Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is the leader of a country that is well known for its cruel Islamic blasphemy laws. Soon after becoming Prime Minister, he stated: “Few in the West understand the pain caused to Muslims by such activities,” referring to Muhammad cartoons. Yet amid his infamous pushing of Sharia globally, and his obsessive determination to see the whole world bow before his threat to levy charges of “Islamophobia,” Khan has exempted China, despite its treatment of the Uighur community. The double standard is for one reason alone: “Islamophobia” is a tactic that will only work against the West. It is a stealth jihad stratagem designed to shut down criticism of Islam in the West, as a means of bringing about its ultimate subjugation.
This will never work against China. Also, Pakistan depends on China.
Imran Khan said last year:
“Pakistan’s future is tied to China. We should be clear on this that our country’s [economic] development has now been intertwined with China.”
According to Foreign Policy Magazine, “Pakistan simply cannot afford to antagonize Beijing by calling it out.”
Other Muslim leaders have gone easy on China as well.
So China gets away with genocide against the Uighurs, while Westerners remain obsessed with not appearing to be “Islamophobic” by even so much as criticizing Islam or jihad, let alone making fun of them.
“China is buying Muslim leaders’ silence on the Uyghurs,” by Alex Ward, Vox, June 23, 2021:
As the world increasingly speaks out against China’s genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, the quietest voices continue to belong to the leaders of Muslim-majority countries.
Look no further than Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s interview this week with Axios’s Jonathan Swan. Swan asked why the premier, who often speaks out on Islamophobia in the West, has been noticeably silent on the human rights atrocities happening just across his country’s border.
Khan parroted China’s denial that it has placed roughly 2 million Uyghurs in internment camps and then evaded the issue over and over again. “This is not the case, according to them,” Khan said, adding that any disagreements between Pakistan and China are hashed out privately.
That’s a jarring statement. Instead of offering a pro forma “Yes, of course we’re concerned by this” before moving on, Khan chose instead to minimize the problem altogether.
Why would Khan do such a thing during a high-profile interview, with his self-enhanced image as a defender of Muslims on the line? The prime minister gave the game away later in the interview: “China has been one of the greatest friends to us in our most difficult times, when we were really struggling,” Khan told Swan. “When our economy was struggling, China came to our rescue.”
China has given Pakistan billions in loans to prop up its economy, allowing the country to improve transit systems and a failing electrical grid, among other things. China didn’t do that out of the goodness of its heart; it did so partly to make Pakistan dependent on China, thus strong-arming it into a closer bilateral relationship.
It’s a play China has run over and over through its “Belt and Road Initiative.” China aims to build a large land-and-sea trading network connecting much of Asia to Europe, Africa, and beyond. To do that, it makes investment and loan deals with nations on that “road” — like Pakistan — so that they form part of the network. The trade, in effect, is that China increases its power and influence while other countries get the economic assistance they need.
That relationship has helped Pakistan avoid economic calamity. But as of right now, it doesn’t have the funds to pay China back. That could spell trouble for Pakistan, as China has a history of taking a nation’s assets when it doesn’t pay its debts, like when it took over a Sri Lankan port in 2018.
To avoid a similar fate, and perhaps keep the money flowing, Khan likely didn’t want to badmouth China in public. “China is Pakistan’s only lifeline out of debt,” said Sameer Lalwani, director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC.
Look elsewhere in the world and the story is essentially the same. Even the leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — who often portray themselves as the defenders of Islam and of the ummah, the global Muslim community — are choosing to prioritize their economic relationship with China over standing up for the Uyghurs.
In the short term, they may get more funds from the relationship with China, but in the long run, the price they pay is in their reputation.
