How Pakistan's Imran Khan is making a career in controversial, meaningless and avoidable comments

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been on news ever since the Taliban took over Afghanistan on 15 August. His party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and he have endorsed the takeover, describing it as ‘Afghanistan has broken the shackles of slavery’. While his statement raised eyebrows across the world, it does not come as a surprise given his three years in office have been interspersed with such controversial, sometimes hilarious, comments. Let’s look at a few: Beef with technology Khan recently linked sexual assault with the misuse of mobile phones. While speaking about the ‘correct usage’ of modern technology, Khan on 25 August said sexual crimes are on the rise in Pakistan due to the “misuse” of mobile phones. Victim shaming In June this year, Khan in an interview with Axios’ journalist Jonathan Swan on HBO said, “If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact on the man unless they are robots. It’s common sense.” Following widespread flak, he backtracked on his remark saying he would “never say such a stupid thing.” Fake video Khan also hit the headlines when he shared a six-year-old video shot in Bangladesh from his verified Twitter handle in 2020 with the line, “Indian police’s pogrom against Muslims in UP.” ‘Slip of tongue’ Khan courted controversy when he described slain Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden a ‘ shaheed’ (martyr) while speaking in the Parliament. Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry later clarified that it was a “slip of the tongue”. West is to blame Khan has recently blamed the English medium education system , inherited from the colonial rulers, for distancing him from his religion and culture. He said the British built such schools to “create an elite class in (undivided) India which is Indian in colour but thinks like us (the British), has our attitudes and through whom we can govern such a big continent”. In a similar vein, earlier this year, in an interview with Geo News, Khan said sexual violence was a product of ‘obscenity,’ which he described as a Western import. Population goof-up Earlier this month Khan said, “New Zealand with a population of 40-50 lakh defeated India with a population of 1 billion and 300 crore in the World Test Championship final.” India has a population of around 136 crore or 1.3 billion.

Poor analogy In November 2018, in response to criticism against his constant U-turns on several issues, Khan compared himself with Nazi and Fascist leaders, Hitler and Napoleon. He said, “One who doesn’t take decisions according to the demand of the situation is not a true leader. Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte would not have suffered losses in wars in Russia if they had taken U-turns,” he remarked. “Leaders should always be ready to take U-turns according to the requirement of their duties and best interests of the nation.” Geography gone wrong In 2018, Khan during a speech at the Envoys Conference on Economic Diplomacy in Islamabad referred to Arica as an “emerging country.” In 2019, again, while speaking at an event in Tehran, during his two-day official visit to Iran, Khan said Germany and Japan share borders.

More from World

US, China reach TikTok framework deal, Trump teases Friday call with Xi ‘Bullying, economic coercion’: China slams Trump pressure on Europe for 100% tariff over Russian oil

Praising China In 2018 again, Khan was heavily trolled for claiming that China is about to make trains that will run faster than light.

Here’s Imran Khan talking about lightspeed trains.  pic.twitter.com/2rYVD1toJ6 — Haider Abbasi (@HaiderKAbbasi)  November 23, 2018

Row over Christianity  The Pakistan prime minister again stirred up a row in the same year when he said that there was no mention of ‘Jesus’ in recorded human history. Incorrect attribution Dawn called out Khan when he claimed, Nobel Prize-winning Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal likened Pakistan’s development to California’s. It said, “the problem is that Myrdal never wrote a book by that title, or made any such claim. The closest he comes is a three-volume work called Asian Drama: an Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, written during the Ayub years, with a sobering chapter on Pakistan.”