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Imran Khan
Ideology
Khan's political platform and declarations are founded on: Islamic values, to which he rededicated himself in the 1990s; liberal economics, with the promise of deregulating the economy and creating a welfare state; decreased bureaucracy and anti-corruption laws, to create and ensure a clean government; the establishment of an independent judiciary; overhaul of the country's police system; and an anti-militant vision for a democratic Pakistan.[23][24][8]
Khan has credited his decision to enter politics with a spiritual awakening, influenced by his conversations with a mystic from the Sufi sect of Islam that began in the last years of his cricket career. "I never drank or smoked, but I used to do my share of partying. In my spiritual evolution there was a block," he explained to the American Washington Post. As an MP, Khan sometimes voted with a bloc of hard-line religious parties such as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, whose leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, he supported for prime minister over Musharraf's candidate in 2002. Rehman is a pro-Taliban cleric who has called for holy war against the United States.[23]
Khan told Britain's Daily Telegraph, "I want Pakistan to be a welfare state and a genuine democracy with a rule of law and an independent judiciary."[8] Other ideas he has presented include a requirement of all students to spend a year after graduation teaching in the countryside and cutting down the over-staffed bureaucracy in order to send them to teach too.[19] "We need decentralisation, empowering people at the grass roots," he has said.[25] In June 2007, Khan publically deplored Britain for knighting Indian-born author Salman Rushdie. He said, "Western civilisation should have been mindful of the injury the writer had caused to the Muslim community by writing his highly controversial book,
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