August 31-September 06, 2012 - Vol. XXIV, No.

29

Analysis

By Khaled Ahmed

Religious intolerance

The
people
who
target
religiou
s
minoriti
es in
Pakista
n had
been
nurture
d as
the
state's
proxy
warrior
s; the
state
then
surrend
ered to
them
its
monop
oly of
violenc
e

A decaying state kills its

minorities
A 150-strong mob of pious Muslims in Islamabad committed vandalism, baying for
the blood of a mentally challenged Christian child Ramsha because they thought she
had burned the Quran. The police had her under arrest pretending it was for her own
security. Earlier, a mad 'blaspheming' man in Bahawalpur was taken out of jail and
burned to death. After the imposition of the Blasphemy Law the first major case was

also against a 14 year old Christian boy in Gujranwala who had to be smuggled
abroad to prevent him from being killed.
According to World Minority Rights Report 2011, Pakistan ranks as the 6th worst country after some African states in
respect of safety and rights of minorities. This includes non-Muslims, those the state has dubbed non-Muslim, and
women. Ironically, this behaviour also includes persecution of non-Muslims through forced conversion to Islam,
through forcible marriages of non-Muslim girls to Muslims, and apparently willing conversion of non-Muslims to Islam
to secure themselves against persecution.
Hindus of Sindh have tried to migrate to India. (Nearly 568 FIRs for forced marriages were lodged last year across 40
districts of Pakistan, with the majority of such cases having been filed in Sindh.) Instead of sympathising with such
fugitives, the liberal PPP government suspected them of being disloyal to Pakistan and stopped them - for some time
- from visiting India. Hindus are the largest minority community in Sindh.
The minister who did that himself fears being killed by the elements who hunt Pakistan's Hindu community. The
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's Balochistan chapter has identified an ongoing exodus of Hindu families from
Quetta too due to fear of kidnappings for ransom, yet the Balochistan government does not seem to be doing much to
address this problem.
Christians living in the Islamic world are marginalised and threatened with persecution. But Pakistan perhaps began
the trend. InFebruary 1997, the twin villages of Shantinagar-Tibba Colony 12 kilometres East of Khanewal, Multan
Division, were looted and burnt by 20,000 Muslim citizens and 500 policemen. The police first evacuated the Christian
population of 15,000, then helped the raiders use battle-field explosives to blow up their houses and property.
In November 2005, the Christian community of Sangla Hill in Nankana District in Punjab experienced a most hairraising day of violence and vandalism. Daily Dawn (13 November 2005) described it like this:

Under the present PPP

government, a Christian federal
minister has been killed by
Punjabi Taliban in broad
daylight in Islamabad

'The burning down of three churches, a missionary-run school, two hostels

and several houses belonging to the Christian community by an enraged
mob of some 3,000 people in Punjab's Nankana district speaks volumes
for the bigotry and intolerance against minorities. Following allegations of
blasphemy levelled against one Yousaf Masih by his Muslim gambling
partners who accused him of also torching the Holy Quran, calls were
given from mosque loudspeakers to punish the local Christians'.

In May 2009, some 12 Christian families fled their homes in a village of Sahiwal because they feared that a dispute
growing around an act of blasphemy in a school may result in their persecution. The village had at least 6,500 voters
in it but the dispute - which may be political - was entwined with the other politics of blasphemy law.
The community cowered in the face of dire announcements being made from mosque loudspeakers. The 'blasphemy'
incident took place in a classroom in a local school where a page of the Holy Quran was found with ink splattered on it
when the school opened in the morning.
The same month, an incident put the world on notice about what Pakistan is moving towards. In Surjani Town in
Karachi, some Pashtun neighbourhood miscreants wrote graffiti on the church wall saying: 'Taliban zindabad', 'Islam
zindabad', 'Christians Islam qabool karo ya jiziya dow', etc, after which an exchange of fire wounded some Christians
in addition to killing one.
The attack on the Christians of a Gojra village Korian took place in August 2009, after an alleged desecration of the
Quran by the Christians in July 2009. Everyone including the Punjab chief
minister anticipated the violence and cautioned the local administration in
When the state of Pakistan
Gojra to prevent lawlessness. The fear was not that desecration had
happened but that it will be conflated with blasphemy and the mobs will
apostatised the Ahmadis
take the law into their own hands and go on a spree of murder.
through an Amendment in the
If the state in Pakistan survives, it must call to mind the following articles of
the Constitution that give protection to the Christians who form the largest
religious minority in Punjab estimated to be between 2 to 4 million:

