What Jemima Goldsmith, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, said about his economist

NEW DELHI: Not only the Pakistani media and the country's intellectuals, even the former wife of Prime Minister Imran Khan, Jemima Goldsmith, has criticized the government's attack on a prominent economist on a key council because of his religious affiliation .

"Indiafensible & v disappointing," tweeted Khan's first ex-wife, Goldsmith, with whom he has two sons and remained in contact with him despite their divorce.

When Khan and Goldsmith got married, he spent many years in Pakistan and is therefore considered to be someone who knows the socio-cultural fabric of the Muslim nation. And her ex-husband, who capitulated to the claims of religious extremists to hunt economist Atif Mian from the Economic Advisory Council (EAC), did not at all understand her well.

"New Pakistani Government Urges Renowned and Respected Economics Professor to Withdraw From Ahmadie Faith NB: Pakistani Founder Quaid-I-Azam Appoints Ahmadi Foreign Minister" Founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah appointed an Ahmadi, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, as Pakistan's foreign minister.

Goldsmith then retweeted a tweet citing Jinnah declaring at the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in August 1947 that in his country, his religion has nothing to do with state affairs.

"You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosque or any other place of worship in that state of Pakistan.You can belong to a religion, a caste or a belief in doing business with the state, "was what Jinnah said.

The Pakistani media also exaggerated the capitulation of the Khan government to religious fundamentalists.

"Poor", "blatant blasphemy of the religious right" and "a blow to an inclusive Pakistan" is the way in which Islamic media on Friday described the capitulation of the Imran Khan government to religious fundamentalists by asking the economist Mian to resign because he belonged to a minority sect.

Not only that, two other economists, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Imran Rasul, who were also appointed to the Khan-led EAC, resigned from the new organization, protesting the fall of Mian.

"Being a Muslim, I can not justify the fact of dropping Mian, a renowned economist from Princeton, who is among the top 25 economists in the world," said Khwaja.

Capitulation to religious extremists


On Friday, a few days after strongly defending Mian's appointment, with phrases such as "we will not bow to extremists," the Pakistani government of Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) announced that Mian would not sit on the council. Several extremist individuals and groups, including Pakistan's far-right Islamist group Tehreek-i-Labbaik (TLP), opposed his appointment.

These people believe that Mian has no place in a government agency simply because he is Ahmadan and his sect does not believe that Muhammad is the last prophet sent to guide humanity. In fact, a PTI government minister even mentioned that Mian's faith was the reason he abandoned it.

The influential newspaper editorial Dawn said Saturday that the campaign led by far-right religious elements to eliminate Mian "was threatening to engulf the ITP government in a crisis that, unfortunately, could quickly degenerate ".

The editorial was most likely alluding to the extremist demonstrations of the TLP last November, which had virtually paralyzed Islamabad. The group protested against what it believed was a dilution of the country's strict blasphemy laws. The then government capitulated to the TLP's request to withdraw the justice minister who subsequently resigned.

Yet giving in to the demands of extremists is not the way to go, Dawn said. In fact, this makes extremism dominant, he adds.