Excessive focus on Muslim Pakistan distorts our vision of Muslim societies in general. Since Pakistan has plagued us from its very inception, our subconscious sees all Muslim societies in adversarial terms. Pakistan's foreign policy aimed at restricting our options in external affairs.
This Pakistan was able to do for a long period, with regard to the 54 members of the Organisation of Islamic Conference after the Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad incident in Rabat. We never had a clear strategy to deal with OIC. From one OIC summit to another, totally uninformed on how the system worked, we simply fell back on knee-jerk responses to Pakistani machinations on Kashmir.
When ethnic cleansing, mass graves and rape camps in Bosnia shocked Europe, what was our response? Nothing, as far as I can remember ... At that stage Benazir Bhutto and Turkey's Ciller made that spectacular dash to the besieged capital of Bosnia. For this gesture, Pakistan manipulated Bosnia to co-sponsor an anti-India resolution in Geneva. Any country as desperate as Bosnia would have responded favourably.
We kept finding excuses for demonstrating no sympathy for the victims of the worst atrocities committed since the World War II. First, we could not abandon our "historic" ties with Belgrade. Our traditional ties were with Tito of Yugoslavia, not Milosevic of Serbia! Second, why should we rush in where angels fear to tread? And finally ... how can we sympathise with a people who co-sponsor resolutions at Pakistan's bidding? People in Bosnia, like those in Central Asia, did not know Pakistan. They only knew India because of its ancient links with the Turkish people.
Everyone knows that Central Asia is all about oil and natural gas. Those are the assets the world is in pursuit of.
And, believe it or not, we do not even have an embassy in Sarajevo. It can be argued that we do not have an embassy in Sarajevo because no major economic stakes are involved (although that by itself is not a convincing argument). But why, pray, have we ignored Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.
The argument was that Azerbaijan's conflict with Armenia made it difficult for us to make a choice. How were we able to make a choice between Croatia and Bosnia? The two were in conflict but we opened an embassy in Zagreb, not in Sarajevo, which represents the composite culture we so celebrate.
.. In recent years whenever a Muslim country has been in conflict with a non-Muslim one, we have tended to be indifferent with the Muslim State.
Do you notice now anti-Pakistanism has quite lazily transformed itself into a debilitating misperception of all Muslim societies? (Does it) reflect a creeping phobia which afflicts sections of our establishment?