Informal Powers Of Congress Ap Gov, Articles S

According to 1961 Census -- the first in the state after Partition, Muslims constituted 68.3 per cent of Jammu and Kashmir's population. July 2021 . Hindus formed 28.45 per cent. Christian activists also stated young women from their communities were vulnerable to forced conversions. Over the past month, Pakistan has seen an unprecedented rise in attacks and arrests of its Shia population, who make up between 15% and 20% of the Sunni-majority country, the largest Shia community outside Iran. The penal code does not explicitly criminalize apostasy, but renouncing Islam is widely considered by clerics to be a form of blasphemy, which can carry the death penalty. Groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States and other governments, such as ISIS, also committed violent acts. (Goyal, 2020) There has been an even greater decline in major cities with historically large Hindu populations. Christian religious freedom activists continued to report widespread discrimination against Christians in private employment. Despite these problems some international organizations have researched and reported some statistics. Updated April 2020 About the Authors. Political parties elected by the general electorate choose the minority individuals who hold these seats; they are not elected directly by the minority constituencies they represent. Hundreds of Shia Pakistanis gathered on Saturday to bury 11 coal miners from the Hazara community killed by the armed group ISIL (ISIS), ending a week of protests that sought to highlight the. In May, the New York Times reported the issue, which was subsequently raised by international human rights NGOs. Their families believe they were taken into custody by the intelligence. The country is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and maintains two reservations: first, that ICCPR Article 3 regarding equal rights of men and women would be applied as to be in conformity with Personal Law of the citizens and Qanoon-e-Shahadat Order, 1984 (Law of Evidence), under which the in-court testimony of men in certain civil matters pertaining to contracts and financial obligations is given greater weight than that of women; and second, that ICCPR Article 25, on the equal right for citizens to take part in public service, would be subject to articles of the constitution mandating that the President and Prime Minister be Muslims. While the Ministry of Law and Justice was officially responsible for ensuring the legal rights of all citizens, in practice, the Ministry for Human Rights continued to assume primary responsibility for the protection of the rights of religious minorities. The Sunni majority is using blasphemy laws to target and murder those they call heretics. Those wishing to be listed as Muslims must swear they believe Mohammed is the final prophet and must denounce the Ahmadiyya movements founder as a false prophet and his followers as non-Muslim. We call upon authorities to ensure the safety of all Pakistanis.. In July, religious and right-wing parties criticized the governments plan to permit construction of a new Hindu temple in Islamabad. By law, decisions of the FSC may be appealed to the Supreme Courts Shariat Appellate Bench. This requirement effectively prohibits Ahmadi Muslims from holding elected office, as they recognize a prophet subsequent to Mohammed. The official state religion of Iran is Shia branch of Islam. And up to 18 million of Pakistan's 74 million jobs may be lost. Leaders in other NGOs agreed the actual number of blasphemy cases was likely higher, but uneven reporting and lack of media coverage in many areas made it difficult to identify an exact number. Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology, Office of the U.S. The government of Punjab, the countrys largest province, passed a series of measures against Ahmadi Muslim beliefs. There is no provision in the law for atheists. Shias in Pakistan are geographically spread across the. The youngest was three years old. There is a small myth that Christianity has been existent in Pakistan ever since a few decades after the crucifixion of Jesus . Although students of other religious groups are not legally required to study Islam, schools do not always offer parallel studies in their own religious beliefs. Also in September, a Karachi court issued an arrest warrant for Abdul Jabbar, a Muslim man who allegedly abducted, forcibly married, and converted a teenage Christian girl in Karachi in 2019. The situation worsened further last week when an influential Sunni religious scholar, Maulana Dr Adil Khan, was killed in an attack. Then, in the 2018 election, ASWJ and TLP were allowed to run in the election, winning seats in parliament. As of years end, the case was awaiting prosecution. It has an estimated 23 million people who adhere to Islam. Pakistan's Human Rights Commission reported more than 200 terrorist attacks resulted in nearly 700 Shia deaths and over 1,000 Shia injuries in 2013. Other NGOs corroborated that 2020 had seen an increase in blasphemy cases. The Special Adviser went on to meet with federal and provincial government officials and civil society leaders in Islamabad and Lahore. Police took him into protective custody and transferred him to a senior police officers office as the mob blocked the Indus Highway and demanded police hand over the alleged blasphemer. Some religious minority leaders stated the system of selecting minority parliamentarians through the internal deliberations of mainstream parties resulted in the appointment of party stalwarts or those who could afford to buy the seats, rather than legislators who genuinely represented minority communities. In a recent study conducted by the Law and Society Alliance, a New Delhi-based think tank headed by N.C. Bipindra, the population of G-B is now approximately 1.5 million, with around 39 per cent Shia, 27 per cent Sunni, 18 per cent Ismaili and 16 per cent Nurbakhshi. On September 7, the JUI-F party held a large Khatm-e-Nabuwat conference in Peshawar, with party leaders and national and provincial parliamentarians in attendance. At least three