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Dalit Women fined for entering Hindu temple

Dalits are not allowed but **** Actress gets welcome in Temples; is it not hypocrisy
http://www.muslimissues.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Dalit-vs-****-Star-640x351.jpg
As per the news published in different news papers and news portals, **** Starr Sunny Leone visited the famous Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai to seek blessings for her forthcoming film Kuch Kuch Locha Hai on Friday, 01 May 2015.

Dressed in a pink salwar kameez, the actress made her way to the temple with offerings.

In the same week Member of Parliament P.L Puniya raised a question in Rajya Sabha Zero Hour about the ban on Dalits to enter the Temples in more than 70 villages of Gujarat state.

This is really so shaming for India that in the 21st century we have such a thought. Our Prime Minister is talking about making India a super power. But whether the super power means just to portray outer face or to look into the inner soul of the country.
Dalits are not allowed but **** Actress gets welcome in Temples; is it not hypocrisy | Muslim Issues
 
This is a sad incident but at least the woman was not harmed or attacked. There are worse cases than this.
 
Dalits are not allowed but **** Actress gets welcome in Temples; is it not hypocrisy
Dalit-vs-****-Star-640x351.jpg

As per the news published in different news papers and news portals, **** Starr Sunny Leone visited the famous Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai to seek blessings for her forthcoming film Kuch Kuch Locha Hai on Friday, 01 May 2015.

Dressed in a pink salwar kameez, the actress made her way to the temple with offerings.

In the same week Member of Parliament P.L Puniya raised a question in Rajya Sabha Zero Hour about the ban on Dalits to enter the Temples in more than 70 villages of Gujarat state.

This is really so shaming for India that in the 21st century we have such a thought. Our Prime Minister is talking about making India a super power. But whether the super power means just to portray outer face or to look into the inner soul of the country.
Dalits are not allowed but **** Actress gets welcome in Temples; is it not hypocrisy | Muslim Issues


Page not found, kindly update the link.
 
Page not found, kindly update the link.
Dalits are not allowed but **** Actress gets welcome in Temples; is it not hypocrisy | Muslim Issues
http://www.muslimissues.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Dalit-vs-****-Star-640x351.jpg

Ayyankali - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Upper cloth controversy
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Jump to: navigation, search
The upper cloth controversy or upper cloth revoltTamil தோள் சீலைப் போராட்டம் refers to incidents surrounding the rebellion by Nadar climber women asserting their right to wear upper-body clothes against the caste restrictions sanctioned by the Travancore kingdom, a part of present day Kerala, India.
In Travancore, Cochin and Malabar, no female was allowed to cover their upper part of the body in front of Brahmins until the 19th century. Under the support of Ayya Vaikundar,[1] some communities fought for their right to wear upper clothes and the upper class resorted to attacking them in 1818. In 1819, the Rani of Travancore announced that the Nadar climber women have no right to wear upper clothes like most non-Brahmin castes of Kerala. However, the aristocratic Nadan women of Kerala, their counterparts, had the rights to cover their bosom.[2] Violence against Nadar climber women continued and reached its peak in 1858 across the kingdom, notably in Neyyattinkara and Neyyur.
On 26 July 1859, under pressure from the Madras Governor, the king of Travancore issued a proclamation announcing the right of Nadar climber women to wear upper clothes but on condition that they should not imitate the style of clothing worn by upper class women.[3][4][5] Though the proclamation did not quell the tension immediately, it gradually subsided as the social and economical status of Nadar climbers progressed in subsequent decades with significant support from missionaries and Ayya Vaikundar.
 
Dalits are not allowed but **** Actress gets welcome in Temples; is it not hypocrisy
Dalit-vs-****-Star-640x351.jpg

As per the news published in different news papers and news portals, **** Starr Sunny Leone visited the famous Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai to seek blessings for her forthcoming film Kuch Kuch Locha Hai on Friday, 01 May 2015.