Khan is the latest Muslim leader to give China a pass on the Uyghurs
George Mason University’s Jonathan Hoffman, who studies Middle Eastern politics and geopolitical competition, told me Khan’s statements are in line with the trend of Muslim leaders turning away from China’s gross human rights abuses.They “represent a broader pattern in the region where the plight of the Uyghurs is sidelined as China has quickly become the largest oil consumer, trade partner, and investor,” he told me….
mike says
Pakistan will come to thinking twice about excepting the money
NOW China owns Pakistan
more Muslims for China to enslave
Infidel says
They don’t quite have a choice: no country in their right mind will lend them money. Previously, Saudi Arabia used to give them free aid, but after Pakistan lashed out at them 2 years ago for not supporting them against India on Kashmir – something that MbS didn’t wanna do b’cos he wanted to cultivate India as a major economic partner and a market – Saudi Arabia ended it and forced Pakistan to pay back $3B, which the latter then borrowed from China to pay back. At this point, China can possess Pakistan just like they took ownership of that Sri Lankan port some years ago, and the latter won’t be able to say a thing
mortimer says
Imran Khan = SELL-OUT
He is no more than a venal Muslim HYPOCRITE.
This will be the last generation of Uighurs. The Uighur women are being sterilized in what is he biggest MEDICAL genocide in history. No more Uighur babies and no more Uighurs.
Infidel says
You say it like it’s a bad thing. The Uyghurs are nothing but another Turkic muslim people, just like their Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek neighbors. As a culture, there is little difference b/w Chinese Turkistan and Soviet Turkistan, so people anthropologically interested in them can study the Kyrgyz to find out more if they become extinct
There are other people, like the Kalash people of NW Pakistan, who’d really become extinct as their population has dwindled by half of them embracing islam. They are descendants of Alexander’s troops who settled in the area, embraced Vedic Hinduism and clung on to it to this day. Unfortunately, their language is islamized – written in the Nastaliq script rather than Devanagiri (something that Kashmiri and Sindhi Hindus do to distinguish themselves from muslims)
And then there are the Yazidis, who have their own culture and religion that’s neither islam, nor Christianity, nor Judaism, nor Zoroastrianism. They are in more real danger of being extinct: once they are, there will be nothing to study them on. The Uyghurs by contrast have a lot of similar neighbors: them being extinct would be like the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs being extinct: nothing of value would be lost
Steve Grant says
The Chinese despise Muslims and treat their own Muslim population as slaves or body part vessels for rich elites. Now the very westernised leader of Pakistan Imran Khan, gleefully accepts $billions from China even though the Chinese are treating Muslims worse than animals? Just shows you Islam is a pretty poor example of a “world” religion and should be shunned. Non Muslim countries should expel any Muslim and not deal with countries like Pakistan.
wpm says
Will the Chinese set up camps for Chinese Moslems in Pakistan like the German Nazis set up camps in Poland for the German and Polish Jews? Will Shite Pakistan Moslems be put into camps or ship to China marked for murder ?Would the Chinese make Pakistan one big camp to kill off all “native” people there ?The Chinese have no problem killing off maybe 100 millions of their own people for the “better good of society”. The Chinese have a very quick “solution” for civil unrest, or labor problems ,or religious belief running against their goals kill them all.
Infidel says
They should do that to Pakistan and Afghanistan as well ?
gravenimage says
China doesn’t hate Islam for ideological reasons–they are just treating the Uighurs as they do because they are a threat in China itself. China sees its actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan as money-making propositions–that’s all.
I’ve seen quite a number of people who believe that China is poised to go on a crusade (so to speak) of wiping out Islam in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other places–but I see no reason given their history that this would be so.
Raja says
The West is doing a big disservice to the world by trumpeting against Chinese treatment of Uighurs. Aren’t the citizens of a state “owned” by it? Is not a state at liberty to do anything as it pleases with rogues? Should any state tolerate parallel governments, law, and courts of islam?
Has any Western government come up with any alternative to internment camps of Uighurs?. When the West itself is clueless in dealing with Islamic terrorism, no-go zones, threats to the host governments etc how can they say that China is wrong? Even Islamic nations in the middle east did not take in a single “refugee” since the refugee crisis broke out. And the islamic nations like Saudi etc do not allow the luxury of terror organisations operating from their soil. So sooner or later countries like France will have to do some serious soul searching when it comes to dealing with Islamic terror.
If Pakistan is whining about the so called islamophobia the world should counter it. The silence against the taunt of Islamophia is criminal negligence. To my knowledge only Boris Johnson defends “islamophobia” as a natural outcome, he had said islam is the problem. Unfortunately he too panders to Islamic thugs.
