Minorities have the same rights to Pakistan as do the Muslims
Pakistan, though predominantly a Muslim state, has a mixed bag of religious identities, including Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis and a few others. This creates quite a powder keg of a situation, where one or the other pretext could be, and often is, used to light up not only sectarian fires but in certain cases a burning tinderbox is shown to this proverbial powder keg by some extremist elements that are hell bent on destroying what little semblance of interfaith harmony the country has. However, if the deteriorating situation is not held in its steps, it could prove to be too devastating for the country.
In a conference, held by Pakistan Ulema Council (PUC), a case for promoting tolerance and interfaith harmony was made. The conference which was attended by almost all the prominent religious parties, sects, leaders from minority religions in Pakistan and others, declared that a blasphemer has no religion but the blasphemy law should not be abused. Recent terror incidents, particularly the one with sectarian tint and the one with targeting minorities, in Karachi, Quetta, and Lahore have somehow managed to move the clerics of the country in issuing statements that condemn these barbaric acts but what they always seem to overlook is that their statements neither help in controlling the menace of terrorism nor they are of any value as a guiding principle for the public to follow. The government seems okay, as usual, with the way things are going. Even after such incidents, hatched out of religious intolerance, like Hazara Shia carnage in Quetta, Abbas Town incident in Karachi and Badami Bagh incident in Lahore, neither have the ulema taken any step to calm down the ultra zealous followers of extremist ideology nor have they come forward to help the government in capturing these misled and misguided few.
A country that has been in the news for not just terrorism, the plain and deadly one, but also for having the governor of one of its provinces, and a minister for none other than minorities affairs, assassinated by religious bigots, one could have assumed that it might have corrected its course and had put behind the days of intolerance and violence. But that still remains only wishful thinking. What we really need is that more conferences like the one held the other day must be held on a more regular basis in order to provide a platform to voice, discuss and be heard on issues related to interfaith harmony and peaceful co-existence. After all, our constitution provides the same rights to minorities as it does to Muslims.
