Pakistan, A living hell for religious minorities , but where is the International community

Millions were displaced, slaughtered or converted in the forming of Pakistan.

The fact is there are no minority rights in Pakistan.

“Pakistan’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan thought of Pakistan as a smaller version of India with one small difference: the Muslims would be a majority. He had not thought of asking himself why Hindus and Sikhs should now accept what he had refused to countenance: living under a majority composed of another religious group.“

Mandal and Zafrullah Khan became quite disillusioned when after Jinnah’s death the constituent assembly went to declare the newborn country an Islamic state and limiting its leadership only to be preserved for Muslims. Both and especially Mandal became quite vocal and advocated the need for a secular nation which they meant Jinnah wished for. Their voice fell to deaf ears, Mandal was pushed aside and had to leave his ministry. His resignation letter paints a gloomy picture of how violence against Hindus was neglected and the authorities failed to catch the culprits.

The main essence is that Pakistan was created to protect the minorities of India. And hence, the ideology of Pakistan is to protect its minorities in order to prove its existence. Pakistan mere being on the map is not to be the eternal enemy of India, or to have influence in Kabul, it is merely to protect our minorities. If they are well, all is well. If they are threatened, then Pakistan has failed. And at current, Pakistan has failed Jinnah and Pakistan miserably.

And if Pakistan came into being due to anti- Hindu majority concept then why the Pukhtuns, Baloch , Sindhis and the minorities should live under the hegemony and atrocities of Punjab majority. The Pukhtuns , Baloch , Sindhis and minorities are living in their ownland like the refugees , they want freedom from Pakistan (Punjabistan).

“A majority of ruling Pakistani politicians too had grown up serving the British. Like their old mentors, they regarded the ordinary people with a mixture of repugnance and fear. Small wonder that senior civil servants and military officers, true heirs of the departed colonial power, treated the politicians with contempt. On this front, the difference with India could not have been more pronounced. In India the political leadership had been forged over three decades of continuous nationalist struggles and long periods of imprisonment. No general or civil servant would have had the nerve to challenge a first-generation Congress leader.“

“Jinnah’s Pakistan died on March 26, 1971, with East Bengal drowned in blood. …

Pakistan is sadly ranked among the worst states to live in for minorities.

There are many theories on what the ideology of Pakistan is. The most popular theory, which was quite unknown as long as Jinnah was alive, is that the country was created and destined to be an Islamic state. The ground reality although was that the drive force behind Pakistan movement was the fight for the right of minorities. Because by the instructions of the British bosses , Jinnah was trumpeting that in India , the muslims will be in minority , so they will be exploited by Hindu Majority. However, the Muslims were not in minority, they were the second majority.

There is a barrier, the size of the Great Wall of China that prevents minorities from becoming successful citizens in Pakistan. The wall has been raised by legal and social measures that persecute them and discriminate against them. The majority Muslim population, hijacked by a significant number of hardline religious leaders and their followers with the support of the governmant agences , has made life for the minorities a living hell. They use mosque loudspeakers for telling them that they will inevitably go to hell in their afterlife.

With the passage of the Objectives Resolution, the fate of minorities in this country was sealed forever

Toba Tek, Pakistan: Iqra Saddique, a young girl from a village Siowaal, Toba Tek Singh was illegally detained by four policemen and a private citizen, Arif Gujjar, on July 28,2013 after she denied to their demand of fornication with them. One of the policemen is identified by name as, Javed. The policemen and the private citizen after being denied by the young girl, they broke open the door and entered her house, brutally torturing her with extreme cruelty. All the accused policemen and the private person dragged her out of her house and they threw her the yard kicking, slapping and punching the young girl. The policeman, Javed and Arif Gujar tore her clothes (shirt and trousers) that she became completely naked in front of a large crowd.

Boota Masih went to meet his friend in market where the Muslim, Muhammad Arif who also worked at Niyaria in same location kicked him on ground and attacked him with knife. After injuring Boota Masih, Muhammad Arif cut his throat and killed him at spot.

After slicing throat of Boota Masih in front of shopkeepers and traders, the killer waved his knife in air standing on dead body shouted, “Allah O Akber, Allah O Akber” “I have killed an infidel blasphemer” and walked away.

