Pakistan PM Imran Khan urges the Muslim world to unite and use trade boycotts to force the West to pass blasphemy laws to protect the Prophet

From Dawn and the Daily Mail

MULTAN: Prime Minister Imran Khan says he has a different approach to tackle Islamophobia unlike a religious party’s pressure to expel the French ambassador and is determined to make it work.

“My way is to take heads of all Muslim countries into confidence. Together, we should ask Europe, the European Union and United Nations to stop hurting the feelings of 1.25 billion Muslim like they do not do in case of Jews,” he said while addressing a ceremony to inaugurate the south Punjab civil secretariat here on Monday,

“I want the Muslim countries to devise a joint line of action over the blasphemy issue with a warning of trade boycott of countries where such incidents will happen. This will be the most effective way to achieve the goal.”

Mr Khan said his government was already working on this issue as Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had discussed it with the foreign ministers of four Muslim countries. 

‘We need to explain why this hurts us, when in the name of freedom of speech they insult the honour of the prophet,’ Imran Khan said in a televised address on Monday. When 50 Muslim countries will unite and say this, and say that if something like this happens in any country, then we will launch a trade boycott on them and not buy their goods, that will have an effect.’ 

He said the approach adopted by the banned Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan to get the ambassador expelled by pointing a gun at the government was never a workable solution to the issue.

Khan said insulting Islam’s Prophet should be treated in the same way as questioning the Holocaust, which is a crime in some European countries.