House told to scrap ‘intolerant’ bill

HEADLINESTue, 11/15/2011 12:23 PM

House told to scrap ‘intolerant’ bill

Ina Parlina, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The House of Representatives has completed a draft of the so-called religious tolerance bill, which observers claim would threaten the very essence of pluralism and tolerance.

The draft bill, which would regulate religious sermons and segregate graves within public cemeteries according to religion, is seen by some as a potentially giant fan that would spread the growing flame of religious intolerance that has sparked violent conflicts across the nation over the past three years.

The bill does not propose an alternative regulation to the current problematic house of worship licensing system that majority groups have used to make it difficult for members of minority religions to congregate for religious prayers in several regions.

Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy head Hendardi said that if passed, the House-initiated bill would likely legitimize restrictions against minorities for the sake of harmony.

He questioned Article 1 Point 4, which defines blasphemy as any act or interpretation of a religion beyond the scope of that religion’s basic teachings.

“Religious harmony is impossible unless religious freedom for every citizen is guaranteed. Therefore, the state must punish all groups that attack this freedom,” he said.

“We need a bill to eliminate religious discrimination, rather than this sort of tolerance bill.”

“Thus, Setara urges the House of Representatives to bin the draft and arrange a new one based on plurality, equality and religious freedom.”

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim majority nation, and also a home to many religions and multi-ethnic groups, has been celebrated worldwide as a champion of cultural and religious pluralism.

However, teachings of the Islamic minority sect Ahmadiyah have been deemed heretical and blasphemous by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI). Followers of the faith have been increasingly targeted in recent years by violent groups who have persuaded several local governments through intimidation and rallies to ban the sect “to maintain security in their regions”.

In February, three Ahmadis were murdered in a mob assault on their community compound in Cikeusik, Banten. The attackers were believed to be members of Islamic hard-line groups. Despite video evidence showing the perpetrators commit the crimes, only a handful were brought to court, where they were handed light sentences of several months each.

Setara recorded 50 separate attacks against Ahmadis in 2010.

The much criticized government licensing process for houses of worship is at the heart of an ongoing legal conflict that has stopped a Christian congregation from holding Sunday services in their own church in Bogor, West Java.

The Bogor administration has persisted on banning the GKI Taman Yasmin congregation’s members from conducting religious services in their church despite that the congregation has received permission to do so from the Supreme Court.

Bogor Mayor Diani Budiarto recently filed a lawsuit against the church, alleging that the petition of local consent used by the congregation to gain approval to build the church contained forged signatures.

The Indonesian Ombudsman has issued a statement saying that Diani’s new evidence is not relevant because GKI Yasmin produced the signed petition in 2002, whereas the allegedly false petition was dated 2006.

“The bill is likely to nurture tyranny of the majority. We must know that there is no single majority group in Indonesia. The tyranny of the majority in a certain group might trigger vengeance toward it in the area where it is a minority,” said Catholic priest Benny Susetyo, who is also the chairman of the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI) inter-faith dialogue division.

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URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/...intolerant-bill.html

Caged Ahmedi Refugees Fear Returning to Pakistan

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Caged Ahmedi Refugees Fear Returning to Pakistan

19 JULY 2011By Kashif N Chaudhry

The plight of minorities: Was the very pretext for Pakistan’s existence not the preservation of religious freedom?

It is no secret that Ahmedis in Pakistan are treated worse than animals, the latter at least having the freedom to bark, meow, chirp the way they choose to. Even when caged, pets are generally loved and cared for. Ahmedis on the other hand receive hatred and indifference from a large segment of Pakistani society. On the one hand, the Mullah brigade has disseminated venom against Ahmedis nationwide (and abroad), while on the other, the state supports this bigotry by criminalising the very existence of Ahmedis through laws that can best be described as discriminatory and cruel.

