The Coronavirus pandemic has hit members of Pakistan’s religious minorities pretty hard. It’s not so much as far as I can tell that the disease itself is afflicting religious minorities, but more that the economic disruption has hit those who have the least secure and most low status jobs many of which are done by Christians, Hindus and Sikhs.

This disproportionate economic effect on religious minorities in Pakistan of the Covid19 disruption is being exploited mercilessly by various Islamic clerics. These clerics are using Muslim run food aid stations to coerce Christians into converting to Islam in exchange for food. This is a disgusting and disgraceful practise and it is wrong when Muslims do it just as it was wrong when evangelical Christians were doing the same during the colonial period in Africa.

Christians seem to be pretty badly affected by this sort of coerced conversion by Muslims to Islam as an article in Persecution (h/t ROP) recently highlighted. According to Persecution, not only is this practice of coerced conversion to Islam going on, but these clerics are boasting about it on national television in Pakistan.

Persecution said:

Church leaders and human rights activists in Pakistan are speaking out against a video in which an Islamic cleric claims his organization is using COVID-19 food aid to convert non-Muslims to Islam. Pakistani Christians claim this cleric and his organization are misusing the COVID-19 pandemic to abuse Pakistan’s already persecuted religious minorities.

Appearing on Mandi Channel, an Islamic TV channel in Pakistan, an Islamic cleric claims his organization, named Dawat-e-Islami, is converting non-Muslims to Islam using COVID-19 food aid. The cleric specifically brought up an example of a man who recently converted to Islam.

“The staff of the organization offered him conversion against food which he accepted,” the cleric claimed. The cleric went on to say the converted man was renamed Muhammad Ramdan and has started following the Islamic ritual of fasting.

Approximately 45% of Pakistan’s population lives below the poverty line, earning most of their income through daily labor jobs. Pakistan’s national lockdown, which started on March 21, has cut off many of these laborers from earning daily wages.

Pakistan’s Christian community has been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to widespread discrimination and intolerance, Pakistani Christians have been marginalized to the country’s poorest and most vulnerable sections of society. Many Christians depend upon the daily labor jobs which have been curtailed by the lockdown.

You would think wouldn’t you that when faced with an emergency that requires all groups to pull together, Islamic religious leaders would respect the fact that despite differing beliefs, every Pakistani is in the same boat and should be given the same level of aid? Unfortunately that is not the case. Pakistani Islamic clerics are seeing the Covid19 problem as an opportunity to push Islam on those who do not want it or desire it. They are exploiting the starving in a manner that disgusts me and should disgust others as well. But what else can we expect for a country that has been turned into a complete shithole by being goverened by Islam.