From Birmingham, Alabama to Peshawar
Like in the US, the fight for equal rights and tolerance will continue in Pakistan for several generations.
The writer is an adjunct professor at the Howard University School of Law and holds a Juris Doctorate and LLM specialising in international law. He tweets @warishusain
Peshawar’s church bombing attack has shocked many around the globe, considering that over 70 innocent people lost their lives to the brutal hand of bigotry. While protesters have demanded justice from the government, one should consider the daily indignations and tragedies non-Muslims have endured in Pakistan. From discrimination in employment to lynch mobs to death sentences on false charges of blasphemy, there are structural, legal and political changes that need to be made to provide justice for the living and the dead victims of the church bombing.
Pakistan does not have a monopoly on violent bigotry; rather, there was a period in American history where African-American citizens were subject to similar abuses as Christians in Pakistan. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four African-American children. Much like their kindred brethren, the Pakistani Taliban, the KKK enacted violent murders and terrorist attacks on anyone who was different from them. For the KKK in southern American states, this meant African Americans, whom they would rape, kidnap, lynch or murder with impunity from the law. Just as Christians in Pakistan are falsely accused of blasphemy, African Americans were also once subject to false accusations of supposed crimes, which led to deadly punishments. This includes the case of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old boy beaten and shot to death on being accused of flirting with a white woman, in 1955. His killers were acquitted of his kidnapping and murder but later admitted to the crime.
Fast forward 50 years to Pakistan and one sees that a Christian man was killed last week in Karachi for allegedly committing an act of blasphemy, and Aasia Bibi languishes in jail appealing her death sentence for the same charge. Much like African Americans in the South during the early 20th Century, life for non-Muslim Pakistanis is a gift that can be revoked at the hands of a jealous neighbour or an angry mob that won’t be stopped by the police. In the US, African-American activists and their supporters worked for several decades fighting racial discrimination. However, racist apologists for white terror groups, much like their Pakistani Taliban apologist counterparts, claimed that these activists were part of a foreign conspiracy.
In the US, these apologists were pushed aside by a public and legislature that was increasingly shocked by the brutality of white terrorists groups in the South. The Civil Rights Act was passed in order to provide social and cultural rights that minorities could enforce through the court or the federal government. The Act criminalised discrimination in the employment or service of minorities in public places like hotels, restaurants and theaters. The FBI was authorised to investigate, arrest and prosecute white terrorist leaders, which disempowered those groups, leaving them incapable of carrying out massive terror attacks against African Americans.
If the government of Pakistan, or its people, wish to remedy the factors that led to the Peshawar Church bombing, they must recognise the expansive nature of discrimination that non-Muslims endure. This discrimination often comes at the hands of the outliers, such as extremists or their apologists, but some of it is engrained in the laws themselves. Non-Muslims are prohibited by the Constitution from becoming President of the country; they are often relegated exclusively to hard labour or sanitation employment. Changing existing laws is essential for any progress to be made. However, this will mean nothing if the police continually fail to protect non-Muslim citizens and bring their killers to justice.
Social discrimination can only be remedied if the state adopts an expansive legislation for cultural, civil, and political rights that allows minorities’ easy access to the courts for remedies to their discrimination claims. Like in the US, the fight for equal rights and tolerance will continue in Pakistan for several generations. However, there is no better time than the present to realise the violent trajectory the nation is headed towards with regard to non-Muslims. Sweeping legislation and proper enforcement by the police and court systems will be the only way to ensure that the survivors of the Peshawar Church bombing can live to see justice and equal protection under the law.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 27th, 2013.
Pakistan does not have a monopoly on violent bigotry; rather, there was a period in American history where African-American citizens were subject to similar abuses as Christians in Pakistan. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four African-American children. Much like their kindred brethren, the Pakistani Taliban, the KKK enacted violent murders and terrorist attacks on anyone who was different from them. For the KKK in southern American states, this meant African Americans, whom they would rape, kidnap, lynch or murder with impunity from the law. Just as Christians in Pakistan are falsely accused of blasphemy, African Americans were also once subject to false accusations of supposed crimes, which led to deadly punishments. This includes the case of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old boy beaten and shot to death on being accused of flirting with a white woman, in 1955. His killers were acquitted of his kidnapping and murder but later admitted to the crime.
Fast forward 50 years to Pakistan and one sees that a Christian man was killed last week in Karachi for allegedly committing an act of blasphemy, and Aasia Bibi languishes in jail appealing her death sentence for the same charge. Much like African Americans in the South during the early 20th Century, life for non-Muslim Pakistanis is a gift that can be revoked at the hands of a jealous neighbour or an angry mob that won’t be stopped by the police. In the US, African-American activists and their supporters worked for several decades fighting racial discrimination. However, racist apologists for white terror groups, much like their Pakistani Taliban apologist counterparts, claimed that these activists were part of a foreign conspiracy.
In the US, these apologists were pushed aside by a public and legislature that was increasingly shocked by the brutality of white terrorists groups in the South. The Civil Rights Act was passed in order to provide social and cultural rights that minorities could enforce through the court or the federal government. The Act criminalised discrimination in the employment or service of minorities in public places like hotels, restaurants and theaters. The FBI was authorised to investigate, arrest and prosecute white terrorist leaders, which disempowered those groups, leaving them incapable of carrying out massive terror attacks against African Americans.
If the government of Pakistan, or its people, wish to remedy the factors that led to the Peshawar Church bombing, they must recognise the expansive nature of discrimination that non-Muslims endure. This discrimination often comes at the hands of the outliers, such as extremists or their apologists, but some of it is engrained in the laws themselves. Non-Muslims are prohibited by the Constitution from becoming President of the country; they are often relegated exclusively to hard labour or sanitation employment. Changing existing laws is essential for any progress to be made. However, this will mean nothing if the police continually fail to protect non-Muslim citizens and bring their killers to justice.
Social discrimination can only be remedied if the state adopts an expansive legislation for cultural, civil, and political rights that allows minorities’ easy access to the courts for remedies to their discrimination claims. Like in the US, the fight for equal rights and tolerance will continue in Pakistan for several generations. However, there is no better time than the present to realise the violent trajectory the nation is headed towards with regard to non-Muslims. Sweeping legislation and proper enforcement by the police and court systems will be the only way to ensure that the survivors of the Peshawar Church bombing can live to see justice and equal protection under the law.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 27th, 2013.