Constitution in the 1970s, some

observers opined that the Shia
community would be next in line
for exclusion and slaughter

Article 20: freedom to profess religion and to manage religious institutions;

Article 22: safeguards around education with respect to religious freedom; Article 25: equality of citizenship; Article 36:

protection of minorities. But these rights and values enshrined in the Constitution have been undermined by a series
of legislations related to the affirmation of the state's ideological credentials.
The introduction in 1984 of the Qanoon-e-Shahadat or 'Law of Evidence' reduces the value of court testimony of a
Muslim woman and a non-Muslim male citizen to that of half a Muslim and, by extension, that of a non-Muslim woman
to one-quarter. Similarly the introduction of a series of amendments to the Blasphemy Laws in the PPC [section 295],
adding in 1982 section 295-B which provides for mandatory life imprisonment for desecrating the Holy Quran, and in
1986 the even harsher section 295-C, which is mandatory death in respect of the insult of the Prophet PBUH,
exposes the broadly poverty-stricken Christian community to abuses of the law.

Most Muslims hold that violation of some human rights takes place because of the
tough living conditions and poverty in the country. The view displays all the
collective blind spots about human rights. It presumes certain conditions to exist
against objective evidence to the contrary. It talks about the minorities in Pakistan
without being aware of their view of how they are being treated. Under the present
PPP government a Christian federal minister has been killed by Punjabi Taliban in
broad daylight in Islamabad.
Today in 2012, you have TV anchors saying more or less the same thing: Muslims
themselves are being maltreated, so the persecution of non-Muslims cannot be
blamed on them. Going on a tangent, they allude to the Rohingya Muslims of Burma
about whom the rascally foreign-funded NGOs have done nothing. (In Burma, the
NGOs protesting Rohingya rights are savagely suppressed by the Burmese ruling
junta.) The ominous sign in Pakistan is that the majority Muslim community is
completely inured against what the minorities are going through.
The blasphemy law victims bear the brunt of the rage of the Barelvis like late
Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi, secretary general of Tanzimat Madaris Dinia, who actually
led a Lashkar to Sangla Hill to punish the Christians already mauled by local
Muslims. He was later killed by the Taliban who think Barelvis are not good Muslims.
The Deobandi rage is directed at the Shia community too. When the state of
Pakistan apostatised the Ahmadis through an Amendment in the Constitution in the
1970s some observers opined that the Shia community would be next in line for
exclusion and slaughter.
The day has arrived. Like the Ahmadis, the Shia are being killed all over Pakistan like
lambs at the slaughter house without much disturbance among the Sunni
community which leans on anti-Americanism to favour the Taliban and their ancillary
warriors originally prepared by the Army against India.
The Shia are not named as a minority in the national census but are informally
considered to be nearly 30 percent of the total population. A storm is brewing
against them in the Middle East, and Pakistan could be considered as a country
where it all began with the help of the state of Pakistan which nurtured the Shiahating Deobandis and allowed its personnel in the intelligence agencies handling the
covert war to be reverse-indoctrinated.

The al Qaeda-linked Lashkar Jhangvi in August 2012 published a gruesome video on

jihadist internet showing the beheading of two Shia. In a statement that
accompanied the video on one of the forums, a jihadist said Lashkar Jhangvi is part
of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Two of the Lashkar fighters then pulled out knives, and
proceeded to behead the Shia men. The victims' heads were then placed on their
laps. The warriors wiped their knives on the clothes of the slain men.
Lashkar claimed that 'most of the operations against the Shia in Pakistan, if not all of
them, are carried out by this group'. It said that Lashkar was the Omar Brigade of
Taliban-Pakistan as the Omar Brigade of al Qaeda targeted Badr Brigade and others
among the Shia.
The politicians turn their face away; the judges are scared of the clerical backlash.
Pakistan as a state is decaying and is eating its minorities first. Before it becomes a
pre-modern hell under Al Qaeda and its followers, it has to accomplish the task
begun with the decimation of the Shia: it will eat its Sunni Muslims too. For the nonMuslims it is a prison from which there is no escape.
Pakistan was always dicey with its minorities because of its ideology, but today it is
killing its minorities because it is killing itself as a state. The people who have
undertaken this destruction have originated in the state of the Muslim mind today
across the Islamic world, but their midwife in Pakistan was the Army which nurtured
them as the state's proxy warriors and then surrendered to them its monopoly of
violence.
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