Dressed in a pink salwar kameez, the actress made her way to the temple with offerings.

In the same week Member of Parliament P.L Puniya raised a question in Rajya Sabha Zero Hour about the ban on Dalits to enter the Temples in more than 70 villages of Gujarat state.

This is really so shaming for India that in the 21st century we have such a thought. Our Prime Minister is talking about making India a super power. But whether the super power means just to portray outer face or to look into the inner soul of the country.
Dalits are not allowed but **** Actress gets welcome in Temples; is it not hypocrisy | Muslim Issues
Do I need to post some quotes like mullah saying Earthquake due to women wearing short dresses & jeans or more...:lol:
 
Now that Modi is PM, India has no more problems at all.

All the minorities are respected equally, India is the next supa powa in 2020 and will establish a Mars colony by 2025.

After all Modi with his "56 inches chest" is the PM now.


Well delusional Indians@PDF want you to believe this tripe unconditionally, just like themselves!
 
Now that Modi is PM, India has no more problems at all.

All the minorities are respected equally, India is the next supa powa in 2020 and will establish a Mars colony by 2025.

After all Modi with his "56 inches chest" is the PM now.


Well delusional Indians@PDF want you to believe this tripe unconditionally, just like themselves!
What size of bra he wears?
 
Why Has Pakistan Become So Intolerant? - The Daily Beast

Why Has Pakistan Become So Intolerant?
I was beaten in Pakistan for my religion. I am far from alone.
A Christian couple, parents of three children with a fourth on the way, were accused of blasphemy by a mob and incinerated in a brick kiln at their worksite in Punjab last November. Suicide bombers blew themselves up at two churches in Lahore in March. Asia Bibi, a Christian laborer and mother of five, awaits a hearing on her death sentence after being accused of blasphemy in 2009. In Peshawar, 127 worshipers were killed and 160 wounded by suicide bombers at All Saints’ Church in September 2013.

My getting beaten up by agents of Pakistan’s military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the back cab of a pickup truck on the outskirts of Peshawar last year was mild compared to the discrimination and violence that the country’s religious minorities have experienced since Pakistan was founded in 1947.

Nevertheless the beating was significant, for it illustrated the extent to which governmental authorities in Pakistan are willing to violate their own constitution’s mandate for religious freedom in order to placate the radicals pressing Pakistan in ever more extreme Islamist directions.

For starters, I’m a U.S. citizen, not a Pakistani. I was principal (the south Asian term for president) of one of Pakistan’s oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher education: Edwardes College, established in Peshawar in 1900 by a mission agency of the Church of England and since 1940 an institution of the local church. And I was being attacked not by the Taliban but by agents of the government’s most powerful intelligence unit.

The assault on me was not personal but political, and the politics had everything to do with religion. Edwardes had about 2,800 students and over 100 faculty members—92 percent of them Muslim and 7 percent Christian—and a longstanding reputation for a liberal learning environment that fostered inter-religious understanding. The campus has both a chapel and a mosque.

The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was so enthusiastic about our educational innovations that they made an unprecedented grant of Rs. 300 million (over $3 million at the time) to support the college’s effort to award its own degrees and de-affiliate from the University of Peshawar.

Degree-awarding status required a charter, and this was where conflict arose. Edwardes has always been a church institution, but its auspices got confused during the nationalization drive of the 1970s, when the local governor illegally installed himself as chair of the board, with a majority of government appointees. The Church of Pakistan and its Diocese of Peshawar never accepted this shift, but the risk of violent retaliation prompted them, understandably, to muddle along with confused governance rather than actively resist.

Until, that is, the charter issue arose in 2013. Following the guidelines of the government’s own “Model Charter for Private Universities,” the proposed charter restored a church majority on the board, with the diocesan bishop as chancellor. Government officials and some Muslim faculty members insisted that the government’s majority be retained, but the church rightly rejected codifying by charter an illegal and dysfunctional governance system. Without constitution, law, or history on its side, the government resorted to threatening Bishop Sarfaraz Peters and me, abusing a Christian administrator, and physically attacking me. I had to leave the country, and the church is still trying to resolve the situation.

