Unequal before the law

Replace Palestinians with Pakistan’s minority, Israel with Pakistan & you'll see similar injustice, persecution trends

"Oh but do you know what the Israelis are doing to the poor Muslims of Palestine? Will you ever see a Muslim be in a position of power in the US? Do you know about the plight of our poor Muslim brothers in India?"

We are all prone to making such arguments full of fallacies and we often let our egos stand in the way of what is right and what is wrong. The statements quoted above are just some of the reactions that I have faced when I have tried to reason for a non-Muslim Pakistani to be given the same rights as a Muslim Pakistani. So, who exactly do we fool when we claim that minorities are protected, in letter and spirit, by the laws of Pakistan? In this momentary glorification of our society, we tend to forget that we are meting out the very same treatment to our minorities that necessitated the formation of Pakistan in the first place. A ‘separate’ homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent was never going to be an issue had there been basic freedom and equal economic opportunities for the minority in the Indian subcontinent. But the economic imperative aside, are we even giving our minorities their basic rights in Pakistan? Basically, are we following our own Constitution?

No, I don’t care about what India and Israel do, and I don’t care about how the West stereotypes Muslims. I am concerned about my own country — a country where we are not protecting our own countrymen. I never asked you about Israel or India or the US.
You want to know who the real heroes of Pakistan are? It’s the Christians living in Joseph Colony, who continue to live in Pakistan, knowing fully well that the 100 odd houses in the colony can be burnt down at the behest of an angry mob. I covered the area for a documentary so I don’t mind repeating it here. Two friends, a Muslim and a Christian, party in many vices, had a fight. The Muslim accused the Christian of having committed blasphemy. Lo and behold, the entire colony was burned down. Everything. There was only one judge, jury, and executioner in this case.

The real heroes of Pakistan are the Hazaras living in Quetta. They live in this land of the pure, knowing fully well that the state is doing absolutely nothing to ensure their safety. Those who kill them continue to get state patronage and we sit here in our comfort zones, almost resigned to our fate. All of my passionate ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ chants become meaningless in front of these brave souls for I have never even ventured into the territory of patriotism that is theirs and theirs alone, just because you and I are too scared to protect them. Only a true Pakistani can stay here knowing what is in store for him or her as a Hazara.

The real heroes of Pakistan are the Ahmadis who stay here, knowing fully well how much their lives are valued in this land of the pure. They never seem to give up and yet here we are, you and I, lying to each other and to the entire world, living a life of hypocrisy. No we will not share their grief, nor will we ever come out to protect them. We are too scared to say a very simple truth: killing someone is wrong!

The Joseph Colony example is the equivalent of the Americans droning innocents in their pursuit of killing terrorists. Or, for the elite, the ‘random’ security checks that you face at American airports just because your name is Khan. People will come out in huge numbers to condemn America. There will be people who will make sure that they remind you of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. There will be those who will tell you that Ahmadis are non-Muslims — as if somehow this justifies killing them, and ignores the fact that false allegations of blasphemy are also a crime under the laws of the land. All this will happen and we will have the same ‘this too shall pass’ attitude towards it. You can’t miss the trend though. It should worry us; even cause us to lose sleep. If these were one or two cases of injustice, we could still claim to be a tolerant society. But the path we have taken now is going to lead us to extreme intolerance. When we lost Salmaan Taseer, people defended his murder and felicitated the murderer. Shahbaz Bhatti’s murder was also defended openly. Now we have lost a Christian couple in Kot Radha Kishan, burned like pieces of coal fuelling a fire. But why do we act surprised now? What did we do to reverse the dangerous trend when Salmaan Taseer was killed? What did we do to protect the Ahmadis when they were killed? What did we ever do to protect the Hazaras of Pakistan? We did nothing. Why do we expect any kind of reward then?

The next time you see the right speaking of Israel's atrocities in Palestine, remember their silence on this. Replace the Palestinians with Pakistan’s minority and Israel with Pakistan, and you will see similar trends of injustice and persecution. We remain adamant on pointing out India’s transgressions in Kashmir, yet we remain silent on the brutal treatment meted out to fellow Pakistanis. No, I am not a RAW agent. I am an average Pakistani, concerned about Pakistan.

Remember that you and I, our families and our friends, we are all living in a state of oblivion, tacitly colluding to set in motion a systemic demise of our society.

Let us not fool the world anymore. Pakistan has a problem: we are narrowing down the space for our minorities.

Our Constitution guarantees: “[t]o enjoy the protection of law and to be treated in accordance with law is the inalienable right of every citizen, wherever he may be, and of every other person for the time being within Pakistan.”

Either we stop the trend or we say that this constitutional guarantee does not apply to Pakistan's minorities.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2014.

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