Daily Nation
Atle Hetland
The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience in research, diplomacy and development aid
When scandals occur everyone is shocked, surprised, outraged and more. We all denounce and distance ourselves from them. We take the moral high ground. That we also did when the large child and youth abuse scandal in some villages in Kasur District in Punjab was made public recently.
The scandal had all the required elements for the media to dig into it and go after everyone in power, as is the role of the media; the police, local administration, principals, teachers, religious leaders, sports leaders, and others in authority. Quickly, politicians at local and higher levels got a hard time. We all wanted to blame someone, and, yes, we were perhaps also a bit hypocritical.
The scandal was embarrassing, especially since it included sexual elements, things that are taboo and not spoken about in public, hardly in private either. We thought about the victims, but sometimes they were made into perpetrators, too, or having been part of it all. The perpetrators and their underground gangs were quickly made into monsters, entirely separate from the rest of the communities – and to a major extent they are, hopefully, but not always and entirely.
The scandal was embarrassing, especially since it included sexual elements, things that are taboo and not spoken about in public, hardly in private either. We thought about the victims, but sometimes they were made into perpetrators, too, or having been part of it all. The perpetrators and their underground gangs were quickly made into monsters, entirely separate from the rest of the communities – and to a major extent they are, hopefully, but not always and entirely.
The sex element was what got the media headlines. However, such scandals are not really about sex; they are more about misuse of power, money, resources, advantages and control. In our time, we should know that, with all the knowledge we have with specialists on psychosocial and political issues. We should know – and admit – that rape and other sexual abuse are not about sex; it is about power and control and what follows from that. Sexual abuse is a means towards other ends.
This means that all good and bad things in a society and community are part of that society’s fabric. True, there may be extreme and secret sub-groups in a society and community. Well, ‘secret’ is probably never quite the case. Things would only be partially secret, and many would know about more or less strange sub-cultures. And if we didn’t know for sure and in detail, we would suspect or have some inkling about unusual and unacceptable activities. Sometimes, we shouldn’t poke our nose into everything either, not gossip and talk about everything. We should ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ and instead focus on being as upright as possible ourselves.
However, there is a limit to this too. If we suspect, see, or should have seen unhealthy things happening ‘under our nose’ and we keep quiet about it, we are not quite blameless any longer. A Pakistan friend wisely said to me when we spoke about the Kasur scandal a few days ago that to be silent may be similar to or the same as being guilty. He was right, at least morally. Legally, an accomplice would have to play a more direct role, be present or aide wrongdoing, offense or crime.
In the current Kasur scandal, the legal process must go ahead and take its course. Individual and joint investigation teams have already been set up. The police and the judicial system must do their work, under sharper outside scrutiny than normally. Each case, whether they turn out to be in the hundreds, tens or fewer, must be dealt with individually. Witnesses and victims must be protected, even perpetrators, who may indeed be guilty but part of a more or less accepted subculture. ‘Unconscious bias’ is a term used when people accept behaviour and values which are unacceptable.
I am warning against going overboard when ‘cleaning up’ the Kasur scandal, even trying to state an example, and then in three months everything is forgotten. There are probably many similar cases in Pakistan and in other countries. Hopefully, the cases are not as bad, but they could be worse, too. We must therefore be level-headed, not use a tragedy to any political, moral, religious or other advantage. This means that we may have to restrain ourselves, and indeed not portray own righteousness, which is so easy to do, thoughtlessly and perhaps hypocritically.
We should realise that most people in the Kasur villages and in other places were scandals have taken place, are good and decent citizens, and they will also have to live in the same communities the rest of their lives, sometimes even with the perpetrators, who would have served sentences and recovered. It is essential to realise that in the same communities where crime has taken place, there are positive and valuable things in other fields. The Kasur scandal was exposed; in other villages, similar things are not revealed.
What can be done in future to minimise sad scandals like the current one that has shocked us all?
What can be done in future to minimise sad scandals like the current one that has shocked us all?
I believe we have to be realistic rather than idealistic about human behaviour. None of us are faultless, neither in what we do, say, believe and advocate, nor in what we sweep under the carpet, and what we want to stay unchanged. What we can do, tough, is to work for greater openness and debate. Often, that would mean that we would have to listen to people having attitudes that we dislike, and behaviour that we are against. We must be part of the society and community we live in and do what is right and improve it when we can.