In addition to mandating that all persons shall have the right to “profess, practice and propagate” their religion, Pakistan’s constitution states that “every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions” (Article 20). Violations of this institutional protection are less dramatic than individuals being accused of blasphemy or neighborhoods going up in flames, but in the long run they’re just as important because they affect the long-term viability of religious minorities and their contribution to society.

Several factors feed into the personal, communal and institutional violations of religious freedom in Pakistan today, violations visited on Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs, but also Shiite, Ahmadi and Ismaili Muslims.

An irony in the case of Pakistan is that it achieved nationhood almost 70 years ago, but its 96 percent Muslim majority still exhibits the siege mentality of the minority status it sought to avoid in India.
One factor is the struggle within Islam about the future of Islam, a struggle that for years, especially since 9/11, has dominated news about North Africa and the Middle East, with ISIS atrocities now occupying center stage. Muslims are wrestling with Islam’s place in the modern world, especially in relation to democracy, education, and freedom as promoted by Western Europe and North America.

In Pakistan this struggle was aggravated by U.S. and Pakistani support for the mujahedeen as they transformed jihad into a tactic of modern warfare against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Today it is aggravated by the proxy ideological battle being waged between Iranian Shiite Islam and Saudi Wahabi Islam. Yet as Farahnaz Ispahani argues in her forthcoming book, Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities, persecution is not a new development, for minorities have been oppressed in Pakistan since shortly after independence in 1947.

Another factor is the global revival of religious chauvinism across many religions, including both Christianity and Islam but also in Hindu nationalism in India and Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. As populations increase and governments fail their constituents, religious majorities prey on minorities in competition for resources, especially as local identities have resurfaced since the end of the Cold War.

An irony in the case of Pakistan is that it achieved nationhood almost 70 years ago, but its 96 percent Muslim majority still exhibits the siege mentality of the minority status it sought to avoid in India. Distrust of the different results in efforts to suppress and eradicate the other.

And then there is terror of the violence that can be meted out to those who oppose extreme views and policies. The vast majority of Pakistanis are moderate and tolerant in their convictions. Newspaper columnists regularly condemn radical views, violent incidents, and the government’s inaction. “We were not like this!” a Muslim colleague of mine cried out at news of another outrage. It was a well-connected Muslim who saved me from being killed by the ISI.

Yet the assassinations of two prominent government officials in 2011—Salman Taseer, the Muslim governor of Punjab, and Shabhaz Bhatti, the Christian federal minister of minority affairs—for opposing the nation’s draconian and much abused blasphemy laws illustrated how there is no limit to the radicals’ reach. The threat of such violence, especially when coupled with the ability of religious political parties to sway voters, intimidates governmental officials into doing little except speechifying after horrifying incidents. Perpetrators go unpunished, and school textbooks continue to disparage religious minorities.

At 200 million inhabitants, Pakistan is the world’s sixth-most populous nation, and it will be fourth by 2050. So what happens with religious freedom in Pakistan is important for the future of religious freedom globally in the 21st century. Can religious people in the human family honor one another’s search for the sacred and explore each other’s paths? Or will religious people disparage, oppress, and kill the religious other and thereby defile the divine?



An Episcopal priest and theologian, Titus Presler, Th.D., is principal-in-exile of Edwardes College, Peshawar, and past president of the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.
 
Why Has Pakistan Become So Intolerant? - The Daily Beast

Why Has Pakistan Become So Intolerant?
I was beaten in Pakistan for my religion. I am far from alone.
A Christian couple, parents of three children with a fourth on the way, were accused of blasphemy by a mob and incinerated in a brick kiln at their worksite in Punjab last November. Suicide bombers blew themselves up at two churches in Lahore in March. Asia Bibi, a Christian laborer and mother of five, awaits a hearing on her death sentence after being accused of blasphemy in 2009. In Peshawar, 127 worshipers were killed and 160 wounded by suicide bombers at All Saints’ Church in September 2013.