Since Ahmedis have been declared ‘Wajib-ul-Qatl’ (deserving of death) by numerous influential extremist groups, they are threatened on a regular basis by extremists living in our neighbourhoods. Ahmedi businesses are forcibly closed down, children harassed and homes attacked. False cases are registered, and with many interested in the prospect of hoors, false witnesses are readily available. Section 298-C of the Pakistan Penal Code prohibits Ahmedis from calling themselves Muslim or act “in any manner whatsoever that outrages the religious feelings of Muslims.” This includes saying the Azaan, calling the Ahmedi place of worship a “mosque,” saying the greeting of peace, aka Salaam, reciting the Quran in public, or saying the Kalima. How these acts cause pain to the feelings of “constitutional” Muslims is beyond me, and how not saying any of this brings solace remains an even bigger enigma. Faced with such bitter two-sided damnation, what would a sane Ahmedi do, if not leave the country?

Was the very pretext for Pakistan’s existence not the preservation of religious freedom? Would it therefore not be befitting of Ahmedis to campaign for a separate state on the same grounds? But since this would cause chaos and unrest in the land they call home, Pakistani Ahmedis patiently pray and continue to hope for better days. However, when persecution becomes overbearing for some, they are forced to resort to emigration, which is the Quran’s prescribed way to escape religious persecution (4:98).

Such a group of desperate Pakistani Ahmedis availed a chance to escape to Thailand (legally) in late 2010. They were hopeful of better reception at the regional office of UNHCR in Bangkok. Pending applications for asylum, the group of 131 Ahmedis was placed in detention for “overstaying their visas.” In the face of uncertainty and horror, 35 Ahmedis agreed to be deported to Pakistan. The other 96 preferred to stay in detention rather than reliving the persecution back home.

Mr Veerawit Tianchainan is the executive director of the Thai Committee for Refugees. At an honorary dinner in Pennsylvania recently, he spoke of the horrible conditions the detainees were kept under. Ladies had to take turns sleeping since there was not enough space in the cells for everyone to lie down at the same time. Faced with overcrowded living conditions, many children had only the floor beside the toilets to sleep on. One of the captives, a pregnant lady, later gave birth in these same conditions.

Months into the detentions, human rights groups started noting and campaigning for the release of these refugees. Mr Tianchainan spearheaded a valiant effort to remove the Ahmedis from these inhumane circumstances. He explained how it took his team weeks of hard work that included a great amount of paper work, multiple phone calls and a period of fundraising to gather the huge amount required to bail the detained Ahmedis out and secure their release. It is no surprise why the Pakistani government did not negotiate for the release of these poor detainees. The state supports laws and tolerates, and in many cases endorses, behaviour that leads to such emigrations in the first place. The fact that the majority of the emigrants preferred the misery of detainment in horrible conditions in a foreign land to life at home is strong reason for shame and compunction, if we have any. Ahmedi emigrants fleeing Pakistan generally belong to one of two groups: those personally under threat, including new converts, and those who have witnessed such threats being carried out, especially in the form of the murder of close relatives. Each of the Ahmedi detainees in Thailand had a similar tale, and theirs have yet to come to a close. Angry at a “safe exit,” extremist groups have stepped up their mischief. Families still in Pakistan are now experiencing even greater harassment. The persecution continues unabated as a whole nation watches in silence and apathy.

As the 96 refugees were released from the detention centre in Thailand last month, one child dreaded going back. “I don’t want to go back in that ‘big cage,’” she said. I can imagine that the mother’s reply would have been something like this: “At least we were treated like animals here, not any worse.”

Kashif N Chaudhry is a graduate of King Edward Medical College in Lahore and is presently completing his medical residency at Mt Sinai Hospital in New Jersey.

© 2009 Newsline Publications (Pvt) Ltd
URL: www.newslinemagazine.com/2011/07/caged-ahmedi...

PML-N and Bigotry: The ‘Basanti’ Connection

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PML-N and Bigotry: The ‘Basanti’ Connection

14 JUNE 2011By Kashif N Chaudhry

Shahbaz Sharif

While Jamaat-e-Islami might be the biggest party supporting the Talibani mindset in Pakistan, the PML-N seems to be certainly competing for the position. The legacy of Zia-ul-Haq lives among us today through these political parties. The vote bank of the PML-N is largely comprised of right-wing conservatives (unsurprising considering the demographic composition of the areas the party controls). Fearful of losing control, the PML-N has had a long record of appeasing the demands of rightists. In doing so, it has been guilty not just of uncountable accounts of serious violations of human rights but also of completely denying justice to the underprivileged segments of society.

