February 2020 03. Editorial Tyranny of the Mullahs in Iran 04. Why PM Imran Khan did not attend Malaysia summit? 06. What Pakistan can learn from BANGLADESH 08. Ahmadis and Kashmir 14. Is being a lawyer in Pakistan contingent upon one’s faith? EDITOR IN CHIEF 16. UK : Muslim leader charts journey from persecution in Mohiuddin Abbasi Pakistan to leafy Tilford 19. Pakistan’s Relations with Iran have remained tense and Enigmatic 22. US: Military training program for Pakistan resumed to strengthen defense cooperation 24 .Some Qualities Of Leadership EDITOR 26. Anti-headscarf law activist sues Iran in U.S. over harassment Zakaria Virk 27. Battle of the Ages to stop Eurasian integration ASSISTANT EDITOR 29. No going back on women’s rights,’ says -30year-old Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Munazza Khan ASSOCIATE EDITOR 30. SA: Wanted: 20,000 Saudi taxi drivers (women especially Amina Nuzhat welcome) SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER 31. NEPAL : Khagendra Thapa Magar: World’s shortest mobile Syed Mubarak A. Shah man dies aged 27 Ph. No. 0047-91698367 32. The Changing Colors of Istanbul ADVERTISING MANAGER M. Sultan Qureshi 34. Ph. No. +1(416)433-0112 CONTENTS Send your writeups at Issue : February, 2019 Disclaimer [email protected] Price : UK Pound 2, per copy The views and opinions expressed Write to: in this magazine are those of the Annual Subscription : 24 UK Pound Monthly Lahore International authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of E-mail : [email protected] Phone : +44 794 007 7825 magazine. Monthly LAHORE International www.lahoreinternational.com Tyranny of the Mullahs in Iran Zakaria Virk, Editor Last month saw some of the most strident Iranian teachers and nurses to live below the anti-government protest in Iran, prompted by poverty line, arresting and torturing them for their obfuscation of their military shooting down a righteous protests. Ukrainian airliner packed with Iranians, including Thousands have been arrested since the uprising and 57 from Canada. That happened on Jan. 8, hours protests in December and January. A number were after a retaliatory missile strike aimed at U.S. forces killed under torture or shot dead by Revolutionary in Iraq, which did not prompt an American military Guards. Quite a few young protesters have also response. For three days Iranian officials knew they disappeared. They have plundered or squandered had shot down the airplane, while the government the wealth of the Iranian people. Every year, they continued to deny the responsibility. spend billions of dollars on war and slaughter of the We give below Maryam Rajavi’s, president of people of Syria. It was recently revealed that they National Council for Resistance, remarks to have sent cartons filled with $100 notes to Iraq to encapsulate the situation in Iran. “So, shame on the fund their terrorist proxies. corrupt and charlatan mullahs who have distressed Indeed, the history of Islam has never seen any ruler the people of Iran. Those who falsely pray and fast, more corrupt or criminal than the demagogues but exploit the underprivileged to the maximum ruling today in Iran, where protesters have risen extent possible. Iran’s needy have reached the point up against their injustice, for freedom and national where they have to sell their kidneys and corneas. sovereignty. Mothers have become so devastated that they sell their unborn fetuses. Iran’s uprising erupted in late December 2017, but its waves have continued ever since, through the Indeed, the mullahs are the worst enemies of God strikes and protests of workers, farmers, teachers, and His people. They inflict the worst oppression plundered people and other social strata. Iranian and injustice on people under the name God and society is in a volatile state and protests have Islam. The people of Kurdistan mostly work as continued in various parts of the country. porters due to extreme poverty. They carry heavy loads (across borders) to earn their living and yet The essential significance of the revolt is that it has they are shot for carrying a few bags of rice. Farmers opted for the regime’s overthrow. The uprising in have been deprived of water and workers’ salaries December and January heralded the defeat of Islamic are not paid. fundamentalism. The protesters attacked many of the manifestations of the mullahs’ religious rule. Shame on the mullahs, who fake their faith in They thus showed that they do not want the mullahs’ Islam, and deprive the people of Iran even of bread compulsory religion or religious compulsions. “We and water. In a land rich with oil and minerals, our leave it to our readers to decide as to how they can 3 people have to scavenge among garbage for food help people of Iran in their struggle for freedom. scraps. While the mullahs have stashed legendary ژژژ wealth for themselves and their relatives, they plunder the people’s savings. They have