As a social scientist, I feel I have a special duty to consider these issues and do more than others to analyse issues and advice on how to improve things. In this case, we focus on child and youth abuse. In other cases, it may be economic misuse of power, inequality, harsh work conditions, and so on. As a social scientist, and as a concerned and active citizen, I have a distinct responsibility to do more and better.
As a social scientist, I feel I have a special duty to consider these issues and do more than others to analyse issues and advice on how to improve things. In this case, we focus on child and youth abuse. In other cases, it may be economic misuse of power, inequality, harsh work conditions, and so on. As a social scientist, and as a concerned and active citizen, I have a distinct responsibility to do more and better.
True, this is long-term and broad. But I believe it is important to consider the Kasur scandal in this light, not just in a limited and legal way, which will not give us many lessons for the future. Yet, we can also draw specific lessons, which can lead to concrete and immediate guidelines for improvement, especially for parents and the children and youth themselves. The children and youth must be taught how to protect themselves against abuse. And if they report abuse, tell parents, uncles, aunts, elder siblings, or others, they must be listened to, not punished. Schools, religious institutions, police, and others must realize their responsibility as advisers, not only as judges – talking from a pedestal. We are all ‘en route’; we must all try to contribute to the betterment of the lives of others, especially the weak and defenseless, and they, too, must become responsible and more in charge of their own daily lives.
Ziaul Haq — History’s verdict
Gen. Zia’s greatest disservice was an almost complete transformation of the state into a controversial, theocratic entity
Source: The News on Sunday
August 17, 2014
It may be too early to talk of history’s verdict on Gen Ziaul Haq’s contribution to the Pakistani people’s miseries but he is likely to be remembered as one of the few who caused the greatest possible harm to Pakistan and its population.
Driven by runaway ambition to seize power at a time when the country’s political elite had found a way to resolve the PPP-PNA confrontation, which both sides had unwisely fuelled, and earned the dubious distinction of being the only dictator in the country’s history to be denounced by the apex court as a usurper. Then, during his decade-long rule hardly any part of public life in the country escaped his predatory forays.
Politicians and politics had been demonised in Pakistan ever since the bureaucracy’s rise to power in the 1950s but Gen. Zia pushed the process to its ultimate limit by engineering the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after a trial that will haunt the country’s judiciary for ever.
Bhutto was no angel and perhaps the people had more complaints against him than the contents of the charge-sheet drawn up by the Zia regime. But the people alone had the right to judge and punish him and this through a legitimate political process. By going all out to secure Bhutto’s hanging, Zia also strengthened the unsavoury trends towards the politics of revenge and violence.
Further, he demonised political parties and politics by taking the unprecedented step of holding non-party elections, the disastrous consequences of which, in the form of people’s alienation from democratic politics, are evident to this day.
Besides Bhutto’s hanging, Gen. Zia contributed to brutalisation of society in several other ways. By staging fully publicised hangings and floggings in public, he lowered the threshold of tolerance in society. And by obliging courts to enforce harsh, inhuman, and degrading punishments, he tried to deprive judicial authorities, as well as the people at large, of their prized traits of restraint and compassion.
The result of Gen. Zia’s efforts to make the constitution and the laws subject to belief is that Pakistan is facing difficulties in conserving its democratic foundations, the country has become the most notorious exporter of militants and their extremist doctrines.
Zia dealt other blows, too, to the judiciary’s independence and dignity. He abused the innovation of asking the judges to make an oath upon an earlier oath to squeeze out judges suspected of commitment to truth and justice — a perverse tradition followed by the next usurper. He also humiliated a chief justice by forcing him to grant him the power to amend the constitution by threatening him with dismissal. (That the CJ became an accomplice by buckling down and was discarded shortly afterwards is a different story.)
The media received its share of the Zia potion. He killed over a dozen newspapers with a single stroke of his pen. He also maintained a regime of press censorship for the longest period in the country’s history. In addition, he developed the art of corrupting journalists by distributing cash-filled envelopes among them and ordering public institutions to advance them loans (non-recoverable) although not all of them had asked for such favours. Finally, he not only threatened journalists of being hung upside down but also had some of them flogged.
