Britain Pressures Pakistan To Repeal Blasphemy Laws

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“The Ahmadiyya Muslim community and other religious minorities, including Shia Muslims, Christians and Hindus, suffer a denial of religious freedom at the hands of the state ..."

Times of Ahmad | News Watch | UK Desk
Source/Credit: Daily Caller
By Joshua Gill | August 15, 2017

Twenty-four British politicians pleaded with Pakistan’s leaders to repeal blasphemy laws on the 70th anniversary of the country’s independence from Britain.

The British MPs sent a letter to Pakistan’s president and prime minister Monday urging Pakistan to repeal discriminatory laws first imposed by British rulers. The Pakistani government has used the laws to persecute non-Sunni religious minorities, including other Muslim sects, Christians and Hindus, according to Christianity Today. U.K. Labor Party’s Siobhain McDonagh, the woman who chairs an inter-party group for Ahmadiyya Muslims, led the politicians’ efforts to pressure the Pakistani government. The Ahmadiyya are a sect persecuted as heretics across much of the Muslim world.

“The Ahmadiyya Muslim community and other religious minorities, including Shia Muslims, Christians and Hindus, suffer a denial of religious freedom at the hands of the state, compounded by harassment, violence and persecution from extremists,” McDonagh said.

McDonagh claimed that Pakistan’s current hostile stance toward religious minorities contrasted with the original vision of a Pakistan “united, open and free, where religious freedom” is preserved for all.

British rulers first imposed blasphemy laws on Pakistan in 1860, when the country was still part of India, according to the BBC. Britain expanded the laws in 1927 and Pakistan kept and further expanded them after the country violently separated from India in 1947.

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