“I, my Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, our ambassador Munir Akram, and our Foreign Office were trying to get a resolution against Islamophobia passed in the United Nations for the last three years,” he said.
The premier explained that after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, Western nations had built a narrative that pushed people to consider Islam to be synonymous with terrorism.
“Terrorism has no religion, and despite Islam having no links with terrorism, a perception was created that terrorism is being spread across the world due to terrorism,” the prime minister said.
In a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) three years back, the prime minister said he had raised the issue of Islamophobia, and after that, he raised it again at the UN.
“Before that, no Pakistani leader had raised the issue at the UN. Earlier, Pakistanis would come out on the streets and vandalised their own property whenever Islam was insulted in Western countries. At that time, I told them: don’t do this, I will raise this issue internationally,” he said.
The prime minister said he has been receiving felicitation from across the Muslim world after the UN passed the resolution to mark March 15 as the “International Day to Combat Islamophobia”.
The landmark resolution was introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the OIC.
“I want to ask you Fazlur Rehman: In the last 30 years, you were part of every government. Did you ever persuade any Western leader to speak against Islamophobia? Did you even speak to them?”