More than a decade ago, certain members of the Punjab Provincial Assembly demanded that the name “Rabwah” (the name for the only Ahmadi-majority city in Pakistan) be changed. Anti-Ahmadi Khatme Nabuwwat claimed that the word “Rabwah” was derived from the Quran and therefore only state-defined Muslims could use the word. The Punjab Assembly, headed by Shahbaz Sharif, surrendered to this contemptuous demand without hearing the opinion of a single resident of Rabwah. With the stroke of a pen, the city’s name was changed to “Chenab Nagar” very much against the wishes of its residents.

Then in 2008, after fierce protests by the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba’s caused the expulsion of all 23 Ahmadi students from Punjab Medical College due to their faith, the PML-N government turned a blind eye. Fearful of upsetting the radical right, the careers of 23 competent medics were left to rot. Thanks to late Governor Salmaan Taseer’s timely intervention, the students were relocated to other institutions.

Then in 2009, the shameful Gojra incident occurred where eight Christians were burnt alive. A mob of banned religious outfits was responsible for the carnage. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif refused to visit the victims. The threat of resignation from a Christian provincial minister, Mr Kamran Michael, as well as strong international protest forced Sharif to eventually rethink his decision four days after the brutal killings.

Kamran Michael

The list of incidents of PML-N bigotry and chauvinism is unending. The party has had an unshakeable relationship with the violation of minority rights. Last week, bigoted leaders of the PML-N expressed major concern over Michael presenting the annual budget speech in the Punjab Assembly. And no, this was not because Michael stuttered like the king in The King’s Speech or had any problems with his fluency with Urdu or English. It was because he was a Christian. This was apparently such a critical issue that a “high-level” meeting was called and Michael was stripped of his position in the finance ministry. Once again, Shahbaz Sharif was the man behind the decision.

The PML-N came under heavy criticism once again from local and international groups and was forced to reinstate Michael – and he eventually presented the budget on June 10. While this is the latest display of PML-N’s twisted mindset, it will not be the last.

Shahbaz Sharif, like his brother, has had a long history of accommodating Punjab’s intolerant clergy, and causing immense pain to minorities. For example, many members of minority groups rot in jails in Punjab on bogus charges, their trials interrupted, their attackers acquitted.

The reversal of the decision regarding Kamran Michael makes one thing clear: the PML-N is facing a serious problem. Now that the world watches Pakistan closely, the party leadership has an international audience to please. It is in a fix, struggling hard to decide between doing what is right and what is rightist.

But then a friend tells me Shahbaz Sharif is a good man and the PML-N’s proclivity for bigotry is due to the preponderance of rightist members in the party. If this is the case, my advice to the chief minister would be best conveyed in the words my friend Taimur Khan likes to recite: “Basanti, in kutton ke saamne mat nachna” (Basanti, stop dancing in front of these dogs).

But to be honest, I have very little hope that Sharif will stop dancing before his dogs.

Kashif N Chaudhry is a graduate of King Edward Medical College in Lahore and is presently completing his medical residency at Mt Sinai Hospital in New Jersey.

© 2009 Newsline Publications (Pvt) Ltd
URL: www.newslinemagazine.com/2011/06/pml...connection/

Extremist Intimidation Chills Pakistan Secular Society

Extremist Intimidation Chills Pakistan Secular Society

by Julie McCarthy

 Listen to the Story or Download. 07:46

Pakistani police guards carry the coffin of the assassinated governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, during the funeral procession in Lahore on Jan. 5. - Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images

January 24, 2011

In Pakistan, a battle has been joined by those who want a tolerant Islamic state against those who want a fundamentalist religious regime.

The killing in Pakistan earlier this month of Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer has cheered the religious right while chilling secular Pakistanis and exposing deep fissures in the society.

