Pakistan’s former minister, Fawad Hussain Chaudhry, launched a sexist attack on Hina Rabbani Khar on social media after she was appointed as a junior foreign affairs minister in the Shehbaz Sharif cabinet. Chaudhry was the Information and Broadcasting minister in the Imran Khan government that fell after losing a no confidence motion earlier this month.
Sharing an old interview of Hina Rabbani Khar, Fawad Hussain described her as a “low IQ” woman whose only claim to fame is “Berkin bags and fancy eyeshades.”
“When you appoint a low IQ women whose only claim to fame is her Berkin bags and expensive eye shades such blunders ll become a norm, hope ll get rid of this lot sooner than later,” Fawad Hussain tweeted.
Hina Rabbani Khar was the youngest and first woman foreign minister during her tenure as a federal minister between February 2011 and March 2013. She has been once again appointed to the same position in the Shehbaz Sharif goverment, however, this time as a junior Minister of State in foreign affairs.
In that old interview with Al Jazeera shared by the PTI leader, Hina Rabbani Khar admitted that as the foreign minister, she had to face the accusation from allies that Pakistan was supporting terrorism, and there were “waves of truth” to those claims. Terming that state-sponsored terrorism was “relics of the past”, Hina Rabbani Khar also disclosed that Pakistan could not take on every terror network within the region all at the same time.
“As far as sponsoring and funding them was concerned, clearly, I would like to believe that under our watch, that was not the policy direction at all,” she said.
Essentially, Hina Rabbani Khan admitted that there was some truth in the terrorism allegation against Pakistan. However, the former minister faced immediate backlash from social media users for his vile sexist attacks on a woman.
It is important to note that Hina Rabbani Khan, who had visited India in 2011 for “peace dialogue”, had stoked a huge controversy by meeting pro-Pakistan Kashmiri separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the hardline chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, even before meeting the foreign ministry officials miffing the Indian government.