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Pakistani politics has been a place of character assassinations and public smearing for decades now. Starting from the infamous allegation of Ayub Khan stating that Fatima Ali Jinnah was a RAW agent to most recently the atrocious assassination attempt of Malala Yousufzai and its reactions – smear campaigns have been a sour reality in the history of Pakistan.
But none have ever come to par with the near decade long movement of degradation which was led by Jemima Khan from 1995 to 2004.
On 30th July 2017, Imran Khan held a rally for succeeding in a 16-month long struggle in the courts to prove corruption charges against Nawaz Sharif. In it, he gave one of the most powerful speeches I’ve heard from him. With no gloating and all praises to Allah, he began counting down from 1996 when his party launched to the most recent day, revisiting all the hurdles and obstacles he faced through the years. Among them, he said the hardest obstacle he had to face was the character assassination of his ex-wife Jemima Khan which resulted in his kids being taken away through the divorce.
Jemima Khan, who is of an English background and an heiress of a multimillion dollar estate, gave it all up to lead a normal Pakistani life in the hills of Islamabad with her cricketer turned politician husband and kids. What she got instead was a phenomenon of unfathomable filth – a woman who meant nothing but the betterment of a country that frankly, we’re running to the ground today.
On my research for this article, I found mind boggling claims through the years that the governments of Pakistan of the time made. Below you are the ‘greatest hits’ of the smear campaign against Jemima Khan that lasted for 9 years.
1995:
Jemima Khan and Imran Khan got married quietly in a wedding ceremony in London. Almost immediately Jemima got attacked from the west for converting to Islam while Imran was deemed to bring a Jewish lobby back home in Pakistan. Ironically, Jemima has always been a supporter of Palestine and although her father was Jewish, she was raised as a Christian Catholic.
1996:
Jemima launched a clothing line called Jemima Khan Designs which employed more than 700 women from impoverished backgrounds. This initiative was attacked in the press by alleging that these women were paid ‘slave wages.’ Even though Jemima made no profit from the clothing line and all revenues were given to Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital, she eventually shut down the project in 2001 by saying, “It is heartbreaking. The people who will lose out are the people I set up the company for.”
1997
The Benazir Bhutto government alleged Imran Khan of being a part of a Zionist conspiracy. Jemima recalls the incident in the following account:
My then-husband had an untarnished political record, but a wife with a Jewish father and a Jewish maiden name was his Achilles heel. A bogus cheque for £40 million, supposedly from my father to fund Imran’s campaign, appeared in all the Pakistani newspapers. The fact that he failed to win a single seat, partly thanks to the smear campaign, put paid to the accusation.
Imran experienced all the disadvantages of marrying a girl with money and, being a proud, self-sufficient type, none of the advantages.
1999
Having been pregnant with her second son, she was shipping a package from Lahore to London that contained 397 tiles. It was alleged that the tiles she had bought from Pakistan were antiques and that she was smuggling them back to England. When a receipt of the purchase was given, it did not suffice and the tiles were still confiscated with Jemima almost being charged with a nonbailable offense. The tiles were bought from a local market in Islamabad. The case was dropped after Pervez Musharraf’s coup in 1999.
2002
Jemima resumed her degree in English from the University of Bristol and in 2002, was photographed with a novel written by Salman Rushdie. He had written the infamous, Satanic Verses and was universally hated in the Muslim world because of it. She had to complete a dissertation on Mr. Rushdie for her program and thus had to study from his works, but in Pakistan, she was deemed a Rushdie apologist and sympathizer. Several statements from Jemima and Imran followed with attempts to rid themselves of such false accusations.
2004
Jemima Khan and Imran Khan split up and she filed for a divorce.
Jemima Khan tried her best to reconcile her differences but with such a hostile environment against her in Pakistan, it became really hard to live a life of dignity. At one point being deemed ‘The New Diana’ by The Guardian, she tried her best to support charity in and around Pakistan and present Pakistan to the world like it was never seen before.
With her clothing line, she was exporting Pakistani culture and beauty through fashion. Due to her marriage to the famous Imran Khan, she was showing how Pakistan was a tolerant society and being a being a Muslim woman was not so bad. Just her presence in Pakistan brought down Princess Diana herself to visit and raise funds for Shaukat Khanum. If anything Jemima did her best to present Pakistan in a light of positivity in the world only to be shot down in the homeland.
Although this isn’t a letter to Jemima Khan but more of a self-realization piece, I as a Pakistani have been time and time again reminded of the vicious acts of insults and slurs thrown at Jemima Khan. The modern Pakistan may be unjust and cruel but it’s also apologetic and on behalf of Pakistan as a nation, I want to apologize for the atrocious behaviors in the past.
We didn’t deserve Jemima Khan with her passion for Pakistan and love for its people just like we don’t entirely deserve her ex-husband. We may be thankless, but we are keen with our memory and hope to not revise such a sorrow act of history in the future. In this case, I do hope history does not repeat itself.