There were dozens of Muslims gathered at spot, but no one stepped forward to stop killer and none tried to rescue Boota Masih.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were used to intimidate and harass religious minorities through false accusations.

Hundreds of Hindus who crossed into India — refused to return and are seaking political asylum in Inda.

It’s in the hands of fanatical Jihadis, bigots and murderers who aren’t prepared to let anyone not in sync with their dogmas and beliefs to live in Pakistan.

Murder is their tool of trade and blood-letting is their creed. Not to mention Pakistan’s non-Muslim minorities, these terrorists aren’t even in favour of letting the sizeable Shia community of Muslims live or survive as citizens in ‘their Land of the Pure.’ The so called founder of Pakistan Jinnah was also non practicing shia. In the real sense he was non-believer . He was just a British agent and nothing else.

In Gilgit-Baltistan the bus was stopped by the terrorists, 21 Shias were separated from the rest of the passengers , they were then shot in cold blood .This was not the first and last massacre of Shias.

Wall-chalking in every major city of Pakistan has been denouncing the shias for years as Kafirs who should be removed from the face of Pakistan under religious injunctions (fatwas) .

Hundreds of Shias have been mercilessly butchered in targeted killings in Pakistan.

The Shias may’ve been targeted by fanatical terrorists of the Taliban or their Pakistani templates-Sipah-e-Sahaban or Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

However, sectarianism is apparently running deep even among those Sunni Muslims belonging to Pakistan’s majority sect who may not condone of or subscribe to blood-letting of minorities.

A survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre found that 50 percent of Sunnis in Pakistan believed Shias to be non-Muslims. This contrasts sharply with even Afghanistan-where 83 percent of Sunnis accept Shias as Muslims.

But while Shias of Pakistan may still have a lot of bleeding hearts crying over their plight, the non-Muslim minorities have far fewer voices drawing the outside world’s attention to their imperilled existence in an ‘ideological state’ whose denizens take pride in their religious moorings as a hallmark of their national identity.

A few weeks after the governor of P:ujnab Tasir’s murder, ShehbazBhatti, a junior minister of religious affairs hailing from the Christian minority of Pakistan, was likewise gunned down-again in the capital, Islamabad by gunmen who haven’t been caught to date. Bhatti’s ‘crime’ was that he proposed amendments in the Blasphemy law.

Young Hindu girls, approaching marriageable age, are being specially targeted by these frenzied zealots to quench their proselytizing thirst. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 20 to 25 Hindu girls-from villages and small towns of Sindh-are abducted each month by rampaging ‘missionaries’ and forcibly converted to Islam.

Most of these girls are, then, betrothed to Muslim men, much against their will.

Several thousand Pakistani Hindus are believed to be living in India for years on visitor visas and biding their time to become eligible for Indian citizenship.

Pakistan has passed into the hands of intolerable bigots.

Jinnah’s Pakistan may soon mutate into a killing field of minorities at the hands of fanatics to prove that Jinnah was horribly wrong.

According to the Justice and Peace commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan that Pakistan is fast becoming a state that will be habitable only for extremists,”.

The “religious bigots hold the view that only Muslims (as defined by them) have the right to live in this country – and that all non-Muslims are infidels who deserve to be killed”.

“The [religious] intolerance is certainly worsening and that is what the world community must worried about,”

The blasphemy cases, grabbing of minority properties, bias in educational texts, discrimination and harassment at employment, abduction, and forced conversion and marriage of young Christian and Hindu women to Muslims are the calamities which the non-muslim minorities are facing in Pakistan.

The atrocities and harassment against religious minorities, which comprise mostly Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis (the four million-strong Islamic sect not recognised as Muslim only in Pakistan), in a nation where nearly 95% are Muslims biased towards religious minoritie. Students in the educational institutions are publicly ridiculed or even beaten by teachers because of their faith”

An 11-year old Christian Nadia Iftikhar said :

“Our teacher was teaching us about the culture of Pakistan and Pakistani people and quoted a sentence from the text book saying ‘We are Pakistani and all of us are Muslims’,” the girl recalled. “At this point I interrupted and said: “Madam, I am also a Pakistani, but not a Muslim instead I am a Christian.” Then An 11-year old Nadia Iftikhar was severely beaten by her teacher.

