Press baron wants India to be defeated in a nuclear war

India is Pakistan's eternal enemy. Unless we defeat it in a nuclear war, it will keep plotting conspiracies against Pakistan, said Mr Majeed Nizami, the owner of the Nawa-i-Waqt, The Nation, and Waqt TV channel, while addressing a function in his honour (Nawa-i-Waqt, June 24). Our missiles and nuclear bombs are superior to India's ghosts, so tackling India is imperative, he declared. "Don't worry if a couple of our cities are also destroyed in the process."

Dr Mujahid Kamran, vice chancellor, Punjab University, Syed Asif Hashmi, chairman, Evacuee Trust Property Board, Bushra Rahman, MNA, Niaz Hussain Lakhvera, director, Lahore Art Council, Pervez Malik, PML-N MNA and finance secretary, Shoaib Bhutta, a staunch journalist friend and fan of President Zardari, and Khushnood Ali Khan, chief editor of Jinnah newspaper, paid glowing tributes to the "living legend". Mr Bhutta blasted the Jang Group by saying that Aman ki Asha was a conspiracy to turn Pakistan into Hindus' slave. "They want to annihilate the two-nation theory." Only Majeed Nizami can stop the Hindu culture from entering Pakistan in the garb of Aman ki Asha, he added. Pervez Malik described Mr Nizami as the most credible (motabir) personality in Pakistan. He also praised Mr Nizami's position on the Kashmir issue, saying that it deserved to be followed by everybody. Only Majeed Nizami's power and force can save Pakistan, said Mr Lakhvera. Khushnood Ali Khan said that one of the missiles should be named after Mr Nizami.

Mr Nizami has changed his rationale for initiating a nuclear war with India. The Nawa-i-Waqt (Nov 5, 2008) quoted him as saying: "Pakistan should not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to wrest Kashmir from India". He had also said that his fondest wish was to turn himself into a nuclear bomb and get dropped on India. In the 1980s, General Zia once invited him to accompany him to India. He angrily turned down the invitation saying "If I ever go to India, I will travel by tank."

As for his position on the Kashmir issue, the Nawa-i-Waqt (Mar 8, 2008) quoted him as saying that "Kashmir is our jugular vein. Anybody who shows flexibility on this issue is a traitor." So all those Pakistanis who do not have a totally uncompromising position on Kashmir are traitors. It will be pretty hard even for shining patriots like Nawaz Sharif and Mushahid Hussain to escape the epithet.

Jang columnist accuses Ahmadi leaders of anti-Pakistan conspiracies

In Jang's issue of June 15, Haroonur Rasheed, one of the most popular columnists in Pakistan, condemned a "prestigious" Karachi-based magazine for writing that the Ahmadis were facing a Spanish Inquisition-style situation in Pakistan. Before launching his tirade, he did not bother to look up the word inquisition in the dictionary. He incorrectly translated it as "naslkooshi". Naslkooshi is called genocide in English. As for the inquisition, it is mazhabi ihtisaab or mazhabi ta'azeeb. Mr Haroonur Rasheed has declared that Ahmaidyyat is British imperialism's "khoodsaakhta pauda" or self-made (sic) plant. What a contradiction! If it is a self-growing (not self-made) plant, then the British must not have anything to do with it. By the way, instead of khoodsaakhta (self-made), the right Urdu word would have been "khoodro" (self-growing).

Without citing a shred of evidence, he claimed that the current Ahmadi leadership is flourishing under the patronage of MI6 and the CIA. "Ahmadi leadership's relations with Israel are no secret and that it has been involved in anti-Pakistan conspiracies." It proves yet again that in Pakistan's Urdu press you can write anything against the minorities and get away with it.

He also asserted that Muslims of the subcontinent always considered Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. He approvingly quoted Iqbal's letter to Nehru as saying that "Qadianis are traitors to Islam and India." If Ahmadis are really so bad, then why did the founder of Pakistan made the Ahmadi leader Sir Zafarullah Khan (1893-1985) the first foreign minister of Pakistan, who served in that position until 1954? Why did the Muslim League government crush the anti-Ahmadi movement of 1953? How come Mr Jinnah did not declare Ahmadis to be non-Muslims immediately after Pakistan's creation? Why did he describe Zafarullah Khan as his son? How had the same Zafarullah Khan become the president of the All India Muslim League in 1931?

Interestingly, the columnist defended Fauzia Wahab, the PPP information secretary, against mullahs' fatwas, arguing that she was incapable of saying anything theologically objectionable because Hazrat Imdadullah Muhajir Makki (1817-1899), one of the founder of the Deobandi school of thought, was her ancestor. What an impeccable logic!

Hindus, Jews and Christians cannot be Muslims' well-wishers

The Nawa-i-Waqt (June 6) editorially quoted Herman Van Rompuy, the EU president, as saying that the EU would increase Pakistan's economic assistance by 50% but Pakistan could not be provided "trade access" to EU because the WTO would object to it, on the grounds that a country that does not meet the requirements was being given the facility. After these lines the paper declared that Hindus, Jews and Christians can have differences among themselves but they are all solidly united on one thing: the destruction of the Muslims. "Expecting anything good from them amounts to living in a fool's paradise."

This is an excellent example of the persecution complex that Pakistan's Urdu press promotes day in day out. The paper probably wants Pakistan to cut itself off from the rest of the world. Maybe it is inspired by the glorious example of Burma. If paper's asssertion is really true, then why doesn't the OIC pass a resolution, telling its members to sever diplomatic relations with Hindu, Jewish and Christian countries? What about the People's Republic of China? Its people are not even ahl-i-kitab (people of the book)? It is an atheist country. Under the Sharia, a Muslim can marry a Christian or Jewsih woman, but not an atheist.What about Pakistan's excellent relations with Nepal, which until recently was the only declared Hindu state in the world?

Gen. Qayyum cites fake quotations against Jews

In his Nawa-i-Waqt column of June 18, Lt. Gen. Abdul Qayyum (ret), former chiarman of Pakistan Steel Mills, approvingly quoted Adolph Hitler as saying: "I could have annihilated all the Jews in the world, but I left some of them so that you can know why I was killing them."

The general 's anti-Semitism knows no bounds. He also approvingly quoted Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the founding fathers of the United States, against Jews. This is what Mr Franklin purportedly said:

There is a great danger for the United State of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain. I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews forever, your children and your children's children will curse you in their graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans, even when they lived among us for ten generations. The Jews are a danger to this land, and if they are allowed to enter, they will imperil our institutions. They should be excluded by the Constitution.

There is one problem with these quotations: they are fake. According to Wikipedia, Mr Franklin's purported anti-Jewish speech is sometimes is called the Franklin Forgery. It first appeared in 1934 in the pages of William Pelley's pro-Nazi weekly magazine Liberation.

In the same column, the general also wrote that out of 57 Muslim countries, 31 have diplomatic relations with Israel. Both these claims are totally wrong. First, there are no 57 Muslim countries. At least ten of the OIC members are Muslim-minority countries and the number of Muslims countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel is much smaller. He made another bizarre claim: Zionists poisoned many prophets. He does not seem to be aware that the Zionist movement was founded in 1897 by Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an Austro-Hungarian journalist.

This column is a truly sad commentary on Pakistan's Urdu press. It shows that Pakistan's Urdu newspapers don't give a damn about factual accuracy. The institution of fact checking does not exist at all. Consequently, readers are constantly fed inaccuracies and falsehoods