Continuous intolerance

Captain Safdar has never disguised his bigotry. The PML-N parliamentarian has a long history of making inflammatory statements against minority groups, particularly Ahmadis. The latest controversy he finds himself in may have been a case of people jumping the gun but it is difficult not to assume the worst when it comes to Captain Safdar. This week, he tabled a resolution in the National Assembly to name the department of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University after Byzantine-era scholar Abu al-Fath Abd al-Rahman Mansur al-Khazini. This was initially reported in the media as a decision to rename the Professor Abdus Salam Centre for Physics at the university but it turned out the resolution concerned a different building altogether. Be that as it may, Captain Safdar’s history is such that one could be forgiven for assuming that he was once again indulging his worst instincts. He has repeatedly demanded that the Abdus Salam Centre be renamed, and also demanded that any Ahmadi serving in the army or other important state institutions be removed. He did this even while Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s anti-government protest was taking place, leading one to believe that he puts his intolerance even before the interests of his party.

What is remarkable is how this PML-N parliamentarian can keep making one inflammatory and hateful statement after the other and suffer no consequence. The party leadership has never said a word about his very problematic stances. Ironically, it was Nawaz Sharif who had originally as PM named the Abdus Salam Centre. And yet, the former PM has remained silent as a party member has repeatedly called for that decision to be overturned. All the efforts made by the PML-N leadership towards democracy, tolerance and equality come to naught when it allows such hate speech to go on without any consequence. The leaders of the PML-N will find that their own legacies will be insubstantial and ephemeral if they do not have the courage to back up their words with action. For someone like Captain Safdar to try and link himself and his discriminatory agenda to science is highly disturbing. It is such people and their supporters who have always stifled the cause of science and rationality.