Source & Credit:Cleveland Blog| Other Voices
By Nusrat J. Qadir | Beachwood | June 4, 2010
Last Friday's horrific attack on two mosques in Lahore only further depicts the extremism taking over Pakistan. While the government of Pakistan would like to blame the Taliban for this, government officials are failing to address the state-sponsored blasphemy laws that allow for such attacks on innocent civilians.
The real issue lies with Pakistan's anti-blasphemy laws, which target not only members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, but all religious minorities, including Christians and Jews. Last Friday's incident was an extreme example of what happens when such laws exist, and, unfortunately, such hatred has seeped outside of Pakistan into our own soil here in the United States, as evidenced by the attempted Times Square bombing.
Pakistan should be called to account for its actions as well as its inaction. The Pakistani government must repeal its laws of intolerance and stop this state-sponsored extremism, which allows terrorists to flourish within the nation. Protection of all citizens should be a requirement, not an option.
These blasphemy laws are the root cause fueling the Taliban and other radical organizations to justify these attacks. The U.S. government should see the correlation between human-rights violations and religious extremism and encourage Pakistan to adhere to human-rights standards required of all democracies. The Pakistani government must abandon these laws and allow all faiths to worship freely within Pakistan.
-- Nusrat J. Qadir, Beachwood
Read original post here: Pakistan's state-sponsored religious intolerance fuels violent attacks
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