doomed Monthly LAHORE International February 2020 www.lahoreinternational.com Why PM Imran Khan did not attend Malaysia summit? By Karamatullah K. Ghori, Toronto In the game of cricket there are many ways and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of in which a batsman can get out. However, Malaysia, the host of the gathering. everyone feels sorry when a batsman But the leader most conspicuous by his absence gets out inadvertently hitting his own was Imran. The Pakistani prime minister wicket while attempting to play a shot. begged himself off from attending the meeting, Imran Khan of Pakistan made his debut as without providing a logical reason for his last- his country’s leader with a sterling reputation minute no-show. What’s galling to most— garnered in his career as a cricketer. All his especially to the host of the meeting—is the fans expected the Kaptan (Captain)—the fact that the conference was the brainchild of sobriquet his admirers affectionately use for Imran, and he becomes guilty of not owning him—to make waves, earn laurels and carve his own invention. It was on the sidelines of new records in his new vocation, just as he had the UN General Assembly’s annual session last excelled in cricket. However, Imran recently September in New York that he met Erdogan hit his own wicket and Pakistanis—friends and Mahathir and the three of them came up and foes of his—are agog: Why did he do it? with the idea of pooling the collectives efforts of like-minded Islamic states for promoting a An important conclave of leaders of several better image of Islam—their common faith Islamic countries was held recently in Kuala and identity. 4 Lumpur, Malaysia. Billed as the KL Summit, Among the three proponents of the idea, it brought together under one roof, among Imran was seen as ‘more equal than others’ other notables, President Recep Erdogan of because he had just delivered a strong Turkey, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran message to the world audience—in his Monthly LAHORE International February 2020 www.lahoreinternational.com Monthly LAHORE International www.lahoreinternational.com straight-from-the-heart address from the under its umbrella for routine, inane meetings UNGA podium—to drop their pre-conceived and issuing communiques that hardly merit notions of Islam being a religion or faith that any notice. promotes terrorism. Imran had made a OIC has been rendered dysfunctional and passionate appeal to non-Muslims to shirk moribund by the Saudis who largely bankroll their ‘Islamophobia’ and rethink Islam. it and want it to play a second fiddle to their Imran found receptive listeners among Muslim foreign policy. Instead of working for unity leaders like Erdogan and Mahathir, who shared of the ummah, Saudi Arabia has become its his vision that it was their responsibility to divider and spoiler—its incursion and ill-fated promote and sell a healthier image of Islam. adventure in Yemen being ample evidence of The idea of the KL Summit, bringing together its nihilistic role. thinkers, authors, social scientists, social But then, the Saudis leaned on their ‘brother’ activists, et al., from across the spectrum of the Imran to sabotage his attendance at KL Summit. Islamic world, was germinated right there in The Saudis and the Emiratis in the UAE took New York among these three leaders. Mahathir fright that the KL conclave was going to become offered to play host to what the leaders thought a parallel body to their subservient OIC. They would be a watershed, a new groundbreaking couldn’t exert pressure on the leaders of Iran, assembly of Muslim intellectuals and policy Turkey and Malaysia. But Pakistan is indebted thinkers. to them. Their largesse bailed out Pakistan Punditry that followed the birth of what was from its economic misery. Imran is personally hailed as a noble initiative noted that all three beholden to them. promoters of it happened to be non-Arabs So Imran was summoned to Riyadh for an and shared a wealth of ideas on how to revive ‘audience’ with Saudi Arabia’s de facto monarch, the Muslim world as a collective and dynamic the incorrigible MBS. Upon his return from force in the 21st century. There was consensus there it was announced that Pakistan would among pundits that this non-Arab initiative was not be attending the KL Summit. The risible an idea whose time had come, largely because explanation for Imran shooting himself in the the Arab world had failed to provide a path to foot was that Pakistan wanted to be “neutral” and the Islamic ummah on how to resuscitate itself. work as “a bridge” to unite Islam-ic countries. There was lamentation all around that the The message between the lines was that the existing collective body, the Organisation of ‘brave’ Kaptan had wilted, succumbed to Islamic Countries (OIC), had failed, miserably, Saudi arm-twisting and didn’t mind hitting his to be a beacon to the Islamic world.