The cases of young minorities women, including teenagers, who had been kidnapped, raped, forced to convert to Islam and marry their abductors. Those who resisted were killed and their parents harassed for reporting the cases to the police, who not only turn a blind eye to the perpetrators of such crimes but also participates in it.

Christians mourn as they stand next to the coffins of their relatives but the International community is turing deaf ear to hear them.

One of the wounded, John Tariq, who lost his father in the attack, asked of the attackers, “What have we done wrong to these people? Why are we being killed?”

In February 1997, the twin villages of Shantinagar-Tibba Colony 12 kilometres East of Khanewal, Multan Division, were looted and burnt by 20,000 Muslim citizens and 500 policemen. The police first evacuated the Christian population of 15,000, then helped the raiders use battle-field explosives to blow up their houses and property.

Pakistani Christian Slaughtered For Faith In Christ.

In recent years, the Christians of Pakistan have become one of the most vulnerable religious communities in Pakistan.

All minorities have been affected, but Christians continue to be the main target. Innocent Christians have been killed in broad daylight, some burnt alive. Churches have been attacked and Christian villages have been burnt to ashes. It seems that there is no chance that the state will be able to undo the two changes to Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Muslims wish to see Pakistan’s population 100% Muslim. They wish to make Pakistan a pillar of Islam where there is no place for religious minorities.”

in Pakistan , where the minorities are also singled out and face grave dangers because of their faith.

While all minorities in Pakistan are under threat, the country has turned as an inferno . They have only two options , either converting their religion or quitting the country seems the only way of their survival.

Pakistan turned like hell for Ahmadis since 1974 when they were declared non-Muslims through the Second Amendment under the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto government.

When General Zia ul Haq came to power, he brought about even more draconian anti-Ahmadi laws. For decades now, their persecution at the hands of bigots has largely been ignored because of these laws.

Defending the rights of the Ahmaddiya community is considered an anathema in Pakistani society.

Six minarets of an Ahmadi place of worship, Baitul Hamd, were demolished by the Kharian city police in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The demolition took place on the application of some clerics from Barelvi religious organisation called Tehrik-e-Tahaffuz-e-Islam.

The application asked the police to take action under the Section 298 B and C of the 1984 ordinance, which declares it illegal for Ahmadis to act or look like Muslims, to practice or propagate their faith and to call their worship place a “mosque”.

In January 2012, local rigid circles asked the Ahmadis at Satellite Town in Rawalpindi to stop worships in the ‘Ewan-e-Tawheed’, the place they are using for the last 17 years.

On this occasion a press release of Ahmadis appeared that read, “The (Ahmaddiya) community is under attack and there are known security threats to community members from these miscreants. Yet innocent and peaceful Ahmadis are not even allowed to defend or protect themselves.”

Pakistani police forced an Ahmadi family to exhume the body of a relative because it was buried in a Muslim graveyard.

When the state of Pakistan apostatised the Ahmadis through an Amendment in the Constitution in the 1970s some observers opined that the Shia community would be next in line for exclusion and slaughter.

There is zero tolerance for Ahmadis and their practices in Pakistan. The hatred towards Ahmadis is not only limited to the religious extremist but some people representing other political parties are also behind such activities.

Like the worship places of Ahmadis, the publications of the sect have also been banned. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority banned a website by the name alislam.org which was controlled by the Ahmaddiya community.

Monthly Misbah, a women’s magazine published by the Ahmaddiya community in Pakistan for decades, was ordered to be banned on the recommendation of a board of clerics constituted by Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab.

The district coordination officer, Chiniot, Dr Irshad Ahmad, issued orders to immediately ban the publication because the Muttahida Ulema Board made the ‘observation’ to cancel the magazine’s ‘declaration’.

Although Ahmadis face threats from different enemies like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Sipahi Sahaba Pakistan, but for them the worst enemy is Punjabi Taliban which is affiliated to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. On 28 May, 2010, two Ahmadi mosques were attacked by militants in Lahore in which 86 Ahmadis were killed.

