first of all thank you for coming and talking to me I'm so happy to be in Turkey it's my
favorite country and sitting here on the bank of Bosporus in this great wonderful hotel it makes me
it gives me this feeling of at home my name is Bashar Qureshi I am originally from Pakistan but I live
in Denmark and I work with NGOs for the last 32 years working with Islamophobia anti-semitism
discrimination racism all those issues which ethnic minorities both religious and ethnic are facing in
European continent Jewish people and Christian people are people of the book in Quran this they
are called elected up we can marry with them we can have business with them we can eat with them we can
have beautiful relationship with them and we had it for thousands hundreds of years so what you are
telling me is against Islam it is against Islamic teaching and it's again our own history because
if you look at the Ottoman Empire they have been in Europe half of Europe under them and they they
showed them most of the time beautiful way of ruling the countries and then we say no no no Islam in this
if somebody insults Quran or insults Prophet we should kill him Islam does not allow that so I think we have
to unify the Muslim communities and present a picture which actually tallies with what Islam teaches yes
if there is another hadith from Prophet that to attain knowledge is every Muslims duty from cradle to the grave you
should never stop educating yourself you should never stop learning new things and Muslims should be proud
that they have a past where they have created amazing scientific development scientific discoveries but
again as long as the Muslims who are thinking rationally and thinking scientifically they were developing all the
time but no sooner this stopped and and started using culture and religion the aggregation came so my
request to the Muslim brothers and sisters is go back to the scriptures go back to the knowledge of Quran
go back what Islam teaches you so that first you become a better in son a better human being then you become
a better husband or a wife you can become a better neighbor you can become a better sports person in
every which way you will develop and this should be our aim 1960s there was a very nice a socio-economical
political cooperation between Pakistan Turkey and Iran it was called regional cooperation development
let's start there again look can you imagine that Pakistan Iran and Turkey get together not as a
country but as a federation or lose federation you have oil you have atomic power you have all the
industry in in in Turkey you have men huge manpower almost you know 400 million it will be just like
European Union and then once you have made these three different countries together and then other
countries can join it definitely immediately if because in Pakistan comes together other countries
will follow exactly and why I'm saying that in European Union they started with two countries they
started with France and Germany who after second world war were tired of killing each other so say
let's sit down and compete against each other so they made the first agreement was about iron iron and
coal coal and look where European Union why can't we look we we do we can do much better actually
there's an economic union exactly Muslim countries control 70% of the world energy resources they have
1.7 billion people they have scientists Pakistan have the fifth largest reservoir of scientists and
engineers Turkey has huge reservoir of young people so let's start there this is this is my wish and I
hope one day and Turkey should take and take a lead in that yeah I have requested yes thank you very
very much it was a great pleasure and honor thank you thank you very much thank you for into thank you