underlined her place in history as the first Muslim woman prime minister.
Next to Ms Bhutto was Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman Nobel laureate; followed by Megawati Soekarnoputri, Indonesia’s first woman president.
Ms Hughes also noted rights activist Mukhtaran Mai’s courage in standing up to her adversaries despite her great personal suffering and a memento distributed after the dinner had a quote of hers: “One person alone cannot do this. I am only able to stand up if the whole world is behind me.”
“The little hope that I have got for justice is because of the support I’m getting from the rest of the world.”
Another Pakistani, Dr Riffat Hassan, founder of the International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan, was quoted as saying: “Justice is a more profound concept than equality because justice in a sense includes what we might call equality and equity; but it’s more than that.”
Paying tribute to Pakistani women, Under-Secretary Hughes recalled that during her visit to the country she met ‘amazing women’ striving for legislation to protect women’s rights.
Her speech focused on the achievements of women in Islam, starting with the acknowledgement that the religion gave legal protection to women long before some other religions and that there had been extraordinary women in the history of Islam.
Under-Secretary Burns rejected the suggestion that the current struggle was between “Islam and Christianity, Judaism and atheism, Buddhism and Hinduism, or any other religion”.
“The conflict instead is between extremism and intolerance, present in all of our countries unfortunately, on the one hand — and the forces of tolerance and hope and peace on the other,” he said.
“Women have an important role to play in promoting tolerance and harmony,” said Ms Hughes while stressing the need to educate them.
