A few years ago the world, or at least the more sensible parts of it was highly entertained by the claim by an Islamic extremist, Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, that Jews, in the form of the Israeli security entity Mossad, were trying to drive him mad by stealing his shoes at night. Bukhari was quite rightly mocked for his ludicrous claim that evil Jews were creeping into his bedroom at night and removing one of his shoes in order to discombobulate him. Shoe memes abounded online at the time that Bukhari made this claim and he was held up as a prime example of the sort of Islamic lunatic who blames ‘the Jews’ for just about everything, including missing shoes.
Now it seems that the Islamic world is being rocked by yet another shoe related scandal, this time from Pakistan where a slipper allegedly belonging to Islam’s founder Mohammed has not turned up since it was stolen 16 years ago. The Al-Arabiya news outlet (h/t ROP) is reporting that the slippers, said by many Muslims to have belonged to their ideology’s founder, have still not been located and returned to the mosque where they were being displayed and that Pakistani police believe that this theft may well have been ‘an inside job’.
Having read the news report on the missing slippers it’s pretty obvious that there are zero Jews involved here, just thieving Pakistanis. However, I am surprised that Islamic elements in Pakistan have not blamed ‘the Jews’ for this on the grounds that anti-Semitic conspiracy theories appear to be quite popular in Pakistan with Jews and Israel often blamed for problems in Pakistan which in reality have their roots in Pakistan’s Islamic culture and the corruption and incompetence with which this nation is governed.
Al Arabiya said:
Shocked by the case of Prophet Mohammad’s slippers missing from Pakistan’s iconic royal mosque for 16 years and angered by inability of country’s law enforcement agencies to recover them, Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court has formed a Joint Interrogation Team (JIT) to probe into the case.
“Chief Justice of Supreme Court has formed a JIT comprising of officials from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Military Intelligence and senior police officials to probe missing slippers of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH),” a press statement issued from Supreme Court stated on Sunday.
“We can’t even protect Prophet Muhammad’s slippers. What a shame,” Chief Justice Saqib Nisar remarked on Sunday. A pair of slippers, believed to have been used by Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), had gone missing from Pakistan’s Badshahi Mosque (royal mosque) on July 30, 2002.
Al Arabiya then went onto describe that the slippers which were on display in a glass case at a mosque in Lahore and were venerated by Muslim visitors, were taken from their case one day by thieves and were never seen since. The case has been investigated for sixteen years by Pakistani police but to no avail. Despite the investigation no sign of the culprits nor the slippers themselves have turned up.
This theft it seems is one of a number of cases where historically significant or valuable articles have gone missing from Pakistani museums which includes millions of dollars worth of ancient jewellery and other artefacts. Al Arabiya reports that there is are strong suspicions among Pakistanis that this was an inside job and that someone in authority either at the mosque or with political power may have been involved in the slipper theft.
If you see Mo’s missing slippers then please return them to the Royal Mosque, Lahore, Pakistan, I’m sure that they will be grateful for their return. They are probably in the hands of the sort of private collectors who have little moral qualms about hanging onto stolen goods but if you do manage get hold of them then return them to Pakistan, although preferably not via Mossad.
