[Dawn] A SERIES of atrocities recently committed against members of minority communities shows that the canker of sectarian violence is posing for Pakistain a much greater threat than is generally realised, especially by the establishment.
The killing of 29 Shia pilgrims near Mastung set some kind of a record in bestiality; the innocent travellers were forced to alight from their bus, lined up and cut down in cold blood. That this was no isolated act by some mentally deranged gangsters was soon confirmed when a similar event, though on a smaller scale, was reported from Quetta and an jihad boy organization, supposedly banned by the government, claimed the credit for both outrages.
These incidents should be seen in the context of the killing and harassment of the Hazara community in Quetta, that have been going on for years, and the excesses being committed against the Shias in Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... Three conclusions are obvious. First, the size of the population threatened by the wave of sectarian violence has increased by a wide margin. Secondly, the targeted groups are no longer threatened with loss of job or property; their right to life itself is denied. And, thirdly, the addition of minority-bashing to the Al Qaeda's agenda has greatly enhanced the strength of the forces that are challenging the state of Pakistain in this regard.
Discrimination including violence against communities that are non-Mohammedan by choice (Hindus, Christians, Sikhs et al) and those put in this bracket against their will (Ahmedis) has been on the increase for several years. That meant about five per cent of the population, or nine million people, were threatened. Even that was not a small number. The addition of the Shias to the people earmarked for extermination should raise the figure of endangered Paks to 15 to 20 per cent of the population -- 27 to 36 million people. Does it not put the need to combat sectarianism at the top of the national agenda?
Traditionally, attacks on minorities were limited to demands for their purge from services, denial of promotion or recruitment, exclusion from housing colonies and similar forms of economic and social discrimination. Now the target groups are threatened with physical liquidation. In some cases, the possibility of one escaping death by 'conversion to Islam' is not even mentioned. Such threats carry seeds of pogroms that no sane person can possibly contemplate with equanimity.
So long as violence against the Shia community was the work of local hate-preachers employed or aided by some politicians in the Khanewal and Jhang districts any conscientious district official could deal with them. Now there is considerable evidence of organizational link-ups between anti-Shia forces of Evil of Punjabi origin and the Sunni Islamic fascistiin the Al Qaeda-Taliban high command.
The danger of the anti-Shia drive being made into a duty under jihad cannot be ignored. That could increase sectarian prejudices among the government personnel. The religio-political parties that do not oppose forces of Evil and inwardly support them are unlikely to protest against Shia killings (as they do not condemn killers of Ahmedis or those who defend the blasphemy accused), leading to a wider acceptability of Shia killings. The government's ability to deal with violators of the law will surely decline.
The increase in anti-Shia sectarian violence is fuelling intolerance in other areas. The excesses against the Ahmedis are on the increase. Every now and then an Ahmedi is killed for his belief. The intimidation and harassment of an Ahmedi couple who burnt their savings to set up a college in Duniyapur, in Lodhran district of Punjab, continues unabated. The latest is a movement for a complete social boycott of Ahmedis in Pachnand, Chakwal district, that includes expulsion of Ahmedi boys and girls from schools, boycott of Ahmedi shops and refusal to allow them seats on buses. The persecution of a Christian student by unjustly accusing her of blasphemy is just one of the many forms anti-minority mania can take.
Many factors have contributed to the growth of sectarian violence in Pakistain, beginning with flaws in the theory of the state and the various steps taken towards its theocratisation. But one of the main factors has been the state's failure to deal with the element of criminality in sectarianism. Most of the perpetrators of horrible crimes against the minorities have remained untracked.
Many instances of collusion between sectarian killers and law-enforcement agencies have come to light. Cases against leaders of sectarian gangs have failed because of police reluctance to place evidence against them before the courts. But while failure to arrest sectarian killers can be understood because of difficulties in identifying them, no excuse is available in the case of known instigators of sectarian hatred.
All over the country, bookshops are full of publications that preach hatred against non-Mohammedans and the various Mohammedan sects and call for violence. Oral statements are made to the same effect from a variety of forums. Members of minority communities are receiving death threats through letters signed by persons who can be identified by the addresses of their organizations and phone/fax numbers. By declining to proceed against these hate-preachers the state indicts itself of complicity with some of the most despicable criminals in the country.
And this despite the fact that hate-preaching and incitement to sectarian violence have been recognised as crimes for 150 years. Action can be taken under a variety of laws, including the Pakistain Penal Code and Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. Suppression of sectarian violence and hatred was in fact one of the objectives for which the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 was enacted. It defines an action as terrorism if it "incites hatred and contempt on religious, sectarian or ethnic basis to stir up violence or cause internal disturbance". One does have serious reservations about this law but if it can be invoked against students (for making modest demands) and lawyers (for demanding the rule of law) its non-application to those who propagate sectarian hatred is a scandal of the first order.
True, violence and discrimination against the minorities is only a part of the mess that has been created in Pakistain by systematic abuse and exploitation of people's belief. It will take a lot of concerted effort over a long time to restore sanity of thought, but there can be no delay in guaranteeing the minorities the protection of the law.
