The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the U.S. claim that there is no freedom of religion there. The Minister of Defense acknowledged religious minorities “are not safe.”
by Massimo Introvigne
Does Pakistan have a serious freedom of religion problem? Yes, said the U.S. Department of State in its recently released yearly report on religious freedom, which suggested including Pakistan in the black list of the worst religious freedom violators in the world.
The report was immediately criticized by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which claimed that the document “lacks transparency,” ignores the government’s efforts to improve the situation, and “does not aid in promoting human rights.”
Or so said Pakistan Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch. A few days later, the Minister of Defense, Khawaja Asif, expressed the opposite opinion. Referring to cases in which Pakistani citizens accused of blasphemy have been lynched, in a speech at the National Assembly Asif said that “Every day, minorities are being killed. They are not safe under the guise of Islam… Pakistan is facing global embarrassment.”
“Even smaller Muslim sects are not safe in Pakistan, which is a disgraceful situation,” the Minister said, probably referring to Shiites rather than to Ahmadis, as the latter are regarded as non-Muslim by Pakistani law.
Asif also noted that in the lynching cases, “those who have been killed so far did not have any evidence linking them to blasphemy; rather, these killings seem to stem from personal vendettas.”
Perhaps the Minister of Defense should explain all this to his colleague at the Foreign Office. Nobody likes to be criticized by a foreign country about its human rights and religious liberty record. However, the facts denounced by the U.S. Department of State are just this, facts. Even Pakistan’s Minister of Defense agrees.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
