Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Is Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain an anti-Semite?

For a moment imagine the following unlikely scenario:
A terrorist organisation in Sweden (that is known to include Jewish members) announces that it intends to kill as many Muslims as it can in Sweden by blowings up every mosque during Friday prayers.  The Swedish Police subsequently find the stockpile of  bombs the terrorists were planning to use and state that they intend to remotely detonate them in such a way that nobody is harmed. Although they know who the terrorists are the Police say they will not take any further action against them (after all, the Swedes are pretty tolerant like that).

Next suppose that, on hearing this news, the Israeli ambassador to the UK requests an interview with the political editor of the Sun to make his country's views about the matter clear. He says that if the Swedish authorities carry out their threat to destroy the terrorists' bombs then he will consider it as an act of war against Israel. The reason, he says, is "because it will have an impact on Israel. Israel has to safeguard its interests since it has many Jewish citizens and they would not take it lying down".
If that really happened you can be sure that the Ambassador would be univerally condemned as an anti-Muslim hatemonger and would be booted out of the country for promoting 'hate-crime'.

Well, if you replace the terrorist organisation in the story with the Iranian political elite, Muslims in Sweden for Jews in Israel, and finally the Israeli Ambassador with the Pakistani equivalent, then the story turns out to be not made up at all as you can see from today's interview in the Sun with Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan. Although the interview covers more than just his concerns about Israel and Iran, here is the relevant part:

Tough-talking Mr Hasan also declared Pakistan would have no choice but to support Iran if "aggressive" Israel attacks it. ... Mr Hasan said: "We would not like Israel to attack any country, irrespective of whether it's Iran or any nuclear country. We wouldn't like to be seen as part of Israel's campaign against any country. If Israel attacks Iran, it will have an impact on Pakistan as well. "We will have to safeguard our own interests. We also have a Shia population in Pakistan who will not take it lying down.
Since, in my hypothetical example, the Ambassador would be univerally condemned as an anti-Muslim hatemonger, can anybody explain why Wajid Shamsul Hasan has not been expelled from the UK as an anti-Semite? He has offered no reason for siding with Iran against Israel
other than a purely racial one.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

good one