Ani O'Brien: What people in the West don't know

I met a young Pakistani woman over the weekend and, as tends to happen with me, she wanted to discuss politics. It was one of the most interesting conversations I have had in a long time. I will call her Esther for this piece.

First, I must admit that I made assumptions about what her positions would be on particular matters of geopolitics based solely on the knowledge that she is from Pakistan. In my defence, my assumptions were statistically informed. Pakistan is one of the world’s most Islamic countries by percentage of population - estimated at around 97%.1 Esther is not part of that super-majority; she is part of the 1.37% who are Christian.

For context, here is a brief summary of what life is like in Pakistan for Christians published by (Qatari) Al Jazeera:

Although Pakistan was founded in 1947 with the intention of creating a tolerant and egalitarian country, Pakistani Christians have continued to endure substandard living conditions, and in recent years, the community has been the target of escalating attacks due to growing intolerance. Christians have faced persecution, targeted killings – including gunmen killing a Catholic man and a priest in two separate incidents last year – forced conversions, mob violence, and destruction of their places of worship and graves by perpetrators emboldened by the absence of meaningful action from the authorities and widespread impunity.

The severe discrimination and attacks against religious minorities have led the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to designate Pakistan as a country of “particular concern”.2

Initially, Esther and I danced around each other as we tentatively discussed Israel and Palestine. My own position on the conflict since October 7 2023 is that there are many, many victims, but the villains are the Hamas terrorists and the Iranian expansionism behind them. Those in the West are determined to create a binary of Israel versus Palestine, but my opinion is that it is Iran and its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi etc) versus Israel and by extension the West. Palestinian civilians are caught in the middle and Hamas are more than happy to sacrifice them.

However, assuming that Esther was Muslim, I proceeded with caution, not really in the mood for a fight. Likewise she tentatively approached the matter in a way that seemed strangely sympathetic to Israel. Eventually, she said the words that opened up our conversation:

“What people in the West don’t know is that Muslims are no problem when they are in the minority, but that changes when they are in the majority. I know because I am a Pakistani Christian.”

I asked her what she meant and she described that the West is blind to the fact that the Islamic world do not share our determination to be tolerant. She said that in the West Muslims are generally treated with respect. They are allowed to build mosques, observe their faith uninterrupted, and are largely accepted. On the other hand, in countries where Muslims are the majority, eradication is in place of tolerance. Esther told me that apart from some left over from before the partition, Christians in Pakistan are not allowed to have churches. They build them underground instead.

Al Jazeera reports:

“The Christian minority has also been heavily persecuted under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which carry a possible death sentence for anyone found guilty of insulting Islam.”3

Esther went on to say that the West needs to understand what “jihad” means and that it is a global agenda. Adherence to Islam requires active expansion and conversion, and violence is routinely the mechanism. Her perspective is that when they get into dominant positions Islamists aggressively pursue mass conversion and the alternative is death. “There is no refusing to convert to Islam in the jihad. If you refuse, you die,” she said.

We discussed the recent Pakistani Islamist terror attacks in Kashmir and Esther expressed support for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s response saying he has to show strength because any weakness will open the door to further attacks. Modi has shut the border with Pakistan, suspended all visa service for Pakistani nationals, instructed military advisers in the Pakistani high commission to leave within a week, and expelled some Pakistani diplomats.4 Pakistan has responded in kind.

The Economist reports that the terrorists made sure their victims were Hindu:

After terrorists brutally killed 26 men in Jammu & Kashmir on April 22nd, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, did not mince his words. Breaking into English—a rarity—he warned: “India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers.” The attack was the worst strike against tourists in Kashmir since an insurgency started in 1989 against Indian rule over the territory, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan. It was the deadliest in the Muslim-majority region since a suicide-bomb targeted paramilitary forces in 2019. This time the gunmen ensured that almost all their victims were Hindu by forcing them to give their names, and seeing if they could recite Islamic verses, before killing them. 

 

Recently married to a fellow Pakistani Christian, Esther is moving to the United Kingdom shortly and she is very apprehensive. They couple visited in January and since then Esther has been increasingly anxious. She said they visited extended family in communities that were almost entirely Muslim and she told her husband that she would not live there. “What would be the point?” she asked him. “We may as well return to Pakistan if we are going to live under Islam,” she said. Her husband has promised that they will eventually settle somewhere in Britain that is actually British because their Christian faith will be accepted there.

Just reflect on that last sentence for a moment.

The West needs to wake up, in Esther’s view. She says tolerance is great and one of the things that makes everyone want to live in the West, but there is a difference between tolerance and allowing the world’s most aggressive and violent religion to create a stronghold. Once Islam has embedded itself in the West there will be no tolerance, she says. There will be no acceptance of other religions and cultures and there certainly will be zero tolerance for homosexuality.

She had not heard of Dr Gad Saad ( a Lebanese-Canadian intellectual) but her words echoed his in many ways. She spoke of the “suicide of the West”. She despaired at the reaction of young people to the October 7 attacks. “The things they are saying - they don’t understand the meaning,” Esther said. “They don’t understand that they are embracing terrorism and that their culture will be destroyed next.”

It was a fascinating conversation with someone who has spent their whole life bar the past 18 months living in a Muslim-majority country as a non-Muslim. She gave context and real life examples to some of the concerns I have about the increasing dominance of the religion in the West.

In New Zealand, Islam is a small minority religion and so, as Esther put it, they behave themselves. I prodded her to explain what she meant by this and she clarified that when in the minority Muslim communities “pretend” to embrace tolerance and the culture around them, but if you were to hear what they preach in their mosques it is often the very opposite. They hate infidels. They see the subjugation of women as the natural order of things.

“They show their true colours as soon as they have power. They demand Sharia and that the culture around them change to suit them,” Esther explained. She pointed to the UK and the growing number of Islamic leaders on councils and in Parliament. It reminded me of the bizarre focus some British MPs have had on calling for an airport be built in Pakistan as if that is a matter for British Parliament.5 Likewise, all around the West, Muslim politicians have been the most outspoken against Israel, often at odds with their country’s foreign policy. “That’s because they are Muslim first, everything else second,” says Esther.

I am very much a live and let live kind of person so long as there is not harm being done to others. I think freedom of religion is fundamental to liberal democracy and I value the tolerance that has the potential to get us in so much trouble. The attacks on the Muslim community in Christchurch by the Australian terrorist in 2019 were one of the darkest days in New Zealand’s history and totally antithetical to our broadly accepting culture. I see what Esther is saying and her warnings echo concerns I certainly have. However, the question it leaves me with is: how do we retain the tolerance and liberal democratic values that make the West great while guarding against the tyranny and terror of expansionist Islam?

References:
1  https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/muslim-population-by-country
2 https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/4/9/how-death-and-despair-haunt-pakistans-christian-minority
3 https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/4/9/how-death-and-despair-haunt-pakistans-christian-minority
4 https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c8x8yqwzznqt
5 https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-mps-campaign-build-airport-pakistan-heathrow-expansion-b1219885.html

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.