Pakistan: Situation for minorities has worsened since founding in 1947

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The Ahmadiyya community continues to face blasphemy allegations, and militant groups have vandalized their graves and prevented them from using their own mosques in Lahore. 

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: Tablet
By Mina Sohail | March 10, 2014

Excerpts:

A recent report by the Pew Research Center placed Pakistan at the top of a list of 198 countries suffering the most from social hostilities involving religion. With a population of about 190 million, Pakistan is predominantly Sunni Muslim. About 20 percent of the population is Shia and 3 percent represents non-Muslims—mostly Hindus, Christians, and Ahmadis.
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Pakistan has grown steadily more intolerant since its establishment in 1947. In the 1970s, Ahmadis—a group of Muslims who follow 19th-century religious leader Mirza Ghulam Ahmad—became the first victims of sectarian violence and were declared non-Muslim by the government of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Christian schools and convents were attacked as institutions representing the West. By the early 1980s, as Islamic militant groups gained strength, sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis began to replace attacks on non-Muslims.

Fatal attacks against minority groups are common today. The deadliest recent attack against the Christian community came in Peshawar, where 81 worshippers were killed by a suicide bombing at a church last September.

The Ahmadiyya community continues to face blasphemy allegations, and militant groups have vandalized their graves and prevented them from using their own mosques in Lahore.

[The Ahmadiyya community was terrorized in May 2010 when two of their mosques in Lahore were simultaneously targeted by Taliban terrorists during Friday prayers and nearly ninety members perished during the hour-long  attack.]

More than 400 members of the Shia Muslim population were killed in targeted attacks that took place across Pakistan last year.

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The above excerpts are taken from an article entitled, "Young Pakistanis Are Asking: If There Can Be Secular Jews, Why Not Atheist Muslims?"  posted in Tablet on March 10, 2014.

Read original post here: Situation for minorities worsened since founding in 1947


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