r/islamichistory

A secret Pakistani diplomatic cable, published for the first time on 18 May, confirms that a senior US diplomat insisted on the removal from office of former prime minister Imran Khan in 2022.

According to the cable, revealed by Drop Site News, Donald Lu, then US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, told Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Asad Majeed Khan, that "all will be forgiven" if the former PM was removed through a no-confidence vote in parliament.
The cable was sent after Khan traveled to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on 24 February 2022, the same day Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Lu stated that Khan's meeting with Putin in Moscow raised “serious concern” in Washington, as noted in the cable dated 7 March 2022 and classified as “Secret / No Circulation.”

Islamabad said Khan's Moscow trip had been planned months earlier and was unrelated to the Russian invasion, and stressed that it was pursuing a "neutral" policy toward the war.

The cable included Asad Majeed Khan's assessment that Lu had received approval from the White House to send that message. The ambassador also stated that Lu's remarks constituted interference in Pakistan's internal political affairs.

The document was forwarded to various Pakistani officials, including the prime minister's office secretary, the foreign minister, the army chief, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, and the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) division director.

Khan was ousted as prime minister in a legislative coup six weeks later, on 9 April 2022. He revealed the existence of the cable at that time, claiming his removal was part of a “US-backed regime-change operation.”
Pakistan's government grew closer to Washington in the wake of Khan's removal via a no-confidence vote.
Before his ouster, Khan had rejected a request to allow the CIA to establish drone bases on Pakistani territory that would be used to carry out attacks and assassinations.

However, after Khan's removal, Pakistan began supplying weapons to Ukraine through US defense contractors and third-country intermediaries, Drop Site News reported.

US support for Pakistan's IMF loan was tied to weapons shipments, with the IMF approving a $3 billion standby in July 2023.
Khan faces 150 legal cases. He was arrested inside the Islamabad High Court building in May 2023 and convicted just days before crucial elections in January 2024, which saw his political party, the "Movement for Justice (PTI)," banned from using its signature symbol.
Authorities also ordered journalists and television news channels not to mention Khan's party in their election coverage.

In December of last year, UN Special Rapporteur on torture Alice Jill Edwards warned that Khan was being held in prison in conditions that could amount to torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment.

Edwards stated that Khan is subjected to lengthy periods of solitary confinement in a small cell without natural light or proper ventilation. The inadequate air flow causes unpleasant odors and insect problems, resulting in Khan experiencing nausea, vomiting, and significant weight loss.

Imran Khan, a 72-year-old ex-professional cricket player, has faced major health challenges, such as a severe spinal injury from a 2013 accident and gunshot wounds sustained during a 2022 assassination attempt.

https://thecradle.co/articles-id/37772

When Syrian film-maker Soudade Kaadan first visited the Arab Hall at London’s Leighton House, in 2023, she was struck by an overwhelming feeling of familiarity. 

At the time, Kaadan — whose award-winning films include Nezouh (2022) and The Day I Lost My Shadow (2018) — was unable to travel to Syria, having been placed on a list of dissidents by the Assad regime. 

The hall, hidden behind a modest, 19th-century red-brick facade, is decorated in vibrant antique tiles from Damascus, Turkey and Iran. “I felt like I was passing through an old Damascene house and I was not a stranger somehow,” she says.

Leighton House is the former home of Victorian painter and sculptor Lord Frederic Leighton, on which he began construction in 1865. Leighton was part of the Holland Park Circle, a group of wealthy artists based in west London including GF Watts and William Burges.

Among Leighton’s early patrons was Queen Victoria, who purchased his first submission to the 1855 summer exhibition of the Royal Academy. In 1878, he became president of the RA, serving in the role for 18 years. 

Since 1929, his former home has been open to the public, showcasing Leighton’s oil paintings as well as works by other contemporaries. The Arab Hall, which was added as an extension to the main building in 1881, is approached through a foyer and reception decorated with objects from the artist’s collection: wooden panels with mother-of-pearl inlay work, a taxidermied peacock, vases, ceramics. 

