It’s an established fact that Pakistani speakers at the United Nations General Assembly [UNGA] repeatedly serve the same old wine brewed by infusing the Kashmir issue with the Palestine problem with a generous sprinkling of institutionalised persecution of Muslims in India with Islamophobia every year. Consequently, people with little appetite or patience for listening to a litany of repetitive remonstrations may have skipped the live viewing of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s speech this year, and I was one of them.

However, news carried by Pakistani media that with a whopping 1.37million views, Sharif’s speech ranked topmost among the world leaders’ speeches at UNGA streamed live intrigued me to view the same on YouTube as I presumed it would be something extraordinary. That there was nothing groundbreaking in what he said did come as a big disappointment, but it was still worth the trouble as what Sharif said and the events that followed exposed the hollowness of Pakistan’s much touted global ‘war’ war against Islamophobia.

In his UNGA address, Pakistan’s prime minister lamented “negative stereotyping of Muslims and acts of discrimination and violence against them,” and these are definitely matters of grave concern. However, who’s actually responsible for this is something that begs serious attention. Sharif would most certainly want the world to believe his unsubstantiated allegation that “the most alarming manifestation of Islamophobia is the Hindu supremacist agenda in India.”

Islamabad takes a lot of pains to project itself as a consummate and uncompromising anti-Islamophobia crusader. However, in what can be accurately cited as a classic example of cutting the nose to spite the face, Pakistan’s congenital animosity towards India blinds both its politicians........

© Eurasia Review