Hop Aboard the Interfaith Express

"In order to change the world we have to change ourselves."
President Shimon Peres, addressing the interfaith Conference.

A two-day interfaith conference at the UN New York was held last week. It was attended by representatives from 80 nations to discuss steps to improve harmony and peace between nations, and between faiths. Ironically, one of the main organizers of this convention was His Majesty King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a country with the worst record in the history of the world on religious tolerance. A country where over a Million Hindu migrant workers (total Indian migrants are 1.5 million) cannot build a measly temple; Hindu women are not allowed to put a dot on their forehead for target practice, a country where holy cities are out of bound to non-Muslims. What was this all about? To bring their hypocrisy for everyone to see? I guess so.

It was about Saudi Arabia trying to fool the world yet again. While it exports and finances its intolerant Wahabi ideology to poor Islamic countries, it turns around and tells the rest of the world, hey look, we are tolerant, while we export our creed, we also welcome other moralities inside our borders, like Sufi ideology. Not really. Adherents of Sufi Islam are routinely rounded up and imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Even wearing of a harmless religious symbol (a cross for example) is illegal, but wearing a verse of Quran carved in gold is legal. All forms of non-Muslim worship are banned in Saudi Arabia.

There are close to 10 million foreigners (roughly 50% of the local population) in Saudi Arabia with absolutely zero religious freedom. Foreigners occupy nearly 70% of the total jobs, and over 90% of the private sector jobs. I have heard stories that those Saudis that do have government jobs only show up at work to collect their paychecks and when they are at work, it is mostly drinking very sugary tea all day long.

The stories of abuse and rape of house maids from poor countries is an everyday occurrence in Saudi Arabia. Most rapes in Saudi Arabia go unreported according to Human Rights Watch.

Until recently, with a couple of exceptions, Saudi Arabia has been signatory of pretty much every major international Human Rights treaty. On paper, Saudis admit to upholding all internal laws, but in practice the story is pretty different. For example, prolonged detentions without counselor representation are against the Vienna convention that Saudi Arabia is a signatory to, but rarely a practitioner. Another example will be the convention covering all forms of discrimination against women. Well, if a restriction on woman travelling alone is not a form of discrimination, what is? Forget about a freedom to drive a car.

Enough about the main organizer of the conference. Let’s now talk about a smaller and internationally an insignificant one, none other than my beloved President of Pakistan, His Excellency Asif Ali Zardari.

Below are a few passages from President Zardari’s speech at the Conference:

“I take this inspiration from my elder brother a man of wisdom and a man of action, the Custodian of Harmain Sharifain, His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.�

“And I find this worthy act stemming out of Your Majesty’s wisdom that is leading your great country today on the path of progress while following the fundamentals of our religion.�

“King Abdullah, in his wisdom, has decried those that would use religion to advance a rigid and extremist political agenda. He has said that religion must be a bridge bringing nations together, not a wall keeping nations apart. It is therefore critical that we undertake the task of building upon faith as a means of finding common ground between different nations and civilizations.�

End of quotes, because the rest of President’s speech is equally painful to read, and while he may not be aware of it but praising another speaker is very childish and very bootlicky thing to do, particularly in-front of the world. He also mentions his martyred wife a few times in his speech. The next quote of the President is what I found very heartwarming, profound and moving:
“Injustice and discrimination on the mere basis of one’s faith must be discouraged, not only in words but through meaningful actions! Bigotry manifested in Islamophobia and anti-Semitism must be combated.�

I sincerely hope that upon returning to Islamabad President Zardari took a ‘meaningful’ action to work on reversing the discriminatory clauses in our Constitution. I would have liked to give example of treatment of Ahmadis, but let’s not go there.

The other theatrical displays of absurdity at this conference were Iran pointing fingers at Israelis and vice-e-versa, but they do that a lot, so there’s nothing new about that.

The question worth imploring is that what rights do these leaders of the most repressive countries have to fool the world? How about putting their money where their mouth is and starting off with helping to bring peace in Darfur (it is human rights, minority rights, interfaith, inter-religious, rape, murder, genocide issues all rolled into one)? Doing so will give their words some credibility. While they are at it, it wouldn’t hurt to speak up against injustices afforded to minorities in their own countries before lecturing the world about intolerance.