Author: Anwar Syed
Publication: Dawn, Karachi
Date: March 16, 2001
NOT as often as the reports of sectarian
violence among Muslims themselves, but often enough, we hear of Muslims
committing atrocities against non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan, notably
Christians and Hindus. These include not only abuse, assault, and killings
but sometime even burning down of their villages, not to speak of discrimination
in matters of access to institutions of professional education, employment,
commerce, and political representation.
Apart from the exclusion of Jewish
tribes from Madina, then from all of Najd and Hejaz, and the inhospitable
treatment of the Zoroastrians in Iran, during the initial stages of Muslim
political dominance, Christian and Jewish minorities did reasonably well
under Muslim rule in Umayyad Spain, Fatimid Egypt, North Africa, the Abbasid
empire, the Ottoman empire, and the Safvid Iran.
Their rights were not quite the
same as those of Muslims, but they were not persecuted. They were free
to profess and practise their religion and settle their personal affairs
according to its law. Doors to higher learning, public employment, and
the professions were open to them. Moreover, they dominated commerce and
banking. One may then say that, with a few exceptions, persecution of non-Muslims
is not a part of the Muslim historical tradition. Why then the persecution
of Pakistani Hindus and Christians?
It should first be noted that all
of them put together do not constitute more than five per cent of the country's
population. In all of Punjab there may not be even as many as a hundred
Hindus. They are located, for the most part, in Sindh and the great majority
of them are desperately poor. In the last quarter century, I have not heard
of a Hindu occupying a high-ranking position in the country's armed forces,
public services, politics, or even the professions. Pakistani Hindus are
victims of the majority's neglect as well as antipathy. Their plight may
result partly from the suspicion, stronger in the Punjabi than, say, in
the Sindhi Muslim mind, that by virtue simply of being Hindu, they may
be willing to work as Indian agents to the detriment of Pakistan. In other
words, their patriotism is to be doubted.
This way of thinking deserves to
be discarded not only because its validity is dubious, that its persistence
invites fiction to become reality, but because Indian seduction is something
to which many Pakistani Muslims may also be susceptible. Pakistani Hindus
pose much less of a threat to our national integrity than some Muslim forces
currently operating in the country do. Civility demands that both public
and private centres of power go out of their way to alleviate the misery
in which our Hindu population lives.
Some, though not all, political
parties and governments in Pakistan have wanted to keep non-Muslim minorities
out of the political mainstream by imposing upon them, much against their
wishes, a system of separate electorates for purposes of representation
in elective bodies. Muslims in pre-independence India demanded and received
this system to ensure that they would have their due representation in
legislatures, and, secondly, that those who did represent them, being chosen
exclusively by Muslim voters, would act as their genuine spokesmen and
not as stooges of Hindu-dominated parties.
The two-nation theory became the
ideological justification for the system of separate electorates. But it
should be recalled that the Quaid-i-Azam had been willing, more than once,
to give up this electoral system if the Congress party would provide adequate
safeguards for Muslim rights. The validity of these propositions (two-nation
theory and separate electorates) was, thus, not eternal but situational.
With the achievement of Pakistan, their work was done, and within Pakistan
they had no role other than that of divisive agents. Continued insistence
upon them is merely a way of saying to our Hindu and Christian citizens
that they are not really Pakistanis in the full meaning of that term. This
forces upon these communities a sense of estrangement from their fellow-countrymen.
In recent years Pakistani Christians
have become exposed to an additional hazard - that of penalties under the
blasphemy law. A number of them have been prosecuted for allegedly blasphemous
speech. It is not known what exactly they had said, presumably because
the act of reporting it would, in itself, amount to blasphemy. It is probable
that in most such cases they are accused of having made some kind of a
derogatory statement about our Prophet (pbuh). In this connection, a relevant
fact should be kept in mind. The Jews do not regard Jesus as the son, or
even as a prophet, of God.
Both Jews and Christians likewise
reject our Prophet's claim that he was a messenger of God. The reason is
plain: were they to accept his claim, they would, ipso facto, become Muslims.
While they honour Jesus and the Jewish prophets, the Muslims, on their
part, dismiss Bahaullah in Iran and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian as imposters.
Given this historical disposition
on the part of a religious group to regard the founder of a subsequent
religious faith as, let us say, "mistaken," ask yourself the following
question: what is an illiterate, or semi-literate, Christian in a village
to say if a Muslim asks him whether he denies Muhammad's (pbuh) claim to
prophethood and, if so, why does he think our Prophet (pbuh) made this
claim? Unless this Christian is clever enough to be successfully evasive,
it seems to me that almost anything he says in response to the question
put to him can be construed as blasphemous. It is likely also that most
of these accusations are unfounded and are made to settle a personal score
or just to intimidate the small and hapless Christian population.
A few Christians here and there
have done well in the military, public services, and the professions. I
remember the late A.R. Cornelius, the Chief Justice of Pakistan for a time
and probably the most distinguished holder of that office, a few eminent
professors, and senior military officers. But, on the whole, the Christians
in Pakistan are also a disadvantaged and depressed community. The majority
of its members do menial work in both urban and rural areas. They too are
victims not only of oppression but also of neglect. Society and polity
should do something to improve their lot.
In this connection, it is well to
bear in mind that millions of Muslims live in the United States, Canada,
the United Kingdom, and Western Europe. They are living as a minority in
largely Christian societies. I have no personal knowledge of how they are
doing in most of these places but, having lived in the United States for
more than thirty-five years, I can say that Muslims in this country are
prospering reasonably well. Their number is now large enough for politicians
to recognize them as an important group and, when they refer to venerable
places of worship, they mention mosques along with synagogues and churches.
Incidentally, the number of mosques
in America has increased enormously during the last twenty years. Occasionally,
there are expressions of annoyance at their emergence in residential neighbourhoods.
But on the whole I will say that the tolerance of Muslims far outweighs
any discrimination they may encounter. In sum, if the American people and
public authorities treated Muslims the way Pakistani Muslims treat their
Christians, we (the Muslims in America) would be ruined.
