With International Support, Could Bhutto have tamed Radical Islam and brought the Faith into the 21st Century?
Career politicians, quick to grab a sound bite, headline or airtime to push their agenda, were conspicuously silent in their support of a historical and potential ally in a terrorist infested region – until it was too late.
Quick to pay their respects to Benazir Bhutto, herald her courage and conviction to rid her country of terrorists and restore Democracy to the region, their rhetoric came too late.
Politicians in the United States and other world leaders missed a golden opportunity to back the first woman Prime Minister of a Muslim country who championed warm relations with the West and condemned Islamo-fascism, before she was assassinated.
While career politicians feared poll numbers and the PC police, Bhutto courageously campaigned for democracy and against terrorism in her country escaping several assassination attempts and eventually paid the ultimate price for her principles. Not with declining poll numbers, but with her life.
Politicians in the US, so eager to gain votes and so fearful of offending non-Christians, refused to openly back a woman who told Parade Magazine “I am what terrorists most fear.” In a post 9/11 world, it only makes sense to support a pro-West, anti-Islamo-facist leader who is seeking the highest office in a country that not only has nuclear weapons, but suffers from a militant administration that historically has strong ties to Osama Bin Laden.
During her terms in office and prior to being overthrown in 1996, Bhutto worked to rid the political system of the Taliban and other terrorist influences. Her tireless work earned her the title of “Number One Target of the Terrorists,” according to a confidant of Musharaff.
Perhaps Bhutto had a better perspective of We the People’s pulse than American politicians when she told Parade, “It is only now that America has awakened to what we are already fighting – Islamic Jihadis.”
If American politicians had shown their support for a leader who potentially could have led a pro-West, Democratic, and nuclear-armed country, perhaps Pakistan would not be the country that “keeps the State Department up at night.”
Besides the possibility that Bhutto could have had a tremendously positive impact on the war against Islamo-facisim, there is another far reaching issue that could have changed the Islamic faith and brought it into the 21st century.
As a Muslim, a female and a powerful leader, she could have been an outspoken advocate for the rights of Muslim women throughout the world. Muslim women are subjugated by Muslim men and are venerable to the risk of honor killings. Honor killings are not limited to Muslim countries. Just recently, a Texas Muslim father shot and killed his two teenage daughters, reportedly, because of their dating habits. In Canada, a Muslim father strangled his teenage daughter, purportedly, because she would not wear the Muslim head covering. The non-Muslim world reacts in disgust to such crime but meanwhile, millions of Muslim women, world wide, continue to be subjected to this culture that is from the eighth century.
With International support, could Bhutto have brought about an end to these ancient and barbaric Muslim customs that prevent women from holding jobs, requires them to cover themselves from head to toe and prevents them from going outside the house without a male family member?
Perhaps Bhutto would have been better protected and supported if the potential of her leadership in the suffrage and freedom movement for Muslim women had been predicted.
Unfortunately, political correctness has led us into an era of uncertainty in the region, where our own silence should haunt us.
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