Women were a special target of his malice but in contest with them he met his Waterloo. The more he tried to trap the women of Pakistan with his mantra of chader and chardivari, the more they came out and braved police violence and torture in dungeons at more than one torture centres. More women than ever took to the prohibited arts during the Zia period, which also saw the birth of a robust women’s movement that is still one of the redeeming features of public life in Pakistan.
Above all, Gen. Zia’s choice of means to deal with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, his role in distorting the concept of jihad, and his decision to wreck the Geneva Accords not only made Pakistan a victim of what is described as Kalashnikov and drug mafia but which also had worldwide repercussions. He is responsible, in no small measure, for the bloodshed in Afghanistan and the destruction of that country. And Ziaul Haq’s signatures can be seen on the images of the carnage going on in Arab lands.
It is a tribute to the saner elements in society and their resilience that resistance to Gen. Zia’s pernicious designs never ceased. Politicians wedded to democratic values survived the dark decade and so did judges of integrity and journalists and social activists blessed with the courage of their convictions. Yet, all of them put together have not been able to roll back Gen. Zia’s thorny legacy. In a sense, Pakistan is still living under the canopy planted by Gen. Zia, thanks to the changes in the laws of the country and its constitution made by him.
Gen. Zia’s greatest disservice to Pakistan and its society was an almost complete transformation of the state into a controversial, theocratic entity that its founder had declared it was never going to be.
He began by tampering with the statute book. The Hudood Ordinances of 1979, the system of state collection of Zakat, the Ordinance XX of 1980, the additions to the Penal Code’s chapter on offences relating to religion all led to excesses against women and members of minority communities and fanned sectarian conflicts, all of which continue unabated.
Even more serious was his mauling of the constitution. By inserting Article 2-A into the Constitution he made the Objectives Resolution a substantive part of the basic law. In a display of rank perfidy and bias against the minorities, he deleted the word ‘freely’ from the guarantee of respect for the non-Muslims’ faith from the text of the Objectives Resolution appended to the constitution as its officially approved version. The addition was unnecessary.
The framers of the Constitutions of 1956, 1962, and 1973 had incorporated the salient features of the Objectives Resolution in the text of the constitution. If they had retained the Resolution as a preamble the purpose probably was a) to explain the evolution of the constitutional provisions, and b) to indicate the sanction for the belief-related provisions of the basic law.
The harm done by the insertion of Article 2-A was that it generated ideas of it being in control of the entire constitution, a view that was totally untenable earlier on. It also strengthened the hands of Zia and his successors to undertake enactment of more religious laws.
Likewise, by creating the Federal Shariat Court, he unnecessarily created a parallel judicial system. Unnecessarily because the task of examining the legal code on the touchstone of repugnancy to Islamic injunctions was being done by the Council of Islamic Ideology (and completed since) and for testing fresh legislation the parliament and courts were in place. There was no reason, and none has been advanced since, that the normal judiciary could not perform the functions assigned to the religions courts.
The only result of elevating clerics to the highest benches is that land reform has been blocked and the state is able to keep interest-related laws alive only on the strength of a stay order.
The result of Gen. Zia’s efforts to make the constitution and the laws subject to belief is that Pakistan is facing difficulties in conserving its democratic foundations, the country has become the most notorious exporter of militants and their extremist doctrines, and the federal structure, egalitarian ideals, and good governance itself are in jeopardy. In a sentence, Gen. Zia robbed the people of their future.
It can be said, in Gen. Zia’s defence, that he was not the originator of many of the atrocious processes expanded by him. He was not the mover of the Objectives Resolution, nor the author of the Constitutions of the Islamic Republic. The declaration of Islam as the religion of the state (an inanimate object incapable of having any belief), and the assumption by the state of power to declare who is a Muslim and who is not, were all done by Zia’s predecessors in power. To a considerable extent, Gen. Zia built upon foundations of extra-democratic rule and religiosity that had been laid earlier and all those responsible for setting precedents for him must also share the blame for the people’s unending tribulations.
Also to be blamed are the rulers who have come after Gen. Zia. Their failure to undo his ignominious work is a stunning indictment of their failure to rid the people of a dangerous legacy.
