The Express Tribune: Omar Kamal bin Farooq

One of the biggest disadvantages of living in a nation as homogeneous as ours is that it is very seldom that you get to hear alternative narratives on history, religion, culture and society in general. People who try and present narratives that are different from the main stream are labelled as agents, heretics or even worse, traitors.

Here I have made a list of ten things that average Pakistanis just don’t want to hear.

1. America and Israel cannot be blamed for all the miseries of the Muslim world in general and Pakistan in particular. For a country that was hand in gloves with the Americans just until the early nineties, our youth has an amazing tendency to blame all national problems on American polices. Right winged politicians are always busy in concocting this feel good account that we are perfect, peace loving people who are being pushed to the brink of collapse by Zionist and Kaffirs (infidels).

2. We live in an amazing country in which supposedly educated people like Aamir Liaquat preach in their honey laden voice that Islam is the most peaceful religion in the world and then go on making hate speeches against Ahmadis. If you really want people to respect Islam, remove discriminatory and archaic laws like the blasphemy and Hudood Ordinance. Learned scholars like Ghamidi have elaborated numerous times that blasphemy law has relevance in true Islamic jurisprudence (of course now he is hiding in Malaysia, scared for his life ─ a fantastic indicator of how we deal with diverse opinions).

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