LAHORE – The growing global tide of Islamophobia continues to rear its bigoted head, with anti-Muslim posters now surfacing in the citadel, the laboratory, of Islam that is Pakistan. Islamphobic banners surfaced all over Lahore, taking social media by storm on Wednesday. The posters, clearly targeting the Muslim community, showed them in a negative light, stereotyping them as people that are anti-Hindu.
The banners, first seen on Lahore’s Mall Road, depict derogatory anti-Hindu comments written on behalf of the representatives of this great Islamic country, with the intention clearly to portray Muslims as extremists.
Furthermore, what has made this instance of hate speech all the more deplorable, is that it deviously sought to speak on behalf of the ruling party that is actually engaged in this global fight against Islamophobia.
“Our party, our government and our Prime Minister, has been actively talking about Islamophobia for months. In fact, we don’t do anything else, but tweet about it all the time. So of course, this is a conspiracy of someone who wants to defame us,” says leader of the ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Shireen Mazari, the Federal Minister for Human Rights.
“Either the conspirators are the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) or they belong to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which of course means one and the same thing,” Mazari added.
The federal government has announced that the matter will be taken up by the joint Turkey-Malaysia-Pakistan anti-Islamphobia channel.
The Punjab government has also vowed to react strongly to the Islamophobic hate speech in the provincial capital.
“Oh you Hindus who put up this anti-Hindu poster to defame Muslims, let this be a warning from a proud Muslim!” said Punjab government spokesperson Fayyaz Ul Hassan Chohan.
