Washington: In the wake of anti-America protests in many parts of the world over an anti-Islam film, the US needs to rethink about its concept of free speech, Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has said.
“It is not good enough to say it’s free speech, it should be allowed. I think if this does provoke action against American citizens or Americans anywhere else in the world, then maybe we do need to rethink how much freedom is OK,” Khar told the CNN in an interview.
Reuters
Khar was responding to questions on violent anti-US protests in cities across Pakistan against the film made in the US.
Though the Obama Administration has termed the video as “disgusting” and said that the US has nothing to do with this video, it refused to ban such a movie arguing that freedom of speech is enshrined in its constitution.
“Is freedom to the extent of harming lives also OK? So, I think we need to find a way to manage this in a civilized manner in trying to bring all of our, you know, all of our minds together,” Khar said.
“I think what we need is more tolerance for each other’s views. What we need is to be able to give mutual space for us to be able to demonstrate what is culturally, religiously important to us and not to hold each other, not to judge each other for that.
“To give that space and to be able to create some space for ourselves. And really we have to be sensitive to religious sensitivities,” she said.
Khar said she does not want to “go deeper into discussion” when asked one does not see massive demonstration or violence emerging because of ugly things that are said about other religions in the Arab and Muslim world, whether Christians or Jews.
PTI
