ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan has termed the knife attack on award-winning author Salman Rushdie “terrible” and “sad” which could not be justified in the name of Islam.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Mr Khan commented on the attack on the India-born author, saying: “I think it is terrible, sad.”

“Rushdie understood, because he came from a Muslim family. He knows the love, respect, reverence of a prophet that lives in our hearts. He knew that. So the anger I understood, but you can’t justify what happened,” the PTI chairman gave his two cents on the attack that had sent Mr Rushdie to a ventilator.

During the interview, Imran Khan also spoke about the situation in Afghanistan and enforced disappearances in Pakistan.

“They [security forces] were responsible for picking up people, but according to them they were involved in this insurgency, which was going on in Balochistan and the tribal area bordering Afghanistan. So they would blame that, with some justification, because you could not convict terrorists in the courts because you wouldn’t get witnesses,” Mr Khan said in a comment on missing persons.

“In my time, we never tried to oppress the media. The only problem was that sometimes the … security agencies — three or four times we found out that picked someone up and immediately when we found out we would immediately have them released,” he told The Guardian.

About Afghanistan, Mr Khan said Afghans needed to take charge of their destiny. “Eventually Afghan women, the Afghan people, will assert their rights. They are strong people,” he said. “But if you push the Taliban from the outside, knowing their mindset, they will just put up defences. They just hate outside interference,” he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2022