Zaid Hamid goes on 24-hour anti-Shia sectarian ‘analysis’

By
Abdullah Niazi
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Media personality and self proclaimed ‘defence analyst’ Zaid Hamid has over the past 24 hours made what he himself described as an ‘analysis’ of the sectarian divided in Pakistan. The analysis, which was made using a series of tweets, has been met with confusion and questions as to what he is actually trying to say.

The tweets came in the wake of demands by protestors in Parachinar for the army to move out and for the Shia population in the Kurram agency capital to form their own militias to defend themselves from sectarian terrorist attacks.

Hamid, who is known for his aggressively nationalist rhetoric and his rather farfetched conspiracy theories, spent a span of more than 24 hours beginning from Tuesday evening where he tweeted exclusively and excessively about the sectarian issues of the country. The series of mean spirited and foul mouthed tweets were full of claims of Hindu-Zionist conspiracies and other outlandish such statements.

The problem here lies that Zaid Hamid has a widely followed social media presence and his name was one of the top trending searches in Pakistan on Wednesday.What was worrying however were the many strongly worded statements that were made clearly against the Shia Muslim community. What was even scarier was when he refused to acknowledge what he had said by twisting the meaning of his own words.

And while Zaid Hamid did make sure to use a number of tweets as qualifying statements, they were almost as useful as people that say “I’m not racist but . . .” In Zaid Hamid’s case, the times he praised Iran’s Supreme Leader or claimed he was equivalent to ‘superman’ for the Shia community over the past few years, it was as good as saying “I’m not sectarian but . . .”

Hamid even managed to get into an altercation with PTI leader Dr Shireen Mazari who asked the FIA to look into Hamid’s anti-Shia rhetoric.

 

Zaid Hamid began what can only be described as his rant on Tuesday evening starting with discussing how the actions of the protestors in Parachinar and their demands are against the national interests of Pakistan. When he was met with criticism he turned to describing the shia community as ‘insincere’ to the Pakistani cause. It was only when he got a lot of negative feedback from these comments that he began to make qualifying statements to seem less biased.

The sequence of tweets continued well over 24 hours with the last one coming less than an hour from the publishing of this piece.

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