My getting beaten up by agents of Pakistan’s military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the back cab of a pickup truck on the outskirts of Peshawar last year was mild compared to the discrimination and violence that the country’s religious minorities have experienced since Pakistan was founded in 1947.

Nevertheless the beating was significant, for it illustrated the extent to which governmental authorities in Pakistan are willing to violate their own constitution’s mandate for religious freedom in order to placate the radicals pressing Pakistan in ever more extreme Islamist directions.

For starters, I’m a U.S. citizen, not a Pakistani. I was principal (the south Asian term for president) of one of Pakistan’s oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher education: Edwardes College, established in Peshawar in 1900 by a mission agency of the Church of England and since 1940 an institution of the local church. And I was being attacked not by the Taliban but by agents of the government’s most powerful intelligence unit.

The assault on me was not personal but political, and the politics had everything to do with religion. Edwardes had about 2,800 students and over 100 faculty members—92 percent of them Muslim and 7 percent Christian—and a longstanding reputation for a liberal learning environment that fostered inter-religious understanding. The campus has both a chapel and a mosque.

The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was so enthusiastic about our educational innovations that they made an unprecedented grant of Rs. 300 million (over $3 million at the time) to support the college’s effort to award its own degrees and de-affiliate from the University of Peshawar.

Degree-awarding status required a charter, and this was where conflict arose. Edwardes has always been a church institution, but its auspices got confused during the nationalization drive of the 1970s, when the local governor illegally installed himself as chair of the board, with a majority of government appointees. The Church of Pakistan and its Diocese of Peshawar never accepted this shift, but the risk of violent retaliation prompted them, understandably, to muddle along with confused governance rather than actively resist.

Until, that is, the charter issue arose in 2013. Following the guidelines of the government’s own “Model Charter for Private Universities,” the proposed charter restored a church majority on the board, with the diocesan bishop as chancellor. Government officials and some Muslim faculty members insisted that the government’s majority be retained, but the church rightly rejected codifying by charter an illegal and dysfunctional governance system. Without constitution, law, or history on its side, the government resorted to threatening Bishop Sarfaraz Peters and me, abusing a Christian administrator, and physically attacking me. I had to leave the country, and the church is still trying to resolve the situation.

In addition to mandating that all persons shall have the right to “profess, practice and propagate” their religion, Pakistan’s constitution states that “every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions” (Article 20). Violations of this institutional protection are less dramatic than individuals being accused of blasphemy or neighborhoods going up in flames, but in the long run they’re just as important because they affect the long-term viability of religious minorities and their contribution to society.

Several factors feed into the personal, communal and institutional violations of religious freedom in Pakistan today, violations visited on Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs, but also Shiite, Ahmadi and Ismaili Muslims.

An irony in the case of Pakistan is that it achieved nationhood almost 70 years ago, but its 96 percent Muslim majority still exhibits the siege mentality of the minority status it sought to avoid in India.
One factor is the struggle within Islam about the future of Islam, a struggle that for years, especially since 9/11, has dominated news about North Africa and the Middle East, with ISIS atrocities now occupying center stage. Muslims are wrestling with Islam’s place in the modern world, especially in relation to democracy, education, and freedom as promoted by Western Europe and North America.

In Pakistan this struggle was aggravated by U.S. and Pakistani support for the mujahedeen as they transformed jihad into a tactic of modern warfare against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Today it is aggravated by the proxy ideological battle being waged between Iranian Shiite Islam and Saudi Wahabi Islam. Yet as Farahnaz Ispahani argues in her forthcoming book, Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities, persecution is not a new development, for minorities have been oppressed in Pakistan since shortly after independence in 1947.

