Bullies; we have all heard of them at some point in our
lives, the more unfortunate ones amongst us have faced the wrath of bullies at
no provocation at all. However, very few of us stand up to them. In fact people
who get bullied often lash out at their well wishers who either point out the
fact that they are being bullied or tell them to give it back to their bullies.
Something similar happened with Najam Sethi on the eve of
February 7th. In his TV
show, Najam Sethi ran a clip of Maulana Fazlur Rehman alluding that Imran
Khan of PTI is politicking at the behest of some nameless and faceless Jews. He
also ran a clip of Mr. Imran Khan saying that Maulana Fazlur Rehman is one of
the three people who are responsible for the mess the country is in. Sethi
later on said that Imran Khan should have been more vocal in his defense and
should have denounced Maulana more vociferously than he did because Maulana will
not let go of Imran Khan’s Jewish connection (Khan’s ex-wife and mother of his
children is of Jewish, Catholic & Protestant heritage)
and will use it again and again during the elections later this year.
Jemima Khan, Khan’s ex-wife, heard the words “Imran Khan,
Jewish lobby, conspiracy” and without actually watching the programme or asking
anyone with a better grasp of Urdu, jumped to the conclusion that it was Najam
Sethi who was stirring up trouble for Khan. She was never considered
particularly bright by anyone of note, and now even less so when she took to
the microblogging website, Twitter, to start a personal attack on Najam Sethi
(She wrote that Mr Sethi has always been critical of Imran Khan except when his
wife and Mr Sethi wanted an invitation to dinner with late Princess Diana)
perhaps undermining the credibility of Mr. Sethi as a journalist.
What followed that was just as crazy as any other war of
words on social media is, but it is significant in revealing that politics
based on religion is not just here and now, it is flourishing with every
passing day. No one is willing to take on this issue head-on, instead they
either try to shoot the messenger – in this case Najam Sethi – or join forces
with the forces spreading vitriolic hatred against the other. It was Maulana Fazlur Rehman who first spoke
about Khan’s Jewish connection but it was Sethi – an easier target who can
perhaps only retaliate with arguments instead of something more sinister or
dangerous – who got burned for just pointing his fingers to the bully in
question.
Some really charged up PTI member even started an online campaign for
Sethi to be removed from the air for “making some immoral remarks about Imran
Khan’s ex-wife Jemima Khan.” The fact that the campaign has received 631
signatures as yet tells us a lot about how people form opinions – divorced from
reason, nuance, logic – and choose their candidate based on that very opinion
come election time.
In past, Imran Khan has been roughed up by the goons of
Islami Jamiat Talaba in Punjab University but we have not heard such vehement
condemnation for them, either because of political expediency or because of the
fact that PTI was afraid of a repeat performance. Whatever the reason is, no
one is calling out the real bullies who are getting away with all kinds of
transgressions.
An edited version was first published in The Express Tribune
PS: I guess Jemima Khan is quite fond of picking up fights
with random people on twitter, sometimes they are famous journalists like Najam
Sethi, sometimes they are nobodies like me. Here
is an account of Jemima Bibi calling me names for questioning if hers is the
real account before she got verified.