A chandelier hangs from the hall’s golden domed ceiling, the space’s grand height initially obscured from view. A fountain sits underneath and the room is lined with tiles inscribed with calligraphy bearing the Islamic declaration of faith and verses from the Qur’an, while others bear floral motifs and illustrations of deer, fish and birds. 

“For me, it was the same logic of Damascene houses,” Kaadan explains. “The facade is always humble. It is when you go through a small door that you discover the fountain, the courtyard, the house, the jasmine, the tiles.” 

Kaadan, the first Arab woman to twice win awards for her films at the Venice Film Festival, has created a short film for The Arab Hall: Past and Present. The exhibition opens on 21 March and commemorates Leighton House’s centenary as a public museum managed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

When The Tiles Spoke blends documentary and magic realism, narrating the tiles’ histories before Leighton, voiced by actors Khalid Abdalla, Leem Lubany and Soad Fares. “The house that held me crumbled. Fire, perhaps, or neglect,” one of the voices intones. “Perhaps I was taken, stripped from the wall, sold as a bargain. But tell me, should history ever be put up for sale?” 

Part of a collection that Leighton purchased on travels to Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Syria in the 1860s and early 1870s, the tiles were among his several acquisitions, in addition to ceramics such as mashrabiya window screens and qamariyya stained glass windows.

Leighton’s interest in the aesthetics of the Islamicate world, exemplified in the orientalist visuals of his own paintings, was part of a wider movement of Victorian artists and designers turning eastward, concurrent with British imperialist expansion. Leighton’s journeys in the region provided him with subjects for his landscape sketches, as well as first-hand exposure to new visual traditions. 

From the 1860s onwards, proponents of the aesthetic movement in Britain looked towards Islamic decorative arts as a source of influence. Architect and designer Owen Jones’s 1842 publication on the Alhambra complex in Spain and subsequent reproduction at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition, introduced British audiences to the “decorative possibilities of architectural tiling in the Islamic tradition”, writes scholar and Leighton House trustee Melanie Gibson.

Jones’s monograph was sought after by architects and decorators, who replicated the Ibero-Islamic style of the Alhambra for “Moorish” smoking rooms, such as that of Rhinefield House in Hampshire. Textile designer William Morris remarked in 1882: “To us pattern designers, Persia has become a holy land.” 

“I think there certainly were within other houses in London suggestions of the influence of the Far East and the Near East and India, but I think nobody went to the extent that Leighton did of actually positively extending his house in order to construct a space — the Arab Hall,” says Daniel Robbins, senior curator of Leighton House. 

Also in the exhibition are a series of site-specific commissions from London-based Lebanese artist Ramzi Mallat, British-Bangladeshi artist Kamilah Ahmed, and calligrapher Soraya Syed. The inclusion of contemporary art, Robbins explains, is part of the museum’s efforts to speak to diverse audiences. 

“I think it’s very important for somewhere like Leighton House not to be seen as a moment in time and a historic, static environment, but one that actually has a life and is continuing to keep questions and issues alive and debated,” Robbins says. 

“What we’re conscious of — and obviously many museums at the moment are very preoccupied with — are questions of cultural appropriation and the circumstances in which collections were formed,” he adds. “Whatever Leighton’s motivations were, he clearly invested a great deal in the realisation of the space, and implicit in that is some sense of celebration on his part.” 

In January, when Kaadan finally returned to Damascus for the first time in 14 years, she visited the Umayyad Mosque. Having been immersed in the creative process of her film and Leighton’s tiles in the prior months, she found herself drawn to the fragments of mosaics scattered along the mosque’s walls. 

“I paused at details I had passed a thousand times without noticing,” Kaadan says. “I realised the film had quietly reshaped how I see the places I thought I knew so well.” 

The Arab Hall: Past and Present is on at Leighton House from 21 March to 4 October.