Another factor is the global revival of religious chauvinism across many religions, including both Christianity and Islam but also in Hindu nationalism in India and Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. As populations increase and governments fail their constituents, religious majorities prey on minorities in competition for resources, especially as local identities have resurfaced since the end of the Cold War.

An irony in the case of Pakistan is that it achieved nationhood almost 70 years ago, but its 96 percent Muslim majority still exhibits the siege mentality of the minority status it sought to avoid in India. Distrust of the different results in efforts to suppress and eradicate the other.

And then there is terror of the violence that can be meted out to those who oppose extreme views and policies. The vast majority of Pakistanis are moderate and tolerant in their convictions. Newspaper columnists regularly condemn radical views, violent incidents, and the government’s inaction. “We were not like this!” a Muslim colleague of mine cried out at news of another outrage. It was a well-connected Muslim who saved me from being killed by the ISI.

Yet the assassinations of two prominent government officials in 2011—Salman Taseer, the Muslim governor of Punjab, and Shabhaz Bhatti, the Christian federal minister of minority affairs—for opposing the nation’s draconian and much abused blasphemy laws illustrated how there is no limit to the radicals’ reach. The threat of such violence, especially when coupled with the ability of religious political parties to sway voters, intimidates governmental officials into doing little except speechifying after horrifying incidents. Perpetrators go unpunished, and school textbooks continue to disparage religious minorities.

At 200 million inhabitants, Pakistan is the world’s sixth-most populous nation, and it will be fourth by 2050. So what happens with religious freedom in Pakistan is important for the future of religious freedom globally in the 21st century. Can religious people in the human family honor one another’s search for the sacred and explore each other’s paths? Or will religious people disparage, oppress, and kill the religious other and thereby defile the divine?



An Episcopal priest and theologian, Titus Presler, Th.D., is principal-in-exile of Edwardes College, Peshawar, and past president of the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.
Hey stop trolling here. This is not related to the topic. If you want you can start a new thread
 
Speakers on Tuesday stressed the need for implementation of laws to protect and promote rights of non-Muslim communities in the country.

They were speaking at an event titled “Quaid’s Vision for Minorities: Challenges and Opportunities”, organised by the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR) in connection with the Minorities Day.

Government had designated August 11 as ‘Minorities Day’ in 2009.

The newly formed commission’s chairperson Justice Ali Nawaz Chowhan said non-Muslim communities were an essential part of the country and called for efforts to integrate them in the mainstream.

“We have taken notice of the Youhanabad incident and we will try to prevent such kind of incidents in the future,” he said.

Ambassador of Austria Brigitta Bhala appreciated the establishment of the commission. Human rights commissions throughout the world are important state institutions and play effective role in protecting rights, she said.

214.jpg


IA Rehman, who is secretary general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), also welcomed the establishment of NCHR, which, he said, was an overdue demand of the civil society.

He urged the government to make the commission functional as soon as possible.

“Quaid’s vision, if implemented properly, can make Pakistan one of the most peaceful nations,” Punjab Assembly Member (MPA) Mary Gill said.

Gill, who is also Punjab chief minister’s adviser on minorities’ issues and chairperson of the religious freedom caucus in the provincial assembly, said the Punjab government would soon announce policy measures to ensure protection of minorities’ rights.

Asia Foundation Deputy Country Representative Ameena Ilahi said the foundation was undertaking three projects on the rights of minorities and marginalised groups in Pakistan.

120.jpg


Day dedicated to late Shahbaz Bhatti

Meanwhile, various minority representatives at another event called for celebrating Aug 11 as a day of national harmony. They also dedicated the day to slain Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti, who was assassinated on March 2, 2011, in Islamabad.

The event was organised by the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA).

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khurshid Shah called upon all religious and political leaders to join hands for interfaith harmony. He also stressed the need for greater integration of non-Muslim communities in the mainstream.

The alliance chairperson Dr Paul Jacob Bhatti said school curricula needed to be reformed and designed in a way that it promoted harmony.

