Mumbai builder Rizvi clashes with Obama’s Islam envoy

What was supposed to be a goodwill gesture turned into an unexpected face-off between two men with distinct points of view about US policies and their historical consequences in the Muslim world.

Rashad Hussain, US president Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference (IOC), the second largest international body, was on a day’s visit to the city to deliver a lecture titled ‘The Obama Administration’s Outreach to the Muslim World’.

Meeting with the press and students of Rizvi College of Architecture, Hussain was in his element as he listed the Obama administration’s efforts in the field of education, science and technology, entrepreneurship and health to reach out to the global Muslim community and bridge the gaps created by past US
governments.

Akhtar Hasan Rizvi, prominent builder and education baron, sat calm and composed as Hussain spoke. When it was his turn on the dais, Rizvi politely welcomed his guest and gave a brief disclaimer, saying, “I welcome the move and support it but doubt the US president’s success.”

Thereafter, the general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party and former Parliamentarian didn’t mince his words, citing grouses which the Muslim community has held for decades against the US. “America gave birth to terrorism and the Jewish policy needs to be controlled,” Rizvi told a visibly shaken Hussain.

"Obama has to begin from the root. If you treat the symptom, it’ll be a temporary cure. You have to treat the disease. And that started 45 years ago,” said Rizvi, referring to America’s backing of Israel during the Palestine crisis, “There would have been no war of 1967 if you had not supported Israel.”

He added, “You gave weapons of mass destruction to Iraq against Iran and then you went hunting for them and could not find them.”

“You made nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons in order to control the whole world. First, America should correct that wrong and stop the supremacy policy,” said Rizvi.

Backing Iran’s right to produce nuclear weapons, Rizvi emphasised, “Israel has not adhered to so many resolutions. Why not pull them up? Every nation has the right to produce nuclear weapons for their survival, why stop them?” He further questioned America’s blundered policy in Vietnam, as well as its hand in creating Taliban and then fearing it.

“I apologise for what I’ve said but I have to lay down the plain facts for you to correct the wrongs you have done,” Rizvi said in the midst of considerable cheering.
 
Unable to stomach the “conspiracy theories” Rizvi brought up, Hussain responded, “In a school of architecture, the emphasis should be on building, and going forward. Not on going backward, living in the past, and spreading conspiracy theories which are dis-empowering.”

“I reject anti-Semitism. Something Islam and the Prophet rejected. To speak about an entire religious group in such a negative way is wrong and I don’t think it reflects reality,” said the envoy adding, “In a school of architecture, I would expect the future belongs to those who build and not to those who destroy.”