Perspective: Pakistan's persecution of minorities leads to religious strife and violence | Sohail Husain

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I know the problem well because I belong to a community — the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community — that in Pakistan has been systematically targeted by fanatics.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Sohail Husain | March 28, 2015

The poor record of religious strife in Pakistan stems from its state-sponsored persecution of minorities. The latest casualty was a brutally executed simultaneous assault by suicide bombers this month on two churches in the major city of Lahore, in which 14 people were killed and at least 78 were wounded.

The notorious anti-blasphemy laws, codified into the Pakistani penal code since the 1980s, have in effect empowered extremist clerics to go so far as to incite vigilante violence, often on mainstream media, against those who they perceive to be nonbelievers.

I know the problem well because I belong to a community — the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community — that in Pakistan has been systematically targeted by fanatics. In fact, I could be arrested by the Pakistani authorities or lynched by a mob, or both, for the simple act of calling myself a Muslim.

Members of all faiths should decry the institutionalized injustice in Pakistan and stand in solidarity with the defenseless victims of such destructive policies.




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SOHAIL HUSAIN of Indiana Township is a member of the Muslim Writers Guild of America (www.muslimwriters.org).


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