“Every non-Muslim has the same sanctity as me,” Mufti Muneebur Rehman said. He condemned discrimination and violence against non-Muslim communities.

Church of Pakistan Lahore Diocese Bishop Irfan Jamil highlighted the principles of freedom and equality.

“We need to remove prejudices that we are all hostages of,” he added.

All Pakistan Hindu Rights Movement Chairperson Haroon Sarab Diyal demanded fair representation for non-Muslim communities in the parliament.

“In Mahabharata, we are given the lesson to sacrifice our lives for the land we are born in. Pakistan is the land I was born in,” he said.

He also called upon Pakistan Army to induct more members from non-Muslim communities and reserve a quota for them.

Bishop of Peshawar Humphrey S Peters lamented that population of non-Muslim communities had been decreasing from 22 per cent in 1947 to less than five per cent.

Pakistan Ulema Council Chairperson Hafiz Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi also addressed the participants and resolved to stand by those who had wrongly been implicated in blasphemy cases.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 12th, 2015
Minorities Day: Protection of non-Muslims stressed - The Express Tribune



Hey stop trolling here. This is not related to the topic. If you want you can start a new thread
LOL Offended? Sunnny Leone too...
 
It's not my fault if you can't paste a working link.
For every one link is working or type sunny in mandir but dalits not

Why Has Pakistan Become So Intolerant? - The Daily Beast

Why Has Pakistan Become So Intolerant?
I was beaten in Pakistan for my religion. I am far from alone.
A Christian couple, parents of three children with a fourth on the way, were accused of blasphemy by a mob and incinerated in a brick kiln at their worksite in Punjab last November. Suicide bombers blew themselves up at two churches in Lahore in March. Asia Bibi, a Christian laborer and mother of five, awaits a hearing on her death sentence after being accused of blasphemy in 2009. In Peshawar, 127 worshipers were killed and 160 wounded by suicide bombers at All Saints’ Church in September 2013.

My getting beaten up by agents of Pakistan’s military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the back cab of a pickup truck on the outskirts of Peshawar last year was mild compared to the discrimination and violence that the country’s religious minorities have experienced since Pakistan was founded in 1947.

Nevertheless the beating was significant, for it illustrated the extent to which governmental authorities in Pakistan are willing to violate their own constitution’s mandate for religious freedom in order to placate the radicals pressing Pakistan in ever more extreme Islamist directions.

For starters, I’m a U.S. citizen, not a Pakistani. I was principal (the south Asian term for president) of one of Pakistan’s oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher education: Edwardes College, established in Peshawar in 1900 by a mission agency of the Church of England and since 1940 an institution of the local church. And I was being attacked not by the Taliban but by agents of the government’s most powerful intelligence unit.

The assault on me was not personal but political, and the politics had everything to do with religion. Edwardes had about 2,800 students and over 100 faculty members—92 percent of them Muslim and 7 percent Christian—and a longstanding reputation for a liberal learning environment that fostered inter-religious understanding. The campus has both a chapel and a mosque.

The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was so enthusiastic about our educational innovations that they made an unprecedented grant of Rs. 300 million (over $3 million at the time) to support the college’s effort to award its own degrees and de-affiliate from the University of Peshawar.

Degree-awarding status required a charter, and this was where conflict arose. Edwardes has always been a church institution, but its auspices got confused during the nationalization drive of the 1970s, when the local governor illegally installed himself as chair of the board, with a majority of government appointees. The Church of Pakistan and its Diocese of Peshawar never accepted this shift, but the risk of violent retaliation prompted them, understandably, to muddle along with confused governance rather than actively resist.

Until, that is, the charter issue arose in 2013. Following the guidelines of the government’s own “Model Charter for Private Universities,” the proposed charter restored a church majority on the board, with the diocesan bishop as chancellor. Government officials and some Muslim faculty members insisted that the government’s majority be retained, but the church rightly rejected codifying by charter an illegal and dysfunctional governance system. Without constitution, law, or history on its side, the government resorted to threatening Bishop Sarfaraz Peters and me, abusing a Christian administrator, and physically attacking me. I had to leave the country, and the church is still trying to resolve the situation.

