The Pakistani government has condemned the “premeditated” murder of four members of a Pakistani-origin Canadian family in Canada and called the incident an act of terrorism.

Condemning the incident, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said the incident revealed “the growing Islamophobia in western countries.” He added that the issue needed to be “countered holistically by the international community,” Dawn reported.

A Canadian police officer told media that there was evidence that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate. “We believe the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith,” he added.

The issue was discussed in the country’s parliament where leaders from both opposition and government condemned the act. “The only fault of the dead was that they were Muslims,” Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the country’s foreign minister, said in parliament. He also called on Muslim countries around the world to take a collective approach to address Islamophobia. 

Reminding previous incidents of hate crimes in western countries, Qureshi said that western countries may call it an act of individual incident. “But this was not an individual act. The trajectory shows that this is a rising trend and it is concerning,” he said. 

(SAM)