Rafia Zakaria: And we ditched Khuda Hafiz for Allah Hafiz?
As Rafia bemoans, when the earthquake struck, everyone helped. The Arabs and our Indian neighbours are missing today. Pakistan can cope with this crisis. But in the still of the night every Pakistani must wonder for the reasons for this deafening silence, this absence. ~~~t
One such commentator, Shibli Telhami, who appeared both on American and Middle Eastern networks, openly said that Arabs were not too interested in what was happening in Pakistan, and that the issue of Middle East peace was far more central. This point, emphasised repeatedly in the coverage of Obama’s speech by Al Jazeera, Al Arabiyya and other networks, should be worthy of note to Pakistanis. Not only did several Arab anchors refuse to acknowledge the refugee crisis and civil war in Pakistan as a pressing issue facing the Muslim world, they quite indifferently discarded it as something inconsequential to the Arab world.
At the same time, the inability of Arab Muslims to extend their sympathy to (or open their pocketbooks for) their fellow Muslims in Pakistan should provide some clues to the Obama administration regarding which Muslims may be more easily ignored. Since the beginning of the Taliban onslaught in Pakistan, not a single emergency conference has been organised by any group of Muslim countries. Neither the Gulf States nor the benevolent Saudis have used any mentionable sum of their oil largesse to aid the people of Malakand languishing in camps.
Rafia Zakaria: And we ditched Khuda Hafiz for Allah Hafiz?
One such commentator, Shibli Telhami, who appeared both on American and Middle Eastern networks, openly said that Arabs were not too interested in what was happening in Pakistan, and that the issue of Middle East peace was far more central. This point, emphasised repeatedly in the coverage of Obama’s speech by Al Jazeera, Al Arabiyya and other networks, should be worthy of note to Pakistanis. Not only did several Arab anchors refuse to acknowledge the refugee crisis and civil war in Pakistan as a pressing issue facing the Muslim world, they quite indifferently discarded it as something inconsequential to the Arab world.
At the same time, the inability of Arab Muslims to extend their sympathy to (or open their pocketbooks for) their fellow Muslims in Pakistan should provide some clues to the Obama administration regarding which Muslims may be more easily ignored. Since the beginning of the Taliban onslaught in Pakistan, not a single emergency conference has been organised by any group of Muslim countries. Neither the Gulf States nor the benevolent Saudis have used any mentionable sum of their oil largesse to aid the people of Malakand languishing in camps.
Rafia Zakaria: And we ditched Khuda Hafiz for Allah Hafiz?
posted by temporal at 6/06/2009
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