Daily Times Editorials 21th September 2026

‘Self-Inflicted Pain’

In a recorded televised message on Sunday, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb warned that the protests and marches gathering around Islamabad could cost Pakistan around Rs120 billion every day. Jamaat-i-Islami has set out against the petroleum levy, PTI is preparing its September 27 mobilisation, hundreds of containers have been positioned around the capital, and hospitals have been placed on high alert. The familiar Islamabad protest season is back.

The Planning Commission estimates losses of Rs 86 billion a day in services, Rs 25 billion in industry and Rs 9 billion in agriculture, besides a further Rs 17 billion hit to revenues. Even so, anyone who has watched Islamabad shut down over the past two decades knows that the damage is hardly theoretical. A daily wager does not recover yesterday’s wage. A truck stranded on an arterial road still runs up costs. Perishable produce has a clock of its own, while an overseas client has little patience for unreliable connectivity.

The Islamabad High Court has now drawn a fairly clear line. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. Occupying highways, interchanges and public places in a manner that blocks movement, business, hospitals and schools is not. The court has also barred provincial governments from putting public resources behind such marches.Send Money Overseas

However, the government weakens that case when prevention begins to swallow the political space it is supposed to protect. Police are monitoring guest houses, bus terminals, transport providers and potential suppliers of food and lodging. Preventive detention orders have been issued under the MPO, Section 144 has been imposed in Punjab, four PTI activists have been arrested in Islamabad after police alleged violence during a raid, and Aleema Khan has been detained for 30 days under a public-order order. Authorities have every right to act against violence. Detaining people before an offence has been committed raises a different question.

Those at the helm should also realise that protests do not grow in an economic vacuum. JI is agitating against a petroleum levy at a time when taxes and duties amount to roughly Rs 114 per litre on petrol and Rs 100 on diesel. Nonetheless, PTI’s mobilisation is political and centred on Imran Khan’s release and what it calls constitutional supremacy.

The opposition has obligations of its own. If the petroleum levy is to go, what replaces the revenue? If a dispute concerns a conviction, what lawful route resolves it? Crowds create pressure. Sadly, they do not answer those questions.

The finance minister calls the coming disruption “self-inflicted pain.” After 2014, Faizabad and every container wall since, Pakistan should know exactly what that means. *

Rising Islamophobia

Italy is preparing to ban full-face coverings such as the niqab and burqa in schools and place a ceiling on the number of foreign students allowed in individual classrooms. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says the measures are about integration: pupils should attend school with their faces visible, foreign children should learn Italian, and no tradition should be allowed to suppress young women.

It goes without saying how problematic it would be for citizenship to become a measure of integration. Many pupils classified as foreign were born in Italy, speak Italian and have known no other home. If language is the problem, test language. If schools need more support, provide it.

In addition, Austria has also begun enforcing a headscarf ban for girls under 14, despite an earlier version being struck down by its Constitutional Court.

Meanwhile, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found that 47 per cent of Muslim respondents in 13 countries had experienced racial discrimination during the previous five years, up from 39 per cent in 2016. Austria recorded 71 per cent, Germany 68 per cent and Finland 63 per cent. Among Muslim women aged 16 to 24 who wore religious clothing, 58 per cent reported discrimination while looking for work.

Britain offers another warning, with 5,837 verified anti-Muslim incidents recorded in 2024. In London alone, 1,031 reports were recorded in the first six months of 2026, already exceeding the total for all of 2023. British police this week also charged a man over alleged religiously aggravated damage targeting five Muslim organisations and venues. Across the Atlantic, the Council on American-Islamic Relations received 8,683 complaints of anti-Muslim bias in 2025, the highest annual number in its records dating back to 1996. Official US data separately show that religion accounted for 22.9 per cent of victims in single-bias hate-crime incidents in 2025.

The United Nations may have recognised the problem. Pakistan helped secure March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia in 2022. The General Assembly adopted another resolution in 2024 calling for legislative and policy measures, and a UN Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia was appointed in 2025. António Guterres warned this March again that Muslims face institutional discrimination, biased immigration policies, profiling and growing anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Yet the machinery remains largely declaratory. An international day can focus attention, but it cannot compel governments to change discriminatory laws, publish progress reports or face a dedicated enforcement process when anti-Muslim prejudice hardens into policy.

That is what makes Italy’s direction worth watching. Integration is a legitimate goal. Language, identification and school discipline are legitimate concerns. They become something else when Muslims repeatedly emerge as the community for whom exceptional rules appear necessary. *