The governor was gunned down in Islamabad by a bodyguard angered at his bid to relax the country’s blasphemy laws. The assassination of Taseer, an audacious advocate for modernism, revealed the conservative attitudes about Islam that are sweeping through Pakistan.

A Growing Rift

A growing and dangerous dichotomy is evident in the Old City of Lahore that teems with shop owners and vendors. Outdoor stalls sit cheek by jowl in the city of 6 million.

In the aftermath of the governor’s killing, Zafar Iqbol, 65, who owns a fabric shop in the Mehood Cloth Market, says he “fears for the future.”

“We feel utterly helpless,” he says. “The market here is under the dominion of elements who have affiliations with religious parties. They come along and they insist that we shut things down, and of course we’re afraid not to, so we do close things down and we lose our business.”

A few of the men who run the market traders association hoist themselves onto the counter of Iqbol’s stall and lean in to listen, causing the owner obvious discomfort.

Members of the Association to Protect the Dignity of the Holy Prophet, or Tahafuz-e-Namwoos Risalat, join the Sunni Itehad Council in a protest march to denounce the Pope. The Vatican called for the abolition of Pakistan's blasphemy laws after a Christian woman accused of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad was sentenced to death. - Julie McCarthy/NPR

While Iqbol mourns the loss of the governor, his unannounced visitors feel anything but sorrow. Mohammad Ilyas, the vice president of the traders association, says the slain governor maligned Islam when he said Pakistan’s strict laws on blasphemy had become a tool to oppress religious minorities.

“It was totally wrong on the part of the governor to say that the blasphemy laws of Pakistan should be changed. The governor not only criticized the law of the land, but he went out of his way to protect Asia Bibi,” a Christian woman who was sentenced to death last year on the charge of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad.

When asked whether Taseer deserved to die, Ilyas, 65, says, “Definitely, because he interfered with the religion of this country. If he hadn’t interfered, he would not have been killed.”

Making An Assassin A Hero

Banners draped in the streets of the Punjab capital, Lahore, call the governor’s confessed killer, Mumtaz Qadri, a hero. The 23-year-old police commando assigned to guard the governor said Taseer was an apostate for opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

Evidence that fundamentalism is becoming mainstream was found in the young lawyers who showered the assassin with rose petals as he entered court in Islamabad one day after the shooting. It signaled that religious fundamentalism was not the purview of the poor Pakistani masses but reaches far into the educated class as well.

Demonstrations saluting Qadri have continued throughout the country, a disturbing signal for Washington, which is hoping for greater stability from its nuclear armed ally.

Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jahangir says each time democracy begins to take hold in Pakistan, the extreme right wages an offensive that is more lethal than the one before.

“And there is a reason behind it. They do not want a democratic dispensation here. It doesn’t suit them. They don’t figure in there. They get marginalized there. So the murder of the governor was a part of that larger plan as well,” she says.

Parliamentarian Sherry Rehman also is facing death threats for proposing amendments to the blasphemy law, as had the governor. Rehman says “sane” voices have been silenced.

Historian Mubarak Ali estimates that the religious right now makes up some 30 percent of Pakistani society and says radical clerics have been emboldened by the mainstream parties, including President Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan Peoples Party. - Julie McCarthy/NPR

“And none of them are seeking to offend sensibilities of any religion, let alone Muslims themselves,” she says.

Rehman’s Pakistan Peoples Party, the party of President Asif Ali Zardari, has disowned any reform of the blasphemy laws and has been conspicuously quiet amid the uproar. Historian Mubarak Ali says all of the mainstream parties have emboldened the religious right by kowtowing to the radical clerics who are roiling the streets.

“Instead of fighting, instead of challenging — they just surrendered,” he says. “And now these clerics, they are so powerful, they are so bold, that now they are threatening everybody.”

‘No Other Alternative’

Farid Piracha, the deputy secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest religious party, says “if there [were] justice in Pakistan,” there would be no eruptions on the streets.

The party’s Islamic revivalist message has pushed Pakistan toward conservatism while preaching the dangers of a perceived U.S. war on Islam.

