ICC Note:
As religious intolerance and sectarian divide continue to cripple Pakistan’s society, there are a few who dare to speak out on these issue and deliver a message of peace and tolerance. Among these few willing to speak out, a Christian activist has organized demonstrations to highlight the suffering of the Christian minority in Pakistan. One week after the bombing of All Saints Church in late September, Jibran Nasir organized human chains, including people from many religious backgrounds, to protect churches. Although the issue of persecution in Pakistan is large and complicated, there are a few who are working to change that reality.
11/15/2013 Pakistan (Foreign Policy Blog) – Hope. It’s certainly not the first word that comes to mind when contemplating present-day Pakistan. This is, after all, a nation convulsed by terrorism, corruption, poverty, natural resource shortages, economic distress, public health crises, and educational failures.
In recent years, when faced with these immense challenges, Islamabad has dithered. Ultimately, it’s offered more shrugs than solutions. Take, for instance, Pakistan’s new president, Mamnoon Hussain. In a speech on October 20, he admitted that the country “is in such a bad state that it cannot get any worse.” Not really inspiring, is it?
It’s especially hard to muster any hope that Pakistan’s spiraling sectarian strife — which killed more than twice as many people last year as it did in 2011 — will end anytime soon. Pakistani public opinion demonstrates considerable support for the underlying views of sectarian militants (in recent polls, 41 percent and 60 percent, respectively, said Shi’as and Ahmadis aren’t Muslims), even if not for the violent means used to express them. Additionally, sectarianism is institutionalized in Pakistan; its second constitutional amendment explicitly brands Ahmadis as non-Muslims (Ahmadis are members of a minority Muslim sect that many Pakistanis regard as heretics for believing there was a prophet after Muhammad). Pakistan has few laws that protect religious minorities, and it rarely arrests, much less prosecutes, perpetrators of sectarian violence.
In effect, deep fractures are steadily gnawing away at Pakistan’s social fabric — and could one day pose an existential threat to the state. If left unaddressed, these violently demarcated cleavages could trigger a Balkanization of sorts.
Yet here is where the narrative changes. The heroic feats of three Pakistanis — virtual unknowns outside their country — give reason to believe that such a descent isn’t necessarily inevitable. These are Pakistanis who not only deplore sectarianism, but have also taken dramatic steps to combat it (one of them lost his life for his efforts). Most critically, their countrymen have supported them.
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Jibran Nasir
In early October, soon after more than 100 Christians were killed in an attack on their church in Peshawar, Christians and Muslims formed human chains around churches in several major Pakistani cities. Participants included muftis, Christian clergy, women, and children, and they displayed banners that proclaimed: “One Nation, One Blood.”
This campaign was led by Jibran Nasir, a Pakistani lawyer and activist who works for an organization called Pakistan for All. “The terrorists showed us what they do on Sundays,” he declared at an event in Lahore. “Here we are showing them what we do on Sundays. We unite.” The intention, he told me, is “to send out a message that every house of God whether a church, temple or synagogue is as sacred as a mosque and hence protection of these places of worship is the responsibility of every Muslim.” He says he was inspired by the human chains formed by Muslims to protect Coptic Christians praying in Egypt, another nation where religious minorities are often persecuted and attacked.
Nasir, who has also organized assistance for Shi’a victims of sectarian attacks, recently ran as an independent for a National Assembly seat representing Karachi. In official campaign videos and media interviews, he constantly condemned sectarianism. He also campaigned for Ahmadi rights — a nearly unfathomable cause for Pakistani politicians to take up. Ultimately, he wasn’t elected, but he vows to run again.
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