Infidel says
Raja
China’s persecution of Uyghurs is for pretty sadistic reasons. They have extradition agreements w/ every muslim country, so that it’s not like a Uyghur could flee to a Tajikistan or Turkey or Pakistan or Libya or Qatar and be safe. Under those agreements, the muslim countries are to extradite any Uyghur refugees back to China, so that they can either be enslaved in sweatshops, dissected for body parts or anything in b/w. End result is Uyghurs fleeing to non-muslim countries that have no such agreements w/ China. Thereby causing a threat to those populations
The right way to do this is how Burma and Sri Lanka are doing it. Burma cracked down on their muslims hard, and forced them to flee to Bangladesh (it’s India’s fault for being stupid enough to accept any!) Once they fled, Burma didn’t care where they went: they just made it clear that they wouldn’t be allowed back. Had China done this, those Uyghurs who don’t have jihadist ambitions (there are arguably some) could have peacefully gone to their next door Turkic muslim neighbors – Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan (preferably the latter) and settled there, and provided them more labor in certain sectors
Sri Lanka cracked down on all muslim organizations, and did a few more things to make muslims very uncomfortable – banned cow slaughter and burial of the dead. Muslim who insist on getting buried have to have their bodies shipped to Maldives
Some of the things China has done, such as convert mosques in Hotan into toilets – I have no issues w/. The main issue I have w/ Beijing is them requiring muslim countries to send back Uyghurs who’ve taken refuge in their countries
gravenimage says
Agreed, Infidel.
And you are right–here is Turkey deporting Uighurs to China:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/02/why-erdogan-has-abandoned-the-uyghurs/#:~:text=Take%20Zinnetgul%20Tursun%2C%20a%20Uyghur,to%20China%20with%20her%20kids.
Infidel says
Too bad that other countries such as Israel or France or Italy or Greece or India or Armenia don’t have the sort of clout over the entire ummah that China as
Wellington says
Khan is a joke, but he is a very cruel and relatively powerful joke. But a total farce he surely is.
All of which points to what the West collectively should do, i.e., stand up to the triple threat to liberty which is 1) Islam; 2) traditional authoritarianism as represented by the present Chinese and Russian regimes; and 3) the enemy within which is Western Leftism, now indoctrinating the youth of the West, skulls full of mush most of them, with Neo-Marxism and by way of such rot as critical race theory.
Four ways for mankind to proceed: 1) democracy, capitalism, a proper moral ethic, et al.; 2) the Islamic route; 3) the standard authoritarian route; and 4) the extra idiotic Western Leftism route.
Only one holds out any real hope for the human race, the other three need to be placed upon the trash heap of history as soon as possible. No quarter for the last three. None.
gravenimage says
+1
gravenimage says
Pakistan’s Khan denies internment of Uighurs, defends China as China gives Pakistan billions
……………..
This should not surprise–Muslims seldom care about others, including their fellow Muslims.
Then, another reason that Muslims ignore China’s treatment of Muslims is that unlike the west, China doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks about them. No amount of criticism about the treatement of Uighurs is going to change their policies.
James Lincoln says
gravenimage says,
“China doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks about them.”
That’s a true statement, and – at least to some small degree – Western nations can learn from this.
For example, Poland and Hungary do not care what the European Commission thinks about their hard line against muslim migration…
gravenimage says
James, I can agree with this–without myself lauding the horrors of Communism, of course.
tim gallagher says
China seems to be buying the whole world, or, at least, big segments of it. No surprise about Pakistan because it seems to be a disaster of a country. I hear that China has bought massive influence in the UN. From reports I have heard, UNESCO is beating up Australia for not taking care of the Great Barrier Reef because China has bought influence among members of UNESCO and now has them trying to defame Australia as part of China’s recent war on Australia (in terms of economic tariffs) ever since Australia said that there should be an investigation into the origins of the Covid virus. On Pakistan not saying anything about the Muslims in China, I don’t see much evidence of Muslims giving a shit about one another. I agree with gravenimage’s comment, just above this, Muslims seldom seem to care about others. that’s the type of ideology islam is.