The radical right is gathering strength in Pakistan conflating religious dogma with the policies of the United States. Piracha says they cannot be separated.

“There is damage of more than 30,000 innocent people during the so-called war against terrorism. So, one cannot believe that America is not against Islam. America’s total military actions are against the Muslim states,” he says.

U.S. drone attacks and the war in Afghanistan have provoked a popular outcry among Pakistanis, which radical Islamists exploit. Historian Ali says extremists have expanded their constituency by emerging as the only alternative voice in a country where millions feel under threat by everything from the faltering economy to the lack of security.

“They say that dictatorships didn’t give them anything. Democracy didn’t give them anything,” he says. “So, they are exhorted that Islam is going to solve their problems, give them dignity in the society and rule of law. Because there is no other alternative, they believed it.”

The extremists also benefit from the legacy of Zia al Haq, the 1980s dictator who undertook the Islamization of the schools that indoctrinated a generation in religious orthodoxy.

“As a result of this education,” Ali says, “they have very closed minds.”

Speaking Out

As religious passions stifle liberal voices, one group refuses to be repressed — the Ajoka Theater.

Ajoka Theater founder Madeeha Guahar on stage following a performance in Islamabad of a play about blasphemy. In the antisecular atmosphere following the Punjab governor’s assassination, the staging of the play is a rare example of secular society standing up against the intimidation of religious extremists. - Julie McCarthy/NPR

It’s been in the forefront of the struggle for a secular democratic Pakistan. This past week, it staged a disturbing production about blasphemy and dedicated it to the slain governor.

It’s a study in brutality, with white-robed clerics in league with black-clad followers haranguing their victims as they hang them.

“That this play was shown in Islamabad is an act of courage,” says audience member Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and essayist. “This is a country that stands at the very verge of religious fascism.”

Hoodbhoy says he fears for the theater company.

“I don’t know when they might be targeted,” he says.

The theater founder and director of the play, Madeeha Guahar, says Ajoka will continue performing and take the risk.

Copyright 2011 NPR
URL: www.npr.org/2011/01/24/...secular-society

26 shots that sent Pakistan over the edge

washingtonpost.com > Print Edition > Sunday Outlook

26 shots that sent Pakistan over the edge

Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, January 23, 2011

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN has reported from South Asia for more than a decade

At a fashionable plaza in this serene Pakistani capital, a few dozen people gather in the evenings at the spot where provincial governor Salman Taseer was gunned down on Jan. 4. More than the man, their candlelight vigils mourn the open debate and religious compassion that have been lost with the assassination of the outspoken liberal politician.

Fifteen miles away, in a working-class alley of Rawalpindi, thousands of people flock each day to the home of Mumtaz Qadri, the elite police guard who killed Taseer. Qadri is in jail now, but the site has become a shrine to what many Pakistanis see as his heroic act against a blasphemer who insulted their prophet. Someone has even put up posters of Qadri riding a white horse to heaven.

In the days since Taseer’s death, Pakistan has become a different country. The veneer of Western democracy has been ripped away, the liberal elite has been cowed into silence, and the civilian government has beaten a hasty retreat from morality, authority and law. Islamic extremist groups, once dismissed as unable to win more than a few seats in Parliament, are filling the streets, with bearded acolytes waving flags and chanting like giddy crowds at a post-game victory rally.

Suddenly, a crucial U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism seems incapable of stopping a tide of intolerant and violent Islam at home - raising doubts about Pakistan’s ability to play a constructive role in the war against the Taliban or to help the United States extricate its forces from Afghanistan, Pakistan’s northern neighbor.

Qadri, who happily confessed to murdering the politician he was assigned to protect, has little chance of being convicted. Instead of suffering ostracism, he was greeted with handshakes and garlands by courthouse lawyers, who offered to defend him pro bono. The provincial court system, notorious for freeing radical Islamic leaders, is unlikely to condemn a national religious hero.

