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Few were surprised when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a war of words against his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, following October's brutal murder of the Parisian schoolteacher Samuel Paty after he showed his class controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. The world has largely reconciled itself to Ankara’s abrasive brand of politics. Yet Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s subtler echo of Mr Erdogan’s words over the past several weeks has raised eyebrows, as did his government’s seeming accommodation of clerical protests on Islamabad’s streets, demanding a boycott of French goods.
The general perception of Mr Khan as a cosmopolitan leader is one of the reasons for this surprise. But as the anthropologist Pnina Werbner noted in her 1995 study of the cricketer-turned-philanthropist-turned-politician, Mr Khan is not someone who attempts to reconcile different worlds. Instead, he occupies many at once. The image of a clean-shaven English public school boy, Oxford graduate and international sportsman co-exists with that of a nationalistic leader who often bats for religious values and traditional culture.