James Lincoln says
tim,
Perhaps muslims operate a little bit like BLM – only “some” muslims matter…
tim gallagher says
Yeah, it seems that way, James. Of course, the different branches of Islam, the Sunnis and the other mob, the Shia or whatever they are called, loathe one another and are always killing one another over who is the purest type of Muslim. This failure by Pakistan to speak up for the Muslims that China is committing genocide against seems to be because China has bought that hopeless country Pakistan, and if Pakistan did speak up then China, in its usual thuggish, bullying style, would destroy the hopeless country economically. China has been ramping up its revenge on Australia for quite a few months now after Australia suggested that a proper investigation of the beginnings of this Covid virus should be carried out. Revenge and thuggery seem to be a very big part of the Chinese regimes’ way of behaving. AS for the BLM and all leftist groups, they are bound to care only about their fellow left wingers. I’m sure they don’t give a damn about blacks who hold conservative or moderate views.
gravenimage says
Agree, Tim.
Infidel says
Tim
Why is the Great Barrier Reef UNESCO’s business? That department of the UN is supposed to be concerned about educational, scientific and cultural heritage issues of the world. Great Barrier Reef would come more under the department of whoever in the UN deals w/ ‘Climate Change’
gravenimage says
UNESCO is supposed to be concerned with “world heritage”–and that could conceivably include natural as well as cultural artefacts. But there is no doubt that UNESCO–like every part of the UN–has become very politicized over its history.
tim gallagher says
Infidel, I suppose that, as gravenimage says, UNESCO does, or at least can, concern itself with issues like the Great Barrier Reef. I have to say that I’m not at all knowledgeable about this type of thing. The commentators out here in Australia that I take notice of have said that China has some dominating role in UNESCO and the UN in general (bought the influence in their usual way) and, as part of the ongoing attacks on Australia by the Chinese regime, UNESCO has come up with this latest load of bullshit. The main point made out here has been that no official from UNESCO has come and checked out the Barrier Reef since 2015, so what would they know about it. And also, China destroys any reefs it has control of. The Chinese regime keeps going on and on with its nastiness. Economically, Australia really depends on China. We sell huge amounts of iron ore and coal to China and it keeps our economy and standard of living going well. I hear that China is now seeking to get iron ore from some African countries, Brazil as well, so I guess this is a way that they believe they can sink Australia’s economy. From Australia’s point of view, the commentary is all about how we need to free ourselves of China, find new markets (such as India and other more friendly countries) because China is , I would say at last, being seen as a vicious enemy by most Australians. ON the UNESCO issue, I take no notice of this stuff, but it suddenly became an issue in the news out here. I suppose I think all those UN bodies are pretty corrupt and useless. I haven’t heard it mentioned for a week or so. Seems to have died down.
gravenimage says
Yes–China is hypocrtical. Obviously Australia has a much better record than China does on the environment. But China doesn’t care. Here’s more information for those not familiar with the situation:
“Great Barrier Reef dragged into row with China”
“The Morrison government will launch a diplomatic lobbying campaign of the members of the World Heritage Committee to try to sway at least seven countries to oppose listing the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”.
There are suspicions that China is using its control of key United Nations bodies as part of its campaign of economic coercion against Australia…”
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/great-barrier-reef-dragged-into-row-with-china-20210622-p58332
tim gallagher says
Thanks for that information, gravenimage. This issue is out of the news because nearly all the news out here is about the Covid breaking out to quite some degree in Sydney and a lock down being imposed. Covid hasn’t been devastating out here (only 900 deaths or so) but the lock down is all the news just now. The thing I notice with China’s kicking Australia around is how it seems to go on and on. The Chinese regime seems to an extremely vindictive mob of scumbags. A bunch of thuggish bullies for sure. Australia is realising that we have break free of our economic dependence on China, though it will take some time to achieve that. Of course, this Barrier Reef stuff is garbage, but China has apparently bought countries at the UN and they seem to be doing the Chinese regime’s bidding.
gravenimage says
Yes, I’ve sadly heard about the surge of Covid cases in Sydney. Not, as you note, as bad as it has been at times in the US or Europe. This from China is disgusting and absurd–but scarcely surprising.