“There is no justice in our country for the common man, but Qadri’s act against a blasphemer has made all Muslims feel stronger,” a shopkeeper in Rawalpindi told me. “They can punish him, but what will they do with a million Qadris who have been born now?”

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, whose ruling coalition recently recovered from near-collapse, has reassured the restive Muslim masses that not a word of Pakistan’s blasphemy law will be changed. One of the harshest such statutes in the Muslim world, it makes any purported slur against the prophet Muhammad - even a misinterpreted remark or a discarded Koran - grounds for execution.

Taseer had proposed softening the law. Another legislator who did the same has received death threats. The police, whose ranks produced the killer, seem duped or complicit. The army, caught between fighting the Taliban and courting public opinion, has remained prudently silent.

Pakistani commentators have expressed shock at the public lionization of Qadri and the demonization of Taseer, who did nothing worse than criticize the blasphemy law and commiserate with a Christian peasant woman who was sentenced to death under it. The atmosphere is so charged now that most clerics refused to officiate at Taseer’s funeral, and the Christian woman’s prison warden said he may not be able to protect her even from the guards.

For the past several years, a few voices have warned against the growth of religious hatred in Pakistan. Columnist Kamila Hyat described a “Talibanization of minds” creeping across the country, emboldening extremist groups and censoring debate. Physicist and activist Pervez Hoodbhuy decried the quashing of critical thought in Pakistani schools and the rote Koranic learning that shapes many young minds.

But in Friday sermons and at many levels of Pakistani society, one hears warnings about creeping Westernization, secular culture and forceful aggression against Islam by America and its allies. When Pope Benedict XVI called for a repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy law this month, some Muslim clerics decried it as part of the foreign conspiracy and said the pope was inviting attacks on minority Christians in Pakistan.

Some observers here say it is unfair to tar millions of Pakistani Muslims as extremists just because they feel strongly enough about the sacred nature of the prophet Muhammad to justify killing someone who insults him. What is needed, they say, is stronger national leaders who will uphold the laws - against blasphemy and murder alike. “This is an Islamic republic, and people feel very strongly about the blasphemy issue,” said Hamid Mir, a leading television journalist here. “We have to respect that, but we also have to respect the law and the constitution, or we will be lost.”

Others argue that a mind-set that finds spiritual justification for shooting a government official 26 times will also accept the public flogging of drunks, the beheading of policemen and the stoning of unmarried lovers - all hallmarks of the Taliban forces that swept through Pakistan’s scenic Swat Valley two years ago.

Pakistan’s army, a close partner of the U.S. military, ultimately drove the Taliban out of Swat after cementing public opinion in its favor. Now Washington is prodding army leaders here to extend their campaign to other insurgent-infested tribal areas.

But public opinion in Pakistan today is not what it was a year ago, and no one wants to risk igniting popular wrath. Not the nuclear-armed security establishment, which still sees Islamic militants as a useful tool to harass arch-rival India. Not the weak, unpopular government, saddled by a secular past and still reeling from the slaying of its most charismatic leader, Benazir Bhutto, three years ago.

In recent days I have listened to Islamic activists rant about the sanctity of the prophet and the evil of those who offend him or dare to question any tents of Islam. They even have a label for such dangerous subversives, which translates roughly as “ought to be killed.”

But there is one conversation that haunts me in particular, an encounter I had with a young man on a flight between Islamabad and Karachi. He was neatly dressed and beardless, a recent science graduate on his way to a job interview. As I read through the morning papers and discarded them on the floor, I noticed him squirming.

“Madam, could you please pick up the papers?” he finally said. “The name of our prophet is on the front page, and it must not be on the ground.”

I complied, and we spoke cordially about our respective religions. But when I asked about Taseer’s murder, his tone changed. “They say he blasphemed against our prophet,” the young man said solemnly. “If this is true, then it would be my duty as a Muslim to kill him, too.”

Pamela Constable, a Washington Post foreign correspondent, is the author of the forthcoming “Playing With Fire: Why Pakistan’s Democracy Is Losing Ground to Islamic Extremists.”

©2011 The Washington Post Company
URL: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/.../AR2011012300278.html