Perhaps these rulers’ failure and Gen. Zia’s success are both rooted in a streak in Pakistani people’s psyche that is described by some as madness or an instinct for self-destruction. Their survival with dignity depends on their ability to purge their mindset of this malignancy.
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The first bricks
To what extent did Zulfikar Ali Bhutto open up the doors for the ‘Islamic’ laws later brought in by Zia?
Source:
The News on Sunday
August 17, 2014
The image of General Ziaul Haq will live with us for a very long time: a nightmarish memory for those who can remember flicking on their television screens to face the wide-toothed grin, the eyes ringed by deep shadows and the distinct moustache of a man who would rule the country for 11 long years, changing its contours forever.
By 1988, when Zia dramatically vanished from the scene in that mysterious C-130 air crash over Bahawalpur, Pakistan had changed beyond recognition, cast in heavy chains under a set of ‘Islamic’ rules with hardline sects ushered in to open their madrassahs in a nation where religious ritual overtook all else.
The legacy lives on with us today, firmly entrenched in the very air we breathe. It is impossible to escape it, with the clauses inked into the Constitution, pinning down Zia’s vision even more firmly.
As extremism has grown, the problem has worsened, with the growing misuse of the blasphemy laws offering just one example of this. It is a frightening one. We see the consequences again and again.
Perhaps because we like to think in black and white — casting people in roles of heroes and villains rather than those who stand between the two; perhaps because of Bhutto’s tragic end at the gallows, we tend to place the entire blame for what has happened to our country entirely on the shoulders of Zia.
This is the easiest way to deal with the past for many of us; the simplistic way, and generally we like to steer clear of too much complexity and too much deep thought.
But to what extent did Zulfikar Ali Bhutto open up the doors for the ‘Islamic’ laws later brought in by Zia? What part did the Pakistan People’s Party government play in weaving religion tightly into the affairs of the State, and in the process, breaking away from the Left-leaning agenda that had brought it to power following the 1970 elections when people voted for radical change?
Bhutto himself, a man who never claimed to be a practising Muslim, resorted to the use of more and more Islamic jargon, organising a Seerat Conference ahead of the 1977 polls and altering key components of PPP policy to gain popular support.
After that election, the Left has, of course, never figured as a force in Pakistan’s electoral politics, and Bhutto himself played a key role in this, ‘cleansing’ his party of its leftist members as he, starting in 1974, linked up with the establishment — essentially to keep checks on his rivals, both within and outside the party.
This unsavoury alliance led to acute differences developing between Bhutto and key founding members of the party, including Malik Meraj Khalid, Dr. Mubashir Hassan, and most notoriously the Bengali communist leader, Jalaluddin Abdur Rahim, who chose to stay with the PPP in what remained of Pakistan after the 1971 civil war.
Rahim, who had served as law minister in the PPP cabinet, criticised Bhutto in public, was imprisoned and tortured. This episode was among those which marked the demise of the PPP as it had been when it first came to power.
There were other measures which laid down the first bricks on the road that Zia would follow. Bhutto perhaps could never have imagined the kind of country Pakistan would become. Today, he would not recognise it. But the policies he adopted played a critical role in bringing about the change.
The direction we looked in began to alter, with heads turning to the West and the Middle East, as the process of plucking Pakistan out of South Asia and placing it closer to the Arab world began. This was partially an outcome of the 1971 war, but the effects would be long-lasting.
As Pakistani workers left for Gulf States their remittances altered economic emphasis and new bonds began to be formed with Pakistan, stepping forward to assist its allies with technical and practical support during the 1973 Arab-Israel war.
The highly successful Organisation of Islamic Conference held in Lahore in 1974 marked this new era. The slide westwards would be taken far further by Zia, who, to a much greater extent than Bhutto borrowed cultural and religious influences from that part of the world, attempting to eradicate a past created through the centuries.
At home, under growing pressure from the Pakistan National Alliance, a broad-based alliance set up against his government, Bhutto began to divert from the originally secular stance of the PPP and use Islam as a prop; a tool to gain popular support.
The PPP’s failure to go through with many of the promises made in 1970 and based on its 1967 manifesto quite evidently drove forward this strategy by a leader desperate to avoid any loss of control.
