US visa restrictions will not affect terrorists but their victims: Nisar
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Monday said the visa restrictions imposed by the United States will not affect terrorists but the victims of terrorism, reported the state-run radio service.
Talking to reporters after inaugurating the Executive Passport Office in Islamabad, he termed it as an important issue and said, "It is not only a matter of issuing visas to a country. In my personal opinion the move will not affect terrorists, however it will increase the miseries of the victims of terrorism."
Referring to a security summit in Washington in Feb 2015 which was hosted by the then US president Barack Obama and attended by foreign ministers of more than 60 countries, he recalled that the summit had stressed the need of international unity and consensus to get rid of the gangrene of terrorism.
"It was also stated that to achieve this goal, some countries would have to discontinue the propaganda of Islamophobia," he said.
Nisar added that he had made it clear that correlating Islam with terrorism was tantamount to negating the entire struggle against terrorism.
"The move by the United States would harm global unity against terrorism, and terrorists would be the beneficiaries of the finger-pointing towards Islam and Muslims, said the interior minister.
“There are more than one and a half billion Muslims in the world, whether one likes the fact or not. It would not be wise to put the blame of a few hundred on the entire Muslim population.”
Nisar said that the majority of terrorist incidents have taken place in Muslim-majority countries, hence it is not fair to blame the entirety of the Muslim world.