The plight of minorities in Pakistan seems never ending. A week after the most festive Independence Day celebrations in recent years, reports of two new cases of minority oppression are cause for sombre reflection about the direction the country has taken. Though the brutal killing of the 37-year-old Ahmadi pharmacy owner by “unknown gunmen on motorcycles” in Taunsa and the arrest of three Christians for ‘blasphemy’ in Gujrat may be geographically far apart, the two incidents are one in being part of a larger trend of Pakistan’s descent into an intolerant powder keg. The murderers of Ikram Ullah, the deceased pharmacist, are unlikely to ever be brought to justice, given the prevalent indifference the police show towards the Ahmaddiya community as revealed by the unpunished arson attack that claimed the lives of four Ahmadis in Gujranwala last year where policemen were known to be present at the scene. The Gujrat Christians’ only ‘crime’ was using a reverential honorific largely reserved for prophets on a poster celebrating the services of Pastor Fazl Masih on his 20th death anniversary. For this the police arrested them and proceeded to raise the issue to farcical heights by inexplicably booking the trio under anti-terrorist charges. An attempt to mediate was rebuffed by the local Muslim clerics, who rejected the apology of the area’s Christian elders.
The fate of the trio seems grim, given the history of anyone accused of blasphemy. If not death at the hands of a mob, then a life languishing in jail and filing appeals against the mandatory death sentence awaits all accused. The process of investigation is minimal as the police find it convenient to hide behind the excuse of ‘sensitive cases’ and neglect their duty to get to the truth. Accusations of blasphemy and vitriolic and inflammatory speeches have become the most potent tool to organise a readily available mob for purposes distinctly removed from religion. Eliminating rivals, land grabbing, political point scoring — all can be achieved by invoking blasphemy for the flimsiest of reasons. The inherent hatred for religiously distinct groups is the fuel that feeds the fire. The situation has deteriorated so much that every second of a minority individual’s life has to be governed by the consideration of not causing inadvertent offence. Unwanted in their own country, they have nowhere to run. Successive governments have found it inconvenient to pursue this matter and the cancer of fanatical intolerance has spread far and wide. As a result Pakistan faces an unimagined, locally created existential threat, not to mention a continued desecration of its image internationally, and it has become critically essential that there be a concentrated pushback targeting the root causes of this violent hatred. The dream of a tolerant Pakistan has to be kept alive. *