In addition to mandating that all persons shall have the right to “profess, practice and propagate” their religion, Pakistan’s constitution states that “every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions” (Article 20). Violations of this institutional protection are less dramatic than individuals being accused of blasphemy or neighborhoods going up in flames, but in the long run they’re just as important because they affect the long-term viability of religious minorities and their contribution to society.

Several factors feed into the personal, communal and institutional violations of religious freedom in Pakistan today, violations visited on Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs, but also Shiite, Ahmadi and Ismaili Muslims.

An irony in the case of Pakistan is that it achieved nationhood almost 70 years ago, but its 96 percent Muslim majority still exhibits the siege mentality of the minority status it sought to avoid in India.
One factor is the struggle within Islam about the future of Islam, a struggle that for years, especially since 9/11, has dominated news about North Africa and the Middle East, with ISIS atrocities now occupying center stage. Muslims are wrestling with Islam’s place in the modern world, especially in relation to democracy, education, and freedom as promoted by Western Europe and North America.

In Pakistan this struggle was aggravated by U.S. and Pakistani support for the mujahedeen as they transformed jihad into a tactic of modern warfare against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Today it is aggravated by the proxy ideological battle being waged between Iranian Shiite Islam and Saudi Wahabi Islam. Yet as Farahnaz Ispahani argues in her forthcoming book, Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities, persecution is not a new development, for minorities have been oppressed in Pakistan since shortly after independence in 1947.

Another factor is the global revival of religious chauvinism across many religions, including both Christianity and Islam but also in Hindu nationalism in India and Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. As populations increase and governments fail their constituents, religious majorities prey on minorities in competition for resources, especially as local identities have resurfaced since the end of the Cold War.

An irony in the case of Pakistan is that it achieved nationhood almost 70 years ago, but its 96 percent Muslim majority still exhibits the siege mentality of the minority status it sought to avoid in India. Distrust of the different results in efforts to suppress and eradicate the other.

And then there is terror of the violence that can be meted out to those who oppose extreme views and policies. The vast majority of Pakistanis are moderate and tolerant in their convictions. Newspaper columnists regularly condemn radical views, violent incidents, and the government’s inaction. “We were not like this!” a Muslim colleague of mine cried out at news of another outrage. It was a well-connected Muslim who saved me from being killed by the ISI.

Yet the assassinations of two prominent government officials in 2011—Salman Taseer, the Muslim governor of Punjab, and Shabhaz Bhatti, the Christian federal minister of minority affairs—for opposing the nation’s draconian and much abused blasphemy laws illustrated how there is no limit to the radicals’ reach. The threat of such violence, especially when coupled with the ability of religious political parties to sway voters, intimidates governmental officials into doing little except speechifying after horrifying incidents. Perpetrators go unpunished, and school textbooks continue to disparage religious minorities.

At 200 million inhabitants, Pakistan is the world’s sixth-most populous nation, and it will be fourth by 2050. So what happens with religious freedom in Pakistan is important for the future of religious freedom globally in the 21st century. Can religious people in the human family honor one another’s search for the sacred and explore each other’s paths? Or will religious people disparage, oppress, and kill the religious other and thereby defile the divine?



An Episcopal priest and theologian, Titus Presler, Th.D., is principal-in-exile of Edwardes College, Peshawar, and past president of the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.
@Irfan Baloch @Slav Defence @WAJsal @Jango @syedali73
Stop derailing / trolling the thread
 
@HariPrasad
i am not mocking you just a curious question in my mind since your are a senior member you can answer it better my question is that in Hindu religious books there is law about casts or the people made it i am asking about dalits are they mentioned same as we know.

ancients texts only mentions 4 castes classified on the basis of work they do. some people like Manu have written their own take on the cast system in which discrimination of dalits is mentioned.
 

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