Magid Shihade

English | اردو Pakistan and Palestine have more in common than some in Pakistan care to recognize.  Whenever I visit the United States, I find that Americans often mix-up Palestine and Pakistan. Their stupidity and inability to differentiate between the two countries is characteristic of what Edward Said defined as Orientalism: “they” all look the same, they all sound the same, and their names sound the same. Yet, such mistakes can also be helpful, because there is indeed much in common between the two sites: one is a colony, and the other is a post-colony—both of a particular kind. Both places are tied to imperialism. Pakistan was born out of British imperialism that created a state for the Muslims of India. Palestine became colonized under British imperialism to create a “state for the Jewish people.” In the case of Pakistan, Muslims were already living in the area. For Palestine, Jews had to be imported from Europe as settlers to make the idea of a state for the Jewish people possible. In the first case—Pakistan— there was a reality, but this reality could have been dealt with in a different way. In the second case, the reality had to be invented from scratch. […]