top Twitter trends praised the killer and called him the savior and pride of Pakistan. The commission also included two Sunni Muslim clerics and senior civil servants from the Ministries of Interior, Law and Justice, Human Rights, Federal Education and Professional Training, Religious Affairs, and the Council of Islamic Ideology. Other NGOs also said that 2020 had seen an increase in blasphemy cases. According to data provided by the Center for Social Justice (CSJ), authorities accused at least 199 individuals of new blasphemy offenses during the year. Shia leaders, meanwhile, denounced the specific honors prescribed by the bill to Mohammeds companions, which they said risked stoking discord between Shia and Sunnis, given their fundamental disagreements over some of the companions status within Islam. On December 30, a mob estimated at 1,000 people incited by a cleric attacked an historic Hindu temple site in Karak District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, destroying the shrine of Hindu saint Shri Paramhans Jee Maharaj and an adjacent building under construction. Since voters who registered as Ahmadis were kept on a separate voter list, they said they were more exposed to threats and physical intimidation, and many Ahmadis continued their longstanding practice of boycotting elections. In May, Daniel Masih appealed to the court in the Sargodha District of Punjab, urging authorities to rescue his brother Bashir and his family from bonded labor under a Muslim landlord. * Name has been changed to protect identity, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Shias living in Pakistani cities increasingly became victim of target killings and the worst ever anti-Shia pogrom took place in Gilgit Baltistan in early 1980s in which radical tribal elements. The constitution mandates that the government take steps to enable Muslims, individually and collectively, to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles and basic concepts of Islam and to promote the observance of Islamic moral standards. (July 2020 est.) A constitutional amendment devolves responsibility for minorities affairs, including religious minorities, to the provinces. In April, police arrested Ramzan Bibi, an Ahmadi Muslim woman, after a neighbor accused her of blasphemy against Mohammed a crime that carries the death penalty in an argument over Bibis charitable donation to a non-Ahmadi mosque. The charges carry up to three years imprisonment and a fine. The provincial and federal governments have legal responsibility for certain minority religious properties abandoned during the 1947 partition of British India. The plan followed a 2014 Supreme Court decision that ordered the government to take steps to ensure the rights of minorities and promote a culture of religious and social tolerance, but religious freedom activists and civil society groups said the proposal was toothless and raised concerns regarding the Religious Affairs Ministrys lack of public consultation, the limited powers of the proposed body, and the ultimate decision to exclude Ahmadis. Throughout the year, unidentified individuals targeted and killed Shia Muslims, including ethnic Hazaras, and Ahmadi Muslims in attacks believed to be religiously motivated. NEW DELHI: Successive Pakistan governments under the garb of development have undertaken an exercise to change demographic composition of Gilgit Baltistan and local Shia population has been reduced to less than 50 per cent compared to 1948. The statement also called on the government to immediately reform its often abused blasphemy laws and its court system, which allow such abuses to occur, and to ensure that the suspect is prosecuted to the full extent of the law., In an official tweet in November following the killing of Ahmadi physician Tahir Ahmad, the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom said the killing was the latest in a series of recent killings targeting the Ahmadiyya community. In July, Tahaffuz-e-Bunyad-e-Islam [protection of foundation of Islam bill] was passed by the Punjab assembly, which supported only the Sunni interpretation of Islam, provoking a huge backlash from the Shia community. Parents may send children to private schools, including religious schools, at the familys expense. Sunnis are not only dominant but also the majority sect in Pakistan. On October 13, according to local media reports, Reeta Kumari, a pregnant Dalit Hindu woman, told the Sindh High Court in Sukkur that she had been abducted by a Muslim man, Rafique Domki, in Islamkot. Speakers at that conference repeatedly used anti-Ahmadi rhetoric. The main functions of Population Census Wing are as under: 1. The Washington-based United States Institute for Peace said 3,800 Shias were murdered between 2007 and 2013, with 325 of those killings occurring in 2012. I fear for myself and my family. With the police on their way to interrogate him, and fearing the violent fate that extremist Sunni groups in Pakistan inflict on those accused of blasphemy, last month Kareem and his family chose to disappear. Pakistan: Shia Muslims . The division between Sunni and Shi'a is nearly as old as Islam itself, having stemmed from a disagreement in AD 632 about who should succeed . In November, the government finalized its Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content Rules 2020, which sought to codify the PTAs authority to regulate content the government deemed unlawful. The rules not only enhanced the PTAs ability to compel online content platforms such as Facebook, Googles YouTube, Twitter, and Wikipedia to remove content but also extended the regulators purview to include local internet service providers that could also be held liable for such content. The government requires all madrassahs to register with the Ministry of Education in addition to registration with one of the five wafaqs. There were continued reports that some madrassahs taught violent extremist doctrine, which the government sought to curb through madrassah registration and curriculum reform. A complainant filed a criminal charge against them on May 3, triggering the police investigation. The anti-Shia Muslim