Claiming responsibility for attacking Ahmadis’ worshipping places, Punjabi Taliban spokesperson Mansoor Maawia had termed the Ahmadis ‘worse than Jews’. He said, “No Ahmadi would live with peace in Pakistan. Our war against them and their followers will continue.”

As religious minorities in Pakistan have been made to feel insecure, and are given no help or protection by the country’s government, many are left with no option but to reluctantly leave the nation,

According to an editorial in The Express Tribune, Hindu girls in Sindh are being abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and then are being married off to Muslim men, while in Balochistan, several Hindus are leaving their ancestral homes, sometimes moving to India or going to large urban cities like Karachi and Quetta because of the threats and difficulties they face in their day-to-day life.

Pakistan was created as an Islamic nation in 1947, and religious minorities are treated as second class citizens under the country’s Islamic laws. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Hindus have been converted to Islam, and many more have been forced to flee the country. In 1971 alone, the Pakistani Army was blamed for the genocide of over one million of Hindus in erstwhile East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh).

Pakistan Muslim League –Quaid (PML-Q) MPA Shahzad Elahi, speaking during the Punjab Assembly session , said the province had become a ‘living hell’ for minorities. Elahi, who has been elected on a non-Muslim minority seat, said that the government of Punjab had made the demolition of churches its mission. The MPA said that the Bible had been desecrated during the demolition and the glasses of the church had also been smashed.

“Living there was pure hell,” says the wife of an Indian personnel also among those expelled. “The children take the dog for a walk, they are followed. You go for a haircut, you’re followed.”

Besides the constant shadowing, there was the isolation. Locals don’t socialise with them. In fact, the aggressive surveillance is partly to discourage locals from getting too friendly with the Indians.

“You had to watch what you are doing, where you are going, what you are talking.” It was oppressive for the children too. The Pakistani children are told not to meet Indian children. “If their Pakistani friends came over, their parents were harassed.”

However, some of the Hindus at the Wagah border revealed that their lives had been turned into a living hell because of insecurity issues, and although they were travelling to India for a religious pilgrimage, they might decide to stay on there if they found it convivial, the editorial said.

The increasing trend of complaints by Hindu traders and families that their shops are looted, houses ransacked, women forcibly converted to Islam and kidnappings taking place for ransom, painted a sorry picture of the troubles faced religious minority communities in Pakistan.

Dec. 2nd 2012 ,a Pakistani Muslim builder agency demolished a century-old Hindu temple in Soldier Bazaar in Karachi on Saturday morning .

Apart from razing down the pre-partition Shri Rama Pir Mandir, the private builder also demolished four or five Hindu houses located next to it. Over 40 people of Hindu faith have become homeless as a result.

“They destroyed their mandir and humiliated their gods,” said an angry Prakash, pointing towards the huge debris of concrete, stones and walls of the temple.

The demolishing team did place the statues of four Hindu deities on the side but the residents accused them of taking away their gold jewellery and crowns.

Pointing to bruises on his arms, another man identified as Lakshman said, “They hit me with their guns when I tried to stop them. I told them to kill me instead of destroying our holy place.“

A woman named Banwri said, the demolition team arrived at around 11 am while she was preparing breakfast.

She rushed outside when she heard the sound of a bulldozer and was given instructions to move her bed, cupboard and other essential items outside her home.

“I watched my house went down in just minutes and I couldn’t do anything,” she said.

Banwri said that during the demolition, the area was cordoned off by police and paramilitary Pakistan Rangers. Saveeta was among the 40-odd people who lost their homes. With her husband away from Karachi, she said she and her three children would spend the nights in the open.

“People were living in cramped houses, separated only by curtains. Over here, we live like animals,” he said.

Actually big talks and assurance like these from Pak authorities to the dying Hindu People of Pakistan do not carry any meaning. Under a definite conspiracy, the 16% strength of Hindu populace in 1947 in Pakistan has come down to a crying 1.86% now as a prominent symbol of last days for Pakistani Hindus anyway. Each and every day the dignity and the Rights of living of Hindus in Pakistan is narrowing in a vanishing point.

