The prime minister of Pakistan, a tenuous U.S. ally, contends Jesus was not a historical figure, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
The Middle East Media Research Institute reported Prime Minister Imran Kahn made the assertion in a speech on the day marked as the birthday of Muhammad.
Khan also lobbied for a worldwide law that would protect Islam from any criticism.
The prime minister said there is little mention of prophets of Allah other than Muhammad, and there is “no mention of Jesus in history.”
“Moses is mentioned, but there is no mention of Jesus in history,” he said. “But the entire life of Muhammad, who was Allah’s last prophet, is part of history.”
Khan said the West should understand Muslims’ love for Muhammad and that freedom of speech is not a legitimate reason to criticize somebody’s religion, according to MEMRI.
The comments came as he confirmed his government “is spearheading efforts to get countries to sign onto the “International Convention on Preventing the Defamation of Religions.”
That document states “freedom of speech is an insufficient pretext for hurting the world’s Muslims,” MEMRI said.
Khan claimed that Islam is the foundation of Western civilization.
“Today’s [great] civilization, the West, learned from the Muslims in Spain. They started reading. Aristotle and Greek philosophies reached Europe through Muslims, and then European civilization rose,” he claimed.
“Every few years, in some Western country, our dear prophet is blasphemed against and dishonored. What is the consequence of this? Muslims become angry. We take to the streets in protest, [protesters] break things in our country. But what does it achieve? It enables the enemies of Muslims to tell people in the West: ‘See, Islam is a big religion that spreads violence.’ They get an opportunity to spread propaganda against Islam.”
He continued: “In Holland, someone blasphemed against Muhammad by drawing a caricature of him. [My government] spoke to Holland’s foreign minister and their ambassador, and I am happy that for the first time, at our asking, they withdrew those caricatures.”
That’s just the beginning, however, of the control he wants Muslims to possess.
“We raised this matter in the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] – that all the Muslim countries should together tell the West… Their people do not understand. They can’t comprehend how much our prophet resides in our hearts. They can’t understand, so we should make them understand,” he said.
“We talked to the OIC, and our foreign minister raised this issue in the U.N. for the first time, and something happened that had never happened before. The European Union’s Human Rights Court [sic] said for the first time that you cannot hurt somebody’s religion under the pretext of freedom of speech, and especially it said that you cannot blaspheme against Muhammad’s honor.”
For the rest of this report, and more, please go to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
