DOHA, 2 March 2007 — Pakistan’s former cricketer and one of the country’s prominent politicians, Imran Khan, yesterday lambasted the narrow-minded approach of the West toward Islam.
“The West thinks Shariah is only about the penal code and cutting hands. An ideal Islamic country governed by Shariah ought to be a sovereign and welfare state where everyone is equal in the eyes of law,” Khan said in a lively onstage interview at the Forbes CEO Middle East Forum.
The former cricketer, who was interviewed by Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes magazine, USA, said the period of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and the four rightly-guided caliphs was the golden period in Islamic history. A nation governed by Shariah is not the one where the elite are above the law and all the policies are framed for them, he said.
“Compassion and justice are the bases of Shariah... In an Islamic state, law is applicable to all. Two of the four caliphs even appeared in court and one of them lost a case against a Jew,” he elaborated.
Imran Khan, who led his country to a thrilling win in the 1992 World Cup against all odds, is the chairman and founder of Pakistan’s only cancer hospital built in the mid-1990s and dedicated to Khan’s mother Shaukat Khanum, who died of cancer.
The Oxford-educated Khan said that democratic rule is fundamental to Islam and that an ideal Islamic nation is no different from the West’s concept of a welfare state. Imran said his Tehrik-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice) party will launch a mass awakening drive against the current regime in Pakistan ahead of national elections slated to be held by the year-end.