Imagine what hell on earth would look like. It is crowded. You are filthy. An unbearable stench fills the air and follows you everywhere. Your family members are blown in to pieces and massacred in front of your very eyes. The roads are ripped, blocked and dangerous. People are paralyzed with fear. You are deafened by explosions and crying screams of pain and loss. Victims lie in hospital corridors. Doctors are either exhausted or massacred for saving lives. Babies are crying; they are alone, starving, and suffering. Bodies are dumped in to carts and shoveled quickly into shallow graves. You can never sleep or rest. And you fear it will never end.This is no imaginary place. This is Quetta, Pakistan.

it seems that there’s a systematic attempt by mainstream media to completely ignore the atrocities and the rampant carnage.

In Gilgit-Baltistan the bus was stopped by the terrorists masquerading as security services agents. 21 Shias were separated from the rest of the passengers with the help of names appearing on their national identity cards; they were then shot in cold blood with a bestiality that could easily shame the beasts of the jungle.

It is an abundantly documented fact that authorities in Pakistan have established a systematic discrimination and brutal oppression of its minority Shia population for years. Shias in Pakistan face the possibility of sheer sectarian cleansing which is being perpetrated by wretched individuals who wrongfully label this minority group as infidels that must be eliminated by swords.

It has become larger than violence perpetuate on streets. We are talking about a humanitarian disaster that the world is simply not willing to hear about. The victims of these bomb blasts and attacks are asking for basic human rights in the most peaceful terms. They do not carry any weapons, not even to defend themselves. Because of this, I want to appeal to readers all over the world — no matter what your political persuasions, no matter what your ethnic denominations, no matter what religion you prescribe to — we need to put a stop to this tragedy. What is happening with the international community? Why don’t we have people strongly condemning the atrocious violence that is taking place on the streets of Paksitan except Punjab each night? I appeal to the international community, to the human rights organizations. I appeal to anyone who holds anything sacred, holds any ideals, or has any sense of ethical morality, save the people and sepcially the minorities of Pakistan from terrorism. Save them from hell on earth, because Pakistan does not want to do that but supporting this sectariansim for the vested internest of Punjab which has made the remaining three province Pukhtunkhwa , Balochistan and sindh its hostages.

However, in Pakistan the Islamization of this nation is based on persecution, hatred, inequality in law; and instead of democratization you have a nation where minorities reside in fear. It therefore appears that women can be gang raped in Pakistan; Christians can be killed for blasphemy; the Ahmadiyya face systematic persecution and mass hatred; the Shia are deemed un-Muslim by Sunni Islamic zealots; the baloch and Pukhtuns are killed for being the nationaliss and terrorist attacks are frequent alongside a major drug problem.

The destruction of Hinduism , Sikhism and other minority religions took place because of hatred, persecution, and bigotry in Pakistan.This led to the systematic persecution of the minority population under a Sunni Muslim majority in Pakistan.

Therefore, the traces of Hindu tolerance have been replaced by Islamic fanatics who are bent on persecuting all minorities, keeping women downtrodden and hating diversity in Pakistan.

Almost three-quarters of women from Pakistan’s Hindu communities have faced sexual harassment while nearly half, complained of religious discrimination at workplaces, educational institutions and neighbourhoods. A report, prepared by the National Commission for Justice and Peace (Pakistan), states that about 74 per cent of the Hindu women faced sexual harassment.

Hindus in Pakistan have been subjected to rampant human rights abuses and severe restrictions on their religious freedom since the creation of the Islamic State of Pakistan in 1947. Systematic legal and institutional discrimination, kidnappings, physical attacks and intimidation, rapes, forced conversions to Islam, and forced marriages of Hindu girls to Muslim men have vastly diminished the Hindu population from approximately 19% to 1.8% in the past 65 years. The recent rise in Islamic fundamentalism throughout Pakistan and the government’s inability and/or unwillingness to protect Hindus has created an atmosphere of fear and insecurity, depriving Hindus of their basic right to live in the land of their forefathers.

According to the Pakistan Hindu Council, a social organization in Pakistan, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 25 Hindu girls are reported kidnapped and forcible converted to Islam each month in Pakistan. However, when considering the number of cases that go unreported, the actual number of Hindu girls kidnapped every month is significantly higher.