campaign first began gathering pace on social media in September, demanding that Shia Muslims were declared heretics. After Iran and India, Pakistan has the world's third-largest Shia community, accounting for ten percent of the total population. The rallies came after police charged Shia cleric Taqi Jaffar with blasphemy on August 30 for criticizing two companions of Mohammed during a Karachi Muharram procession. Several hundred protesters led by religious leaders took to the streets and chanted slogans against the alleged blasphemer. Because of some limitations in many countries Population of Shia is not clearly known. The directorate would be empowered to inspect printing presses, bookstores, and publishing houses and confiscate books before or after they are printed if they are judged to contain objectionable content. Most Pakistani Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, which is represented by the Barelvi and Deobandi traditions. Population: 233,500,636 (July 2017 est.) In all these cases, judges repeatedly delayed hearings, adjourned hearings without hearing arguments, or sent appeals to other judicial benches. India with 21 million is in second place closely followed by Pakistan (20 million). No casualties were reported. The temple had also been part of a government-run school. . Print and broadcast media outlets continued to publish and broadcast anti-Ahmadi rhetoric. Pakistan's population is expected to surpass that of Indonesia in 2048 when it will reach 331.29 million. Courts issued two new death sentences for blasphemy and sentenced another individual to five years imprisonment. The Shia population in Pakistan is estimated as being 11.8% of the country's population. While the law requires a senior police official to investigate any blasphemy charge before a complaint may be filed, a requirement that NGOs and legal observers stated helped contribute to an objective investigation and the dismissal of many blasphemy cases, some NGOs said police did not uniformly follow this procedure. The event received positive coverage in local media. Khattaks brother, who witnessed the killing, named two suspects in his criminal complaint, including a friend of Khattak a lecturer from the University of Agriculture in Peshawar with whom Khattak had had a heated religious argument on October 4. According to Ahmadiyya leaders, the government effectively disenfranchised their community by requiring voters to swear an oath affirming the finality of the Prophethood of Mohammed, something that they stated was against Ahmadi belief, in order to register as Muslims. Observers reported that English-language media continued to cover issues facing religious minorities in an objective manner, but Urdu-language media continued to show bias in reporting on minority religious groups, including multiple instances in which media censored references to Ahmadis on talk shows, used inflammatory language, or made inappropriate references to minorities. The website further stated extensions could be granted for two years with two reentries per year, excluding from India. In 2018 the Islamabad High Court issued a judgment requiring citizens to declare an affidavit of faith to join the armed forces, judiciary, and civil services and directed parliament to amend laws to ensure Ahmadis did not use Islamic terms or have names associated with Islam. The non-Pakhtun population of Pakistan is predominantly Barelvi. According to the provisional results of a national census conducted in 2017 (the most recent), 96 percent of the population is Sunni or Shia Muslim. In July 2020, Tahaffuz-e-Bunyad-e-Islam (protection of foundation of Islam bill) was passed by the Punjab assembly, which supported only the Sunni interpretation of Islam, provoking a huge . Representatives of the Bahai community said this policy particularly affected them because the Bahai World Center the spiritual and administrative center of the community was in Haifa, Israel. U.S. government cultural centers in Khairpur, Hyderabad, and Karachi held events to promote religious freedom. According to technology companies and religious minority activists, the definition of objectionable content in the draft law was vague and subject to government interpretation. Dr Nauman Naqvi, an associate professor at Habib University in Karachi, said: Since Pakistans economic and political outlook appears increasingly troubled, the ruling power see Sunni majoritarian populism as the only option to secure stability, undercut democratic forces and distract from the grave political and economic crises that hover over Pakistan. The government said Ahmadis could qualify for admission if they did not claim to be Muslims. Leh's demand for UT status started in 1947 as the old statements of the former parliamentarian and religious leader, Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, indicate. On February 7, the district administration returned a century-old Hindu temple to the Hindu community in Zhob, Balochistan. During his February visit to Karachi, the Department of State Special Adviser for Religious Minorities told students and faculty at Karachi Universitys Department of Islamic Studies, An inclusive society creates more space for trade and prosperity. The audience applauded his comments about the protection of religious freedom for Muslims in the United States. Page 2 of 41 Preface. On October 5, also in Peshawar, Professor Naeemuddin Khattak, a member of the Ahmadiyya community, died after being shot while driving home from work. Phillip Smyth. Civil society activists and media reported young Christian and Hindu women being abducted and raped by Muslim men. Then, in mid-September, a march of more than 30,000 people, organised by extremist Sunni Muslim groups, gathered in Karachi over two days to call Shia Muslims unbelievers and blasphemers and called for their beheading. According to an unofficial and unverified estimate, between 700 and 5,000 Pakistan Shias from Karachi, Parachinar, and Gilgit-Baltistan, recruited by Iran, went to Syria to fight against the. This declaration is also required for private educational institutions, including universities.