Imran Khan and the Islamophobia industry that buried him

There is a peculiar genius among certain Muslim intellectuals in the West: they can detect Islamophobia everywhere except where naming it might cost them something. In Paris, they are forensic. In Delhi, incandescent. In Gaza, thunderous. In Washington, fluent in the grammar of empire. But when Muslim political agency is crushed in Pakistan, when Imran Khan is imprisoned and millions of his supporters are treated as civic contamination, the vocabulary collapses. The seminar goes quiet. The footnotes flee the scene. The prophetic tradition, so frequently invoked in safer venues, is quietly folded into hand luggage until the next fundable outrage. Khan need not be romanticized to recognize the betrayal. One can criticize him, reject parts of his politics, even dislike […]