42 million signatures on Pakistani petition against terrorism

It’s gone unremarked in the media here, but a huge online petition is being run in Pakistan against terrorism. Started by the Yeh Hum Naheen (YHN) Foundation, a Pakistani NGO, it is currently growing at the rate of more than a million signatures a day, assisted by a mix of offline and online campaigning, including several thousand people around the country gathering signatures on sheets of paper, a high profile website and the ability for people to sign the petition via text message.

The straplines for the campaign are interesting, as they are clearly aimed in part at addressing support for terrorism from within Muslim communities:

Are we the ones … who turn hopes into misery?
Are we the ones … who deprive children of their fathers’ affection?
Are we the ones … who deprive mothers of their children?

(Although all online petitions are vulnerable to the occasional dodgy signature, the overall scale of support for the campaign seems credible given the steps being taken to validate signatures and the large volume of media coverage for the campaign.)

The lack of coverage for this massive campaign in the UK media raises some interesting questions. Looking for example at Google News UK for stories on the petition, a search today for “Yeh Hum Naheen petition” produced ten stories, all for Pakistani or Indian news outlets, and no story from a UK media outlet. It’s not as if Muslims and terrorism is a story the UK media is usually not interested in, but this is one that hasn’t yet got their attention.