Dangerously, under pressure from the religious right, discriminatory laws were built into the Constitution. Ahmadis were declared non-Muslim in 1974, opening the way for the growing violence they would face through the Zia era and later. Shariah laws, banning alcohol sale to Muslims, appeared a few years later. Tinkling wine glasses vanished from tables, and with them went free choice and the dream of a liberal Pakistan that some still held on to.
Bhutto himself, a man who never claimed to be a practising Muslim, resorted to the use of more and more Islamic jargon, organising a Seerat Conference ahead of the 1977 polls and altering key components of PPP policy to gain popular support. Requirements, such as the one that the head of State be a Muslim, crept into the Constitution. They have, of course, remained there.
Of course, attempts to ‘Islamise’ Pakistan had begun decades earlier. They assumed their harshest form under Zia. Had Bhutto survived as a ruler, we would almost certainly not have seen the kind of horrors that marked Zia’s years in power: the floggings, the public hangings, the brutal stripping away of rights from women and minority groups and the alterations in law that have re-shaped society.
Today, politics and religion ride together, pressed close to each other. This is, undoubtedly, what Zia left us with. Religion and promotion of extremism were the hallmarks of his rule. They helped prop him up as a leader who exercised immense coercive power. But the path towards bringing Islam into the lives of people who already practised it was begun by Bhutto, as he led his party in a different direction to the one envisaged by its founders.
We can only guess what the outcome may have been had he not caved in to pressures which could have been avoided by keeping with the original line of the party. But all this now is, of course, a part of history. Today, we see where the direction taken has brought us, and we can only wonder if we would be standing at a quite different place had policies between 1971 and 1977 been different.
It seems almost certain that this would, indeed, have been the case, possibly even staving off the arrival at the helm of State of General Ziaul Haq, the man who would change the face of our country forever in so many different ways.
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Forced Conversions
with special thanks to:
The Express Tribune
August 18, 2014
Cross-cultural marriages can be a beautiful thing — when engaged in willingly by two people through mutual consent. However, when pregnant and married women belonging to one faith are forcefully converted and married to men of another faith, the act is one reeking of criminality. The forced conversion of married and expecting women of the Hindu faith impinges on basic human rights. The news of forced conversions is old, of course, but sadly, the government has not acted in the way of stopping the phenomenon in the least bit, and now, not even married women are being spared.
The minorities of Sindh have been abused for a long time by governments and by sections of the majority community. They continue being further marginalised, as they enjoy only a withering presence in politics. Without support from law-enforcement agencies, which are controlled by the government, minorities in Pakistan seem to have absolutely no protection. The injustice perpetrated by the majority now includes producing false marriage documents — possibly issued by clerics and with no government or official review — to wreck Hindu families and homes. This wrongdoing continues and we can only hope that oppressed minority communities will one day be able to achieve the freedom that international human rights laws grant them. The lack of protection accorded to minorities by law-enforcement agencies upholds the argument that the police need to become independent of the influence of those occupying the corridors of power. Alas, revamping the system and mindsets might be eons away for Pakistan, but the problem of lack of provision of basic human rights needs to be addressed immediately. Women of all faiths frequently have to fight for the right to marry whoever they want to, but if that woman belongs to a minority faith in Pakistan, her chances of being forced into a situation against her will increases several-fold.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 18th, 2014.
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Why It Feels Like a 'Crime' to Be Christian in Pakistan
In September, a suicide bomb attack on a church killed at least 75 people. And in March 2013, a Muslim mob set ablaze almost 200 buildings in a predominantly Christian neighborhood of Lahore.
Source/Credit: NBC News
By Wajahat S. Khan | August 17, 2014
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – This Islamic republic's wealthy and cosmopolitan capital is jokingly referred to as "a beautiful city 15 minutes from Pakistan." But life is no laughing matter for Islamabad's Christian community.
Most of the city's Christians can be found living in ramshackle houses constructed over open sewers in ghettos hidden from sight behind whitewashed walls. Authorities supply no power or gas to the slums, which are essentially cities within cities and in some cases are nestled between Islamabad's most plush neighborhoods.
Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah proclaimed in 1947 that his countrymen "may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the state."