Sunni Muslim fanatics have turned on fellow Muslims and moderate Sunni leaders who speak out also face death and persecution. Therefore, in modern day Pakistan many mosques belonging to the Ahmadiyya, the Shia and Sufi religious places are being attacked and destroyed by the fanatics of Sunni Islam.

In Pakistan the Islamization of society means more hatred, more persecution and keeping women firmly in their place.After all, the only thing that appears to bind Muslim conservatives in Pakistan is hatred and this hatred is unleashed against non-Muslims and Muslim minorities like the Ahmadiyya and Shia.

Pakistan is a land of institutional religious discrimination and the central government is weak because of internal Islamic chaos which is turning on itself.

Pakistan is moving backward and all non-Muslims and minority Muslims face the wrath of Sunni Islam.

The mullahs who cleverly twist koranic injunctions to justify all kinds of horrible atrocities against its defenceless minorities. As a result, while they grow up, they psychologically equate Hindus with impurity, with uncleanliness, as not Pakistani, and therefore less than, both Islamically and as citizens.’

The matter has been made even more convoluted due to two laws, which justify persecution of minorities, who are considered second-class citizens in Pakistan. The first, which made Islam the state religion of Pakistan, was drafted in 1973. It proposed a separate electorate for Muslims and other minorities and said Hindus can vote only for Hindu candidates. This is the formula when the British used in British India before Partition under the Morley-Minto Reforms:

that Indian Muslims be allotted reserved seats in the Municipal and District Boards, in the Provincial Councils and in the Imperial Legislature.

that only Muslims should vote for candidates for the Muslim

As the illegal child of the British Empirc , Pakistan continued the same formula.

The other, an even more pernicious law, was passed during the reign of Zia ul Haq, the Pakistani dictator, the notorious blasphemy law. This law gave a convenient cover to anyone who wished to kill, murder, abduct any member of a religious minority. This could be justified by pointing out the ‘accused’ and claiming he/she had blasphemed Islam.

The latest was the sentencing to death for blasphemy of a Pakistani Christian woman. Aasia Bibi had been working in the fields in Punjab province when she was sent to fetch water. When she returned, some Muslim women refused to drink it, saying it was unclean because it had been carried by a Christian. As the argument escalated, police became involved and Aasia Bibi was charged with blasphemy for allegedly insulting Islam. After a year in jail, she was convicted and sentenced to become the first woman to be hanged for blasphemy in Pakistan.

The matter is made worse by the Pakistani school curriculum, whose books foster hatred against Hindus, branding them the ‘eternal enemies of Islam’. Recently, a horde of 250 Hindus arrived from Pakistan on tourist visas; many of them, after entering the Indian border, promptly claimed they had no intention of returning to Pakistan.

The Kalima was removed from an Ahmadi mosque in Sialkot , massacre of Christians in Peshawar and Shia’s massacre in Quetta took place . What is next? Which minority is going to be targeted next? Shias? Hindus? Or back to Ahmadis?



What was their fault? What possible sin did they commit? What could they possibly have done to deserve something so horrific to happen to them? They were religious minorities . They were not Muslims. They did not believe what the ‘official Muslims’ of Pakistan believe in. Their fault is that they exist. Their fault is that they were born in Pakistan, the country which does not believe in the rights of minorities, rather it believes in the right to make their life a living hell. Their fault is that they are helpless. Their fault is that they are basically not Muslims.

The government has failed to provide adequate security to the minorities of Pakistan. People are dying due to their beliefs. Children and women, for whom it is just an ordinary Sunday with ordinary church meetings, are dying merely because they go to Chruch to practise their beliefs. They are returning home without their loved ones. Many of them will be returning to empty homes. But heartbreakingly, many of them will not be returning at all.

All this commotion, all this haphazardness, all this chaos but the government just sits and does nothing. The government fails to provide adequate security to its minorities. It also fails to prevent hate speech against the minorities, all of them including Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis and Shias. It fails to give them their basic right – the right to live. No one can declare that any minority has been given that basic right, because that would be an outright lie. All the government can do when something like this happens is to fake a sad face, look grim and condemn the attack and demand for the victims to be brought to justice. They won’t take any action against any perpetrators, they won’t TRY to investigate the incident. Why? Because they’re just minorities.

