a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package...
there is one minority community in Pakistain -- the Ahmadis -- against whom persecution of both kinds not only exists but is celebrated as a virtue by sections of the majority.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistain held a consultative meeting with members of the community on Sunday to explore the issue and perhaps, in the process, attempt to hold up a mirror to society's unconscionable collusion in discrimination against them.
On the occasion, examples were cited from various aspects of life, including educational institutions and the workplace, where they are subjected to humiliation and harassment, as well as in the media -- where hate speech against them may have even incited the murder of some members of the community.
The HRCP panelists recounted Pakistain's legislative history whereby adherents of the minority faith were declared non-Muslim through a constitutional amendment in 1974; that was later followed by Gen Zia ul Haq
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...making it a punishable offence for Ahmadis to call themselves Muslim, to refer to their call to prayer as 'azan' or their places of worship as 'masjid'.
The HRCP deserves to be commended for highlighting an issue that the conscience of society has long buried. Years of institutionalised discrimination against the Ahmadi community and its persistent vilification have led to a situation where even the mass murder of its members in Lahore on May 28, 2010 failed to elicit the kind of public outrage that such carnage should have merited -- and has done so in the case of similar attacks on adherents of other minority faiths.
But then, why should one be surprised at such callous indifference when the state, duty-bound to protect the fundamental rights of all its citizens, has left the community's right to religious freedom entirely at the mercy of what the majority considers acceptable?
This carte blanche is best reflected in Section 298-C of the Pakistain Penal Code, which stipulates that an Ahmadi is liable to sanctions if he "in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims": such an open-ended law cannot promote the cause of justice.
Now that there is a realisation that religious intolerance has spawned many of the problems that Pakistain is grappling with today, there must be a resolve to eliminate it in all its forms -- without exception.