A self-styled “Lord” and a millionaire teenager, Aleem Iqbal, more commonly known as Lord Aleem, was invited to deliver an inspirational talk on entrepreneurship by the Entrepreneurial Society at LUMS last night. When the society began publicizing the event on the university’s discussion forums, a number of people criticized the organizers for inviting a “self-proclaimed lord” who does not have any accomplishments of his own and merely functions on “what’s my father’s is mine”; his father has been running a luxury car hire business in the West Midlands, United Kingdom, for the past several years.
A day before the talk, “Lord” Aleem tweeted that he was in his full element and ready to confront the “know-it-alls” at LUMS.
Meanwhile, some of the LUMS students took to Twitter to express their frustration over the upcoming talk that had become the talk of the town by then. Amidst all of this, a student tweeted about how glad she was, now that the students were finally questioning the authenticity of the talk. To which, “Lord” Aleem had following to say:
While it’s understandable that “Lord” Aleem wanted to justify his position, telling someone that you would like to embarrass them in front of their entire university (just because they do not hold a good opinion of you) instead of engaging in a healthy debate, is questionable. Specifically for someone who was invited to deliver an “inspirational” lecture in the first place.
The problem further aggravated when he asked where this girl was during his talk to which, the student had the following reply.
However, it is important to look at the situation objectively before arriving at any conclusion.
According to one of the attendees, “During the talk someone asked him about his Syrian bread project and he explained how it was about distributing flour to the Syrian refugees who he went out to see in Lebanon. He mentioned how poorly they were living their lives and how even his pet dog in Pakistan had better living conditions, to which a guy in the audience started laughing. “Lord” Aleem found this to be offensive and therefore, asked him to get up and leave.”
Whatever it is that prompted the laugh, people on both sides could have handled the situation a little more gracefully without having to say things like “silly silly girl”, “butt-hurt” or “fool”.
Now, LUMS Students have started adding “Lord” to their twitter handles, as a show of their disapproval to what happened before, during and after the talk. Here’s hoping we have more peaceful, friendly and engaging talks at LUMS rather than fiascoes like the one above.
Fingers crossed.
Cover Image Via: mirror.co.uk