So the religious minorities ask the government and the politicians and everyone who just gave a statement condemning the attack – What will condemning the attack do? The victims, they don’t need your fake sympathies. They don’t need your phony statements about condemnation. They don’t need your stupid statements to the press. They need security. They need justice. They need to be assured that this will not happen again. Can you provide it? Can you promise them this won’t happen again? How can you when you don’t even give a damn what happens to the minorities in Pakistan anyway? As long as no one hurts you and your family, why would you even care? Just condemning an attack will not do. What good does it do to them? Will it bring their loved ones back? Will the perpetrators get what they deserve? Will the police even bother investigating?

They demand justice. They demand basic rights to be given to all minorities to be able to freely practise their religion, They demand them to be able to live without the fear of constantly look over their shoulder for someone who wants to kill them in the name of Islam. They want guarantee that all their rights will be safeguarded and that they will be provided security. They demand justice for each and every person who has been affected by those monstrous attacks in the name of Islam. This is not what Islam teaches. Islam is a religion is alwayf peace and love, it is not the religion of forcefulness and hatred and bloodshed. But unfortunately Islam has always been used as a tool by the Pakistan Army and establishement to rule , and mkae the other provinces hostages of Punjab province.

The genocide of minorities in Pakistan is never going to end. This will keep on going until the extremists wipe out every minority from Pakistan and then live in the ‘land of the pure’. That pure land which is now full of the blood of innocent men, women and children. The same pure land which all of these minorities helped to make. The same pure land which now has no place for anyone except the religious extremists inciting hatred against minorities and the greedy politicians, who only care about money and power.

To the minorities, I say run. Run and do not look back. Pakistan is not the place to live right now, or anytime in the near future. Live somewhere where at least you will be treated like a human, at the very least. At least you would be able to live without the constant fear that you’ll be murdered at that very spot. Run my dear brothers and sisters.

To the attackers and the government, I say you can kill people and murder them in the name of Islam and you can condemn these incidents all you want, but God knows what is in your hearts. Fear the day when you will be judged in front of Him for murdering innocent people. Fear the day when He encompasses you in His Wrath. Because no wrath is greater than His. Fear that day. May some sense be knocked into you.

Minorities have been increasingly victimized since the creation of Pakistan up till now!

It was ‘better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ Pakistan’s rulers proved it was possible to do both.”

If the touchstone of a truly secular state is how it treats its minorities, it would seem that Pakistan has well high failed the test on all fronts’which at the time servied as a wake-up call of the dangers of growing religious intolerance in Pakistan.

“Jinnah’s Pakistan died on March 26, 1971, with East Bengal drowned in blood. …

The reality of the situation in Pakistan should be a wake-up call to the entire world.

Such is the power of the religious lobbies that no government dares challenge them. Each ”wake-up” call is soon forgotten until another injustice against religious minorities punches its way to the surface.

The government will not, and dares not, repeal the laws which leave Pakistan’s minorities vulnerable.

Poor choices and preferences have led Pakistan to where it is today. Short sighted leaders destroyed the potential in the country. Now we are talking about religious minorities, blasphemy etc. These are clearly signs of backwardness. When things drift in the backward direction, primitive mindset sets in and people are controlled by ultra conservative minded people. It is really unfortunate.

Violence has taken the upper hand in that part of the world. State violence agaist the citizens, military and police violence against the civilians, violence of people against each other reflecting different cultures,languages and traditions. And finally violence against the religious minorities.

Minorities have been increasingly victimized since the creation of Pakistan up till now!

“Pakistan is fast becoming a state that will be habitable only for extremists,” according to the Justice and Peace commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan.

In its latest annual report, the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) pointed out that “religious bigots hold the view that only Muslims (as defined by them) have the right to live in this country – and that all non-Muslims are infidels who deserve to be killed”.

The [religious] intolerance is certainly worsening and that is what the international community must be worried about.

While all minorities in Pakistan are under threat, the country has turned as an inferno for them and either converting their religion or quitting the country seems the only way of their survival.

