Video: Nationwide Protest in Pakistan in Support of Imran Khan: Largest Rally in the History of Peshawar City, in the History of the Province of the Pashtun People

By Junaid S. Ahmad

Global Research, April 14, 2022

This, of course, follows the largest single-day nationwide protests in Pakistan last Sunday.

I hope our friends in Western alternative media will be so gracious (and self-correcting) to permit us all to put to rest now, the idea that these demonstrators are limited to the ‘educated’ and ‘urban middle class’, disconnected from the rest of Pakistan. And just by the way, I’m not sure why these labels are deployed so disapprovingly – especially by progressive Pakistani pundits who inhabit that same social class.

Almost half of Pakistanis are ‘urban’ by this point, which would obviously make them an important support base. And it’s quite bizarre why the term ‘educated’ is used either pejoratively or to associate it exclusively with the ‘middle class.’ A majority of Pakistanis from the lower classes are educated (but don’t necessarily have the ‘cultural capital’ or patronage networks of those above them to get good jobs), and a significant chunk of our upper classes have never felt the need for formal education.

We’ve also been given the impression that only dominant class and ethnic groups are the ones coming out in support of Khan. The Pashtuns, who Pakistani progressives have correctly considered to have been brutalized and marginalized by the ‘War on Terror,’ seem to be blinded by some ‘false consciousness’ (ostensibly, just like all of the non-‘urban middle class’ demonstrators) since they have come out on the streets in the hundreds of thousands on Wednesday evening.

I hope and pray that the Pakistani liberal-left and their very friendly hosts in Western alternative media carry on with caricatures of Khan till their hearts’ content, but go easy on the millions of demonstrators who don’t deserve the disparaging mischaracterizations to which they’ve been subjected.

Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion, Law, and Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.