But the modern reality is very different. Most people in Pakistan are Muslims and Jinnah's imagined secular state has become increasingly theocratic after decades of dictatorships and official Islamism. Christians, particularly the poor belonging to the agricultural center and north of the country, are considered outcasts by many and find themselves pushed to the edge of society.
Islamabad's Christians allege rampant discrimination by the conservative Pakistan Muslim League government. They say their small proportion of the population means they don't stand a chance at the ballot box and are now demanding a voice.
Recently retired cook Rehmat Masih has lived in Islamabad for four decades. The 65-year-old offers a bleak assessment of life in a Christian slum.
"I think being Christian, in this place, this Pakistan, is a crime," he said. "If we speak out, our corpses will be on the road."
Masih lives in "100 Quarters," a litter-strewn slum tucked between Islamabad’s posh Margalla and Hill Roads. It is named after the first 100 apartments granted to Christians by the government in the 1960s, but it has since grown and now houses more than 1,000 Christian families.
“They say that Islamabad is a great capital of a great nation,” said Masih, standing next to an overflowing drain. “But they let us live like this in middle of Islamabad. Officials drive by every day in BMWs and see this. Yet we are kept like this. Why?”
According to the National Minority Alliance (NMA), Christians form under three percent of Pakistan’s estimated 180 million people. But the community is spread all over the country, making it almost impossible for Christians to elect representatives who share their religion because they lack the numbers in a free-for-all poll. Almost always faced with a choice of a Muslim candidate from mainstream parties, they have to depend on a handful of “reserved” seats for minorities for representation in the 343-seat parliament, where non-Muslim minorities - Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians - have only 10 seats.
Critics like Samuel Yaqoob, of the Muslim-Christian Coalition, say those seats are given to "friends and favorites of the ruling parties, not actual spokespersons of our community."
“We are too scattered, too divided, too uneducated,” added Robin Daniel, of the National Minority Alliance.
Many residents of the capital's Christian slums work in sanitation, cleaning sewers and collecting refuse. Others provide domestic help for Islamabad’s well-heeled. Students from private high schools can be spotted with their expensive cars parked near the gates of such slums during afternoons, purchasing narcotics from Christian teenagers.
“Our problems are social, legal and political,” said Shahryar Shams, 25, a newly graduated lawyer. “In theory, all fundamental rights for minorities are granted by the Constitution of Pakistan. But we lack organized political leadership in our own community. We face increasing extremism from the rest of society too ... But our biggest issue is that we are represented by those who are selected by the powers that be, and not through our direct vote.”
In September, a suicide bomb attack on a church killed at least 75 people. And in March 2013, a Muslim mob set ablaze almost 200 buildings in a predominantly Christian neighborhood of Lahore.
Pakistan's much-debated "Blasphemy Law" is also often used to target Christians and other minorities. In 2012, 14-year-old Rimsha Masih was falsely accused of burning the Quran, the sacred Islamic text. Charges were later dropped amid international concern for her safety, but the law, remains on the books. Those accused under an anti-blasphemy law are sometimes lynched by the public even if they are found innocent by the courts.
But Fazeela Bibi, 17, a Christian high-school dropout who works as an office assistant at the American Embassy in Islamabad, suggested that the community was traditionally "not united" enough to drive change.
“One person can't do anything alone," she said, while preparing lunch over a wood stove in a 100 Quarters courtyard adjacent to a drain oozing out monsoon rains and refuse. "Injustice cannot be fought alone."
Image: Fazeela Bibi, 17, is a resident of the Christian "100 Quarters" slum Wajahat S. Khan / NBC News
Fazeela Bibi, a 17-year-old resident of the "100 Quarters" slum, says Christians are unfairly treated in Pakistan but also acknowledges that the community is not organized.
Masih, the retired cook, has been unsuccessfully trying for 14 months to meet his elected local representative to request repairs for a broken electric transformer. He wasn’t too optimistic about the future.
“I'm pretty sure that we will remain living like this,” he said. “That's how it’s been for 67 years. There are no angels in Islamabad. Only politicians.”