In addition, Jinnah himself belonged to the Shia denomination, and many of the top leaders of the Pakistan movement were from the Shia, Ismaili and Ahmadi camps.

The most militant of them are these days touring the country under the banner of ‘Defence of Pakistan Council’, together with several political parties. Its militant members Sippah Sahaba Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangwi and Jamaat-ud-Daawa all have an ugly record of several thousand innocent Pakistani civilian and religious minorities lives. They have openly embraced Taliban and denounce the military operations to curb these groupings. Most importantly, this group fails to condemn violence on minorities in the country. And if they do address such, they blame it on ‘foreign elements’.

What can Pakistan’s minorities expect, when the politicians, who on one hand promise to safeguard minorities, on the other stand alongside those who at point blank kill and incite violence?

A Decaying State Kills its Religious Minorities;

According to World Minority Rights Report 2011, Pakistan ranks as the 6th worst country after some African states in respect of safety and rights of minorities.

According to an article in Friday Times on Pakistan’s violations of human rights and religious freedoms. , young non-Muslim girls are being forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men, Christians are becoming increasing marginalized, and the country’s blasphemy laws are being used to falsely accuse and imprison minorities.



The politicians turn their face away; the judges are scared of the clerical backlash. Pakistan as a state is decaying and is eating its minorities first. For the non-Muslims it is a prison from which there is no escape.

Pakistan was always dicey with its minorities because of its ideology, but today it is killing its minorities because it is killing itself as a state.

In Pakistan was the Army which nurtured these fuandamentalists and extremists as the state’s proxy warriors and then surrendered to them its monopoly of violence.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights say Islamic Pakistan is the most repressive of any nation in the world. Discriminatory legislation favoring Muslims encourages the persecution of religious minorities.

If radical Muslims gain control of the country, circumstances will be much worse:

Religious leaders in Islam are like military commanders with the power to declare war.

Radical Islam remains entrenched with oppressive laws empowering them to crush non Muslims economically. They hate their non Muslim neighbors in Pakistan.

Minorities are threatened if they do not convert to Islam. There is no freedom of religion to share their faith in Christ with Muslims.

Blasphemy laws carry a penalty of life imprisonment and even death in Pakistan where the accused have little hope of justice.

Life for Pakistani Christians changed overnight. Christians couldn’t go to hotels. Businesses posted signs saying, NO CHRISTIANS ALLOWED. It became even more difficult to get a job.

Muslims come to America and European countries to enjoy the freedom they have here and escape the legalistic oppression of Islamic nations.

The Pakistani government is so repressive, it cut electricity to Christian slums to drive believers in Jesus Christ into the Mosques to profess Islam or leave the country.

Pakistan is not only a militant nation of radical extremists, weapons to spill blood are easy to purchase. We see a roadside seller of guns and other killing devices.

In Pakistan, religioius minorities are threatened to convert or die. Their neighbors covet their goods , their homes, their property. The police are poorly paid and will do little for minorities to protect them and their property.

Many become Muslims to escape oppression and persecution.

Pakistani minority religions are suffering from economic discrimination.

It is a third world country with nuclear power. When peace is taken from the world, Pakistan will show India the real meaning of Islam.

Once Pakistan strikes India or India strikes Pakistan, retaliation will take place and they will “kill one another.” Such is the devastating effect of nuclear war.

Pakistan would be safer without nuclear power. Possession of nuclear power invites a first strike from their enemies. Pakistan has an army of 650,000 in a nation with fifty percent of its people suffering from illiteracy. Obviously Muslim Pakistan has its priorities confused.

Pakistan is a third world country with nuclear power. A backward nation with many of its people uneducated.

As all the terrorist organazations are flourished under the cover of Pakistan Army and ISI for their proxy wars in Afghanistan , Kashmir , India and also to suppress the Pukhtuns , Baloch , sindhis and minorities, so the International communty must think seriously about the existence of Pakistan for the sake of peace in the world. The existance of Pakistan and peace are two opposite phenomena. Now it is the responsibility of the International community which one they want to choose.

Writer:

Mashal Khan Takkar

Editor in Chief

THE VOICE TIMES