Perspective: Religious intolerance in Pakistan | S.C. Kohli

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Gen. Zia's regime (1977-88) was primarily combination of 'Military-Mullah alliance' which ruthlessly used Islam to legitimize dictatorial rule in the country. 

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Meri News
By S.C. Kohli | November 27, 2015

There is no space of religious tolerance in Pakistan's national and social polity. Since 2000 over 4,000 Pakistanis, mostly Shia Muslims, have been killed and 6,800 injured due to sectarian violence in the country.

According the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), in 2013 over 700 Shia were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in more than 200 nationwide sectarian attacks.

In Focus

HRCP, in its report had also highlighted the extent of intolerance in Pakistan and asserted that Pakistan was becoming a more and more dangerous country for religious minorities and increasingly intolerant of dissent. Plight of Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan is that atrocities on them is merely considered as a law and order problem by the provincial and federal government and issue is handled with subjective and biased attitude.

Pakistan is the only country in the world, which was created in the name of religion. Mohd Ali Jinnah, patron of Pakistan, had declared that in Pakistan all citizens will be equal and their religious belief had nothing to do with state. However, with the demise of Jinnah, religious tolerance was also buried in Pakistan. Not only non-Muslims, even Muslims like Shias and Ahmedis are subjected to social and economic discrimination and they are physically assaulted and their properties are burnt by the state supported Sunni radicals and fanatics.

Blasphemy law of colonial era of 1927, which had originally banned any type of insult against any religion in the united India remained in existence even after creation of Pakistan. It was amended by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in 1986 to protect only Islam. Since then sense of security amongst non-Muslims has been dissipating with an alarming rate.

According to a recent country-wide survey conducted in Pakistan, over 80 per cent people were convinced that blasphemy law was being used against minorities and creating difficulties for them. Meanwhile, according to a report, in 2014, eleven temples and churches were attacked in 144 incidents of sectarian violence across Pakistan.

Academically, in Pakistan, despite being an Islamic state; freedom of religion is guaranteed in the Constitution, whereas, ironically even Muslims are not safe in the country. Pakistan is virtually divided into Muslim minorities and non-Muslim minorities. While Shia Muslims and Ahmedi Muslims are Muslim minorities, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs are mainly non-Muslim minorities.

The latest available statics indicate that at present in Pakistan 96.28 per cent population is Muslim, 1.59 per cent Christians, 1.60 per cent Hindus. 0.25 per cent Ahmedi (who are not allowed to call themselves as Muslim)0.25 per cent Scheduled Castes and 0.07 per cent others. With regard to minorities, 3.3 million adult Hindus, 2.8 adult Christians, 40,000 Bai'ah, 20,000 Sikhs and 3,000 Kalash people live in Pakistan.

General Zia-ul-Haq is known to be father of religious intolerance and sectarianism in Pakistan. Gen. Zia's regime (1977-88) was primarily combination of 'Military-Mullah alliance' which ruthlessly used Islam to legitimize dictatorial rule in the country. Gen. Zia also misused Islam to divide Muslims resulting into emergence of hostile sectarian groups. It was during Zia's regime that Shia and Ahmedi Muslims, which constituted about 20 and 0.25 per cent of the Pakistan's total population respectively, were made second-class citizens in the country.

Despite being Muslims but being in minority, Shias and Ahmedis been facing religious intolerance, particularity since ruling days of Gen. Zia's regime. It was Gen. Zia who had initiated state-sponsored intolerance against Shias and Ahmedis. While Shias were made targets by ISI supported Sunni-Jihadi and radical groups formed during Afghan war, Ahmedis who were constitutionally declared as non-Muslims in 1974 by Bhuttto, were barred from practising Muslim tenets and using mosque for any religious purpose by Gen. Zia in 1984. Since then these two Muslim minorities have become targets of intimidation, discrimination and hostility at the hands of radical Sunnis in Pakistan.

In the recent yeas there had been an upsurge in attacks on Shia Muslims in Pakistan. A recent study made by a Islamabad-based think tank, the Jinnah Institute, revealed that some 19,000 Shia Muslims have been killed in bomb blasts and militant attacks in Pakistan between 2012 and 2015. During 2015 prominent attacks on Shias, including killing of 61 Shias in bomb blasts in a Shia mosque in Shikarpur in Sindh on January 30 and killing of over 45 Shias in an attack on their bus in Karachi in May 2015. Most of the attacks on Shias were carried out by the Sunni militant outfits like Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan(TTP), Lashkar-e- Toiba.

Ahmedis are next to the Shia of the minority Muslim community of Pakistan who have been regularity targeted by the Sunni fundamentalists and radicals as they do not accept Mohammad as the final prophet. They are subjected to religious persecutions and discrimination. Almost immediately after inception of Pakistan, Ahmedis had been subjected to violent communal attacks and target killings, including in 1953, 1974 and 2010 in Lahore.

With over 5 million population in Pakistan, Ahmedis are treated worst than a second class citizen and discredited religiously and socially in all sphere of life in Pakistan. Their properties are attacked and burnt on a little instigation and law and order agencies prefer to turn their face on such attacks. During 2010-2015 more than 175 Ahmedis were killed, mostly in Punjab province of Pakistan in communal rights. Ironically, in Pakistan, even graves of Ahmedis are defaced by the local police to prevent any communal clashes.

Non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan also do not have any safety from the hands of country's radical and fanatics. Islamic terror attacks on Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and other non-Muslim minorities take place all over the country, sometimes even in connivance with local police. Christians are generally attacked in the context of "blaspheming" against Islam.

In November 2014, a Christian couple was burnt to death by a mob of over one thousand fanatic Muslims in Kasur, Punjab (Pakistan) for alleged blasphemy. Christians are socially and politically discriminated and their places of worships are also targeted. In September 2013, TTP attacked All Saints Church in Peshawar, killing 130 people. In Lahore, TTP carried out two attacks on a Roman Catholic Church in March 2015, in which 20 people were killed and scores were injured.

Since Pakistan is predominantly a Muslim country, there has been decline in population of Hindus and Sikhs. Hindus are prosecuted on flimsy grounds and their temples are attacked. Majority of out of 3 lakh Hindus in Pakistan are residing in Sindh province and most of anti-Hindus incidents take place in Sindh only. Forced conversion of Hindus is the main problem being faced by the community. After the partition, Hindus had constituted over 15 per cent of the total population of Pakistan and now they are reduced to less than two per cent.

Hundreds of Hindu girls are subjected to rape, kidnapping and forced conversion to Islam every year. Hindus are regularly targeted, socially and economically exploited and have been facing cultural and religious discrimination at the hands of state supported radical and fundamental elements. Similar is the condition of small Sikh community in Pakistan, most of which lives in Khyber agency and areas close Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Since Pakistan is a politically unstable country without solid democratic roots, has weak economic base as well as vulnerable to army rules, sectarianism, fundamentalism and religious intolerance are going to have permanent place in the country's social, religious and political polity.

Pakistan's dismal record in safeguarding country's minorities and their rights has also been recently criticized by the several international bodies, including United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Subcommittee on Human Rights and Foreign Affairs of European Union(EU) and some members of the House of Lords the United Kingdom.


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