The recent European Parliament resolution on the blasphemy laws in Pakistan has created quite a scare in some parts of Pakistani business community. They are scared that Pakistan will loose the GSP+ status and that in turn will cause huge unemployment. There is the core religious argument which all religious scholars, with varying degrees of eloquence, have put forward. I am not going to touch that because first of all I am not a religious scholar and secondly as I said it has been already presented. What I am going to present it a political case.
This whole issue originated in France, where in 2006, a publication called Charlie Hebdo ( French for Charlie Weekly) published cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). The magazine kept on doing such stunts but the whole thing took a radical turn when last year French President Emmanuel Macron jumped in and declared “We will not give up cartoons”. This changed the status of the issue from a magazine to official French policy. Why did he do that? A simplistic answer is that France is going to hold elections in April 2022 and he needs some issue to win, like Modi in India made cow slaughter an issue. Macron may be Modi in some sense but France is not India. So what is the issue?
About five years ago Mark
Vail, a political economist, wrote an article about France titled “Europe’s
Middle Child”. In that article he portrayed France as a middle child of Europe.
Germany is the elder, the big gorilla. They are the ones who sell BMWs and
other things to America and China. Then there are Eastern European countries,
sort of minions of Germany, who are part of the supply chain of Germany or do shady
things like Latvia doing Russian money laundering etc. The Greeks, the
Italians, the Spanish have stagnant economies, falling birth rates and mostly
don’t like Germans but they don’t have oversized egos like French. It is
France, the middle child which is not here not there. Yes they make wine and
cheese but that is not same as BMW or Douche Bank ( who kind of own Greece).
It is with this background
that France is proposing “strategic autonomy” for Europe in which Europe
becomes independent of both America (not really) and China (really really) not
just economically but also on issues like human rights. With this “strategic
autonomy” France wants to regain its leadership role in Europe and become sort
of big guy on moral issues like plight of Muslims in China, freedom of
expression etc. The rest of the Europeans, especially Germans and their East
European minions, are not very enthusiastic about terminating their
relationships with the rest of the world, especially with China on such issues.
They want to trade with the rest of the world and make money, morality takes a
back seat. So they will pay lip service about freedom of expression etc but if
compelled to decide they will choose international trade.
Here lies the skill, or lack
of, of Muslim countries to take advantage of these divisions and not think of
EU as one solid monolithic block, which as I have explained above it is not. If
just a few Muslim countries could coordinate their actions and make use of the
internal divisions of EU this blasphemy issue can be solved quite easily. But
unfortunately let alone other Islamic countries our own uleema are not united.
Yes they pay lip service to unity in public but the harsh reality is that
majority, if not all, hold sectarian views which they hold quite close to their
hearts. It is not the unity of EU which is the problem; it is lack of it in our
uleema which is the real problem. Until and unless our uleema have a real
change of heart towards each other this problem will not be solved. As a test
of their love of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) let’s see how many pray behind other
sect’s alim.
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