Denouncing Islamic-extremism, Sohail Raza of reformist, Muslims Facing Tomorrow
Channel: Democracy Broadcasting
Date: 2018-09-11

http://DemocracyBroadcasting.com Q: Mr Rasa what country do you come from originally? 
A: I come from Pakistan. I lived my youth and studied there and in 1978, I left Pakistan fearing the rise of extremism which came about during the reign of General Zia-ul-Haq. He imported the extremist message from Saudi at that time into Pakistan and women started covering up, alcohol was banned and other forms of extreme Islamic ideology crept in. 
Q: Most Americans are not aware that the son of UCLA Professor Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist who went looking for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan. 
Were they helped, was al-Qaeda helped by the ISI?
A:  Absolutely yes, and that is the sad part. The mullah, the clerics, the mullah and military alliance.  The ISI is also disunited in a certain way that the official version means maybe something different, but there are splinter groups that definitely help terrorist organizations because they used them in Afghanistan and they used them in Kashmir.  So it is to their advantage to keep them happy and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was one of them-  and Danny Pearl did an excellent job in investigating. Actually he went with a friend of mine, Asra Nomani, also from The Wall Street Journal, a Pakistani, and they did a terrific investigation into Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and eventually it ended up in not very pleasant circumstances.
Q:  Why in your view did they behead Daniel Pearl?
A:  The first reason is because he was a Jew - and the supposed animosity between Judaism and Islam which does not exist - even in the Quran it does not exist - and the sooner the two work together the better it is will be for the peace in the world - that is the one reason because he was Jewish because he was American and they wanted to make a statement - and they did.
Q: You started off claiming that they killed him because he was a Jew but the Quran preaches otherwise but what's the wider held belief towards Jews in the Muslim world?
A: The wider held belief is that of total ignorance. A person who's spouting hate against Jews in Israel-  I can bet you anything he doesn't even know where in the map Israelis or what is the history of the Jews.  It comes through total ignorance this animosity and it plays into the hands of Muslim politicians whether in the Arab world or in Pakistan or Malaysia or Indonesia. 
It plays into the hands because that is the supposed enemy and it is very easy to build a hysteria and a mob against Israel or the Jews.

Q: So President Trump has declared that he's cutting support to Pakistan. Hasn’t  Pakistan been one of the primary benefactors of American foreign aid over the past 20 years? 
Yes, and one of the better words to describe Pakistan would be a “frenemy”- a friendly enemy. So Pakistan has always played a double game- it has taken aid from the United States of America to build its military. But on the other hand, it is also in the game of appeasing terrorists or terrorist organizations to play its own politics vis a vis India and Afghanistan and Iran to a certain extent.

Q:  Who is A.Q. Khan? 
A:  A.Q Khan is the father of the nuclear program in Pakistan. He stole nuclear secrets from the Netherlands and went about to Pakistan to develop a nuclear bomb. And a lot of people don't know that when we talk about North Korea and we talk about the nuclear program in Iran, it is A.Q. Khan that has sold nuclear secrets to both North Korea and Iran. 
Q: Hasn’t it been referred to as the “Islamic bomb” that originated in Pakistan - where did he spread it within the Muslim world?
A: Well he wanted to spread it more into Libya, into Saudi Arabia but he was stopped and brought in to check. Now he is considerably restrained but the damage has already been done.