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Wajahat S.Khan is a correspondent and producer for NBC News based in Islamabad, covering South Asia
Read original post here: Why It Feels Like a 'Crime' to Be Christian in Pakistan
Source/Credit: NBC News
By Wajahat S. Khan | August 17, 2014
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – This Islamic republic's wealthy and cosmopolitan capital is jokingly referred to as "a beautiful city 15 minutes from Pakistan." But life is no laughing matter for Islamabad's Christian community.
Most of the city's Christians can be found living in ramshackle houses constructed over open sewers in ghettos hidden from sight behind whitewashed walls. Authorities supply no power or gas to the slums, which are essentially cities within cities and in some cases are nestled between Islamabad's most plush neighborhoods.
Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah proclaimed in 1947 that his countrymen "may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the state."
But the modern reality is very different. Most people in Pakistan are Muslims and Jinnah's imagined secular state has become increasingly theocratic after decades of dictatorships and official Islamism. Christians, particularly the poor belonging to the agricultural center and north of the country, are considered outcasts by many and find themselves pushed to the edge of society.
Islamabad's Christians allege rampant discrimination by the conservative Pakistan Muslim League government. They say their small proportion of the population means they don't stand a chance at the ballot box and are now demanding a voice.
Recently retired cook Rehmat Masih has lived in Islamabad for four decades. The 65-year-old offers a bleak assessment of life in a Christian slum.
"I think being Christian, in this place, this Pakistan, is a crime," he said. "If we speak out, our corpses will be on the road."
Masih lives in "100 Quarters," a litter-strewn slum tucked between Islamabad’s posh Margalla and Hill Roads. It is named after the first 100 apartments granted to Christians by the government in the 1960s, but it has since grown and now houses more than 1,000 Christian families.
“They say that Islamabad is a great capital of a great nation,” said Masih, standing next to an overflowing drain. “But they let us live like this in middle of Islamabad. Officials drive by every day in BMWs and see this. Yet we are kept like this. Why?”
According to the National Minority Alliance (NMA), Christians form under three percent of Pakistan’s estimated 180 million people. But the community is spread all over the country, making it almost impossible for Christians to elect representatives who share their religion because they lack the numbers in a free-for-all poll. Almost always faced with a choice of a Muslim candidate from mainstream parties, they have to depend on a handful of “reserved” seats for minorities for representation in the 343-seat parliament, where non-Muslim minorities - Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians - have only 10 seats.
Critics like Samuel Yaqoob, of the Muslim-Christian Coalition, say those seats are given to "friends and favorites of the ruling parties, not actual spokespersons of our community."
“We are too scattered, too divided, too uneducated,” added Robin Daniel, of the National Minority Alliance.
Many residents of the capital's Christian slums work in sanitation, cleaning sewers and collecting refuse. Others provide domestic help for Islamabad’s well-heeled. Students from private high schools can be spotted with their expensive cars parked near the gates of such slums during afternoons, purchasing narcotics from Christian teenagers.
“Our problems are social, legal and political,” said Shahryar Shams, 25, a newly graduated lawyer. “In theory, all fundamental rights for minorities are granted by the Constitution of Pakistan. But we lack organized political leadership in our own community. We face increasing extremism from the rest of society too ... But our biggest issue is that we are represented by those who are selected by the powers that be, and not through our direct vote.”
In September, a suicide bomb attack on a church killed at least 75 people. And in March 2013, a Muslim mob set ablaze almost 200 buildings in a predominantly Christian neighborhood of Lahore.
Pakistan's much-debated "Blasphemy Law" is also often used to target Christians and other minorities. In 2012, 14-year-old Rimsha Masih was falsely accused of burning the Quran, the sacred Islamic text. Charges were later dropped amid international concern for her safety, but the law, remains on the books. Those accused under an anti-blasphemy law are sometimes lynched by the public even if they are found innocent by the courts.
But Fazeela Bibi, 17, a Christian high-school dropout who works as an office assistant at the American Embassy in Islamabad, suggested that the community was traditionally "not united" enough to drive change.
“One person can't do anything alone," she said, while preparing lunch over a wood stove in a 100 Quarters courtyard adjacent to a drain oozing out monsoon rains and refuse. "Injustice cannot be fought alone."
