Imran Khan and the Islamophobia industry that buried him |
There is a peculiar genius among certain Muslim intellectuals in the West: they can detect Islamophobia everywhere except where naming it might cost them something. In Paris, they are forensic. In Delhi, incandescent. In Gaza, thunderous. In Washington, fluent in the grammar of empire. But when Muslim political agency is crushed in Pakistan, when Imran Khan is imprisoned and millions of his supporters are treated as civic contamination, the vocabulary collapses. The seminar goes quiet. The footnotes flee the scene. The prophetic tradition, so frequently invoked in safer venues, is quietly folded into hand luggage until the next fundable outrage.
Khan need not be romanticized to recognize the betrayal. One can criticize him, reject parts of his politics, even dislike his movement, and still understand the obvious: here was a Muslim leader who internationalized the language of Islamophobia, pushed anti-Muslim hatred onto the global diplomatic agenda, spoke of Muslim dignity as agency rather than grievance-management, and gave millions the sense that Muslim sovereignty need not remain permanently supervised by generals, Gulf monarchs, Western embassies, and local comprador elites. Now that he has been caged by precisely the kind of order these intellectuals claim to oppose, many have discovered their most refined political doctrine: silence.
How convenient. How mature. How career-safe.
The problem is not that every Muslim scholar or activist must support Khan. The problem is that so many built careers on the very vocabulary his persecution now tests: Islamophobia, empire, authoritarianism, Muslim agency, decoloniality, political subjectivity, resistance.
The problem is not that every Muslim scholar or activist must support Khan. The problem is that so many built careers on the very vocabulary his persecution now tests: Islamophobia, empire, authoritarianism, Muslim agency, decoloniality, political subjectivity, resistance.
These words were not meant to become decorative furniture in the academic-industrial complex. They were meant to clarify reality. Instead, they are sharpened against safe enemies and sheathed before dangerous patrons. They work beautifully against France, India, Israel, China, and America. They malfunction, apparently, when the offender speaks Urdu, wears a uniform, issues travel permissions, controls family access, or determines whether one’s next visit home will be pleasant or poisoned.
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For this class, Islamophobia is apparently a French........