- Below the belt minority bashing
Barely had the protests of the Hazara community over frequent target killings ended that another persecuted minority found itself in the limelight for reasons not of their making. One would fondly like to consider Thursday’s proceedings of the Lower House as an irritating, isolated aberration, but in vain. The passage in the national assembly of a resolution tabled by chief protagonist Captain (rtd) Safdar, son-in-law of the disqualified PM, and possibly likely to join him in the same debarred boat, for retitling the Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad’s National Centre for Physics by effacing the name of 1979 Physics Nobel Laureate Dr Abdus Salam, Ahmedi by belief and a proud Pakistani to the grave, has evaporated what little, if indeed any, prestige and credibility the outgoing chamber still possessed. Whether the controversial resolution was passed with or without the much cherished, but always lacking, quorum, or bulldosed through the House by a few like-minded members coincidently present at the time is unknown and beside the point. The stamp of the National Assembly will always ‘adorn’ this odious document, even if it is shot down later by the (incoming?) post 2018 election Upper House.
Since the ‘’Professor Abdus Salam Centre for Physics’’ was approved by the then PM in December 2016, the diametrically opposite rebellious position adopted by the errant son-in-law should be good enough reason for cutting off his reported monthly ‘pocket money’ of 1,500 UAE Dirhams. Safdar’s track record of bigotry is chronic and well-documented, and his scandalous, hate-filled rant against Ahmedis in October 2017 demanding a complete ban on their recruitment in the army, judiciary and public services, was eerily reminiscent of the Nazis 1933 anti-Semitic law, ‘Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’, whose key sentence was: ‘All officials of non-Aryan origins are to be retired’. Our national minorities have made superlative contributions in educational, defence, foreign affairs, bureaucratic and medical fields, and denigrating them as aliens, second class citizens, or exploiting them as pawns in a ruthless political game, negates the Quaid’s vision, encourages extremist mindset and blackens the country’s image. The clock of minorities’ rights cannot be turned back.