Image: Fazeela Bibi, 17, is a resident of the Christian "100 Quarters" slum Wajahat S. Khan / NBC News
Fazeela Bibi, a 17-year-old resident of the "100 Quarters" slum, says Christians are unfairly treated in Pakistan but also acknowledges that the community is not organized.
Masih, the retired cook, has been unsuccessfully trying for 14 months to meet his elected local representative to request repairs for a broken electric transformer. He wasn’t too optimistic about the future.
“I'm pretty sure that we will remain living like this,” he said. “That's how it’s been for 67 years. There are no angels in Islamabad. Only politicians.”
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Wajahat S.Khan is a correspondent and producer for NBC News based in Islamabad, covering South Asia
Read original post here: Why It Feels Like a 'Crime' to Be Christian in Pakistan
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Why are matters of faith beyond discussion?
with special thanks to:Source/Credit: Daily Dawn Pakistan
By Badar Iqbal Chaudhary | August 15, 2014
As I was leaving for Britain for the first time, many years ago, one of the Imams that I had held various discussions with, advised me:
“Baita there is a class of people who do not believe in any god. Do not hold a discussion with them, ever!”
“But why?,” I asked.
Maulvi sahib explained his rationale: “Because they can potentially diminish your faith with their illogical and audacious questions.”
To that I couldn't help but retort: “Are you so uncertain of the strength of my faith? What if I were able to endow a better understanding of Islam upon them and thus bring them a notch closer to my own religion?”
Maulvi sahib did not have an answer. I took that as a sign that he had understood the logical fallacy in his argument.
Thereafter, I spent years abroad, and had countless arguments with my ‘atheist friends’, returning a ‘ghazi’ nevertheless.
The apprehension of the Imam Sahib however, was not a sole occurrence. This dilemma prevails within Muslims by and large.
Take for instance the much derided Satanic Verses by Rushdie — whose venom was testified to by Ayatollah of Iran — alleging that it had the potential to damage the faith of Muslim society.
I had the fortune (or misfortune rather, given its opaque metaphors and stale story line), to read the book.
Guess what, I am still as much a Muslim as I was before reading the book.
In the same vein, one of the fundamental lessons debaters are taught is that there are two ways of polishing an argument: looking at it from eleven different angles, or holding the same discussion at eleven different instances.
By the end of it, one is left with the bare truth which can be discussed, argued or defended at any platform. Conviction of one's arguments comes as an accompanying advantage.
Herein lies the critical problem ailing Muslim society – we are afraid of discourse; frightened that our faith may desert us; terrified that we may become influenced by the rhetoric ‘emanating from other quarters’.
It is invariably this refusal to indulge in discussion which prevents us from becoming more reasonable in our own arguments.
This has resulted in most practicing Muslims in our part of the world becoming ignorant to the very ethos of religion. Principles are sacrificed for the sake of literal interpretations; pride and ego remain high despite the uncovering of ankles; the beard is guarded but modesty is not; and ablution is performed five times a day but the streets are 'religiously' littered with rubbish.
I have had the chance to make acquaintance of at least three Europeans who converted to Islam in the recent years, after they did their own fair amount of research. Let me assure you, they are far better at following the principles of Islam than most born-Muslims, who consider themselves entitled to all the blessings of the world for their faith despite knowing virtually nothing about it.
Bear in mind, the lack of discussion does not just breed ignorant Muslims, it also gives birth to a violent class as well.
If Islam were a religion of mindless compliance, it would not have emphasised discernment so much; the concept of Ijtihad, is the idea of Muslims being an enlightened nation, aware of the teachings they are expected to follow and the rationale behind each.
The following verse of Iqbal acknowledges faith as being beyond the understandable, but still implies that faith is a journey that has to be traversed through reason.
Guzar ja aqal se agay k yeh noor, Chiragh e rah hai manzil nahi hai
[Translation: Move on and beyond reason, for reason is the torch for this journey but not the destination.]
One is compelled into reiterating the same point ever so often: A more modern approach to the understanding of religion needs to be undertaken. Aversion to discussion should be shunned, even on topics as controversial as blasphemy laws.
A progressive society can well defend its ideologies, a regressive one is reduced to the annals of history.
The choice is ours.
Read original post here: Pakistan: Why are matters of faith beyond discussion?
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