The point cannot be over-emphasised. If the state of Pakistain cannot afford the protection of law to the Shia, the Ahmedi and any other community, no additional evidence will be required to brand it as a failed state. Indeed, a state that puts five to 20 per cent of its population at the mercy of bloodthirsty goons forfeits its claim to be accepted as a modern state. What is at stake is not only the life and liberty of a Hazara, or an Ahmedi or a Christian citizen; at stake is the survival of the Pak nation. Denial of minorities' rights has always meant that the majority has taken the suicide path.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/30/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] ANOTHER reminder of how recklessly blasphemy accusations are levelled in Pakistain surfaced last week when a Christian eighth-grader was scolded, beaten and expelled for misspelling the word `naat`. The 13-year-old girl explained to school authorities that she had made a mistake, but this was apparently of no consequence. A local maulana told the press that, regardless of intent, the word she had written instead was blasphemous and the punishment was deserved. But the repercussions were not limited to her; her mother, a nurse, was transferred out of their hometown. Even if this was done for security reasons, the family will have to begin a new life in a new place, a choice they did not make. Other Christians in their former town are now afraid for their own security.
As long as the government and other politicians remain reluctant to modify the blasphemy laws and condemn knee-jerk blasphemy accusations, such incidents -- and worse -- will continue to take place. In this case the victim was lucky enough not to be placed in long-term storage, taken to court or attacked, but others have had to bear those consequences on even slight suspicions of blasphemy or because of other enmities channelled into false blasphemy accusations. In fact, as the Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti murders demonstrate, the definition of blasphemy itself has been expanded to include asking for changes to the law -- not even its repeal -- or questioning charges against an alleged blasphemer. A change in mindset is required, and the first step should be a modification of the law to increase evidentiary requirements, incorporate the intentions of the accused and define punishments to fit the magnitude of the offence. Unless these bold steps are taken, all Paks -- and especially minorities -- will remain vulnerable to unjust accusations that can endanger their lives.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the Pak society was flushed with the idea (duly propagated by the military-establishment) that it were the Pakistain-backed anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen who were solely responsible for breaking the Soviet Union, and that consequently, jihadist Islam was set to trigger a number of Islamic revolutions in various Mohammedan countries.
Of course, no-one was talking about the billions of dollars worth of aid and weapons that had come in from the United States and Soddy Arabia for the mujahideen groups anymore, and the fact that in the end it was the Soviet Union that defeated itself by retaining an outdated and stagnant economic and political system that eventually collapsed after failing to financially and politically sustain the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan (1979-88) and its long-drawn war with mujahideen guerillas.
But the euphoria of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was short-lived. Pakistain's military dictator, General Ziaul Haq, who had presided over the 'Afghan jihad,' was assassinated in August 1988 and his death paved the way for the election of a liberal party, the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP).
However, there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened... the arrival of liberal democracy did not mean the end of the era of jihad and 'Islamisation' that the Zia regime had proliferated. On the contrary, Zia's rigorous Islamisation polices and the artificial euphoria of mujahideen victory superimposed on the collective psyche of the society spilled over more forcefully after his liquidation.
Interestingly, the end of the Afghan civil war and the retreat of the United States' economic and military interest in the area also saw Pakistain reeling from political confusion and economic downturns.
As the Pak military establishment (now playing a backstage role) instigated the rise and fall of one democratic government after another, the country went spinning further down the spiral of economic, political and social instability.
Democratic parties were left fighting their little battles of survival against one another and against some rather obvious political intrigues of the non-elected civil-military establishment.
The people were left at the mercy of those forces that made the best of the confusion that had gripped Pakistain after the end of the 'Afghan jihad.'
Faith fans
A number of Islamist outfits had already made in-roads in the politics and sociology of Pakistain by riding on the 1980's Islamisation process.
But as most of them were highly bad boy and eventually got themselves 'strategically' linked with certain sections of the radicalised military institutions, it were the evangelical movements that managed to reap the most success within the country's chaotic and uncertain social and cultural milieu.
The largest of them was also the oldest. The ranks of the Tableeghi Jamat (TJ), a highly ritualistic Deobandi Islamic evangelical movement, swelled. But since the TJ was more a collection of working-class and petty-bourgeoisie cohorts and fellow travelers, newer evangelical outfits emerged with the idea of almost exclusively catering to the growing 'born again' trend being witnessed in the county's middle and upper-middle classes in the 1990s.
Three of the most prominent organizations in this context were Farhat Hashmi's Al-Huda, Zakir Naik's 'Islamic Research Foundation' and Babar R. Chaudhry's Arrahman Araheem (AA).
All three also benefited by another unprecedented trend that began emerging within the urban middle-class youth of Pakistain: Never before did young Paks exhibit so much interest in religion and religiosity as did the generations that grew up in much of the 1990s and almost all of the 2000s.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2011 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Kurram Agency
Punjab
ANOTHER reminder of how recklessly blasphemy accusations are levelled in Pakistain surfaced last week when a Christian eighth-grader was scolded, beaten and expelled for misspelling the word `naat`. The 13-year-old girl explained to school authorities that she had made a mistake, but this was apparently of no consequence. A local maulana told the press that, regardless of intent, the word she had written instead was blasphemous and the punishment was deserved. But the repercussions were not limited to her; her mother, a nurse, was transferred out of their hometown. Even if this was done for security reasons, the family will have to begin a new life in a new place, a choice they did not make. Other Christians in their former town are now afraid for their own security.
