As we all now know, or should know, Pakistan is a hellish place to be a religious minority. This is because Pakistan’s ruling Sunni Muslim culture views and treats members of minorities such as Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and others such as heterodox Muslims like the Ahmediyya, like dirt. Members of these groups often get the worst jobs, have poor access to redress via the criminal law and can fact false accusations of the capital offence of ‘blasphemy’.
Because Pakistan is both culturally and politically guided by some of the worst forms of Orthodox Islam on the planet it is a terrible place to be a believer in anything other than Sunni Islam. Anybody who studies religion or who understands the conditions that are necessary or a nation to have religious freedom will know that the very last place on earth that you’d want to be anything other than a Sunni Muslim is Pakistan.
However, this record for treating religious minorities like dirt has not stopped the Pakistani President showing extreme hypocrisy and whining like anything about the possibility of what are relatively mild controls being placed on extremist Islam in France. According to an article posted on a site that monitors the persecution of Christians called Persecution.org (h/t ROP), the Pakistani President Dr. Arif Alvi has had the barefaced effrontery to call French efforts to deal with a worsening problem of violent Islamic extremism as ‘discriminatory’ towards Muslims. Ironically Dr Alvi has revealed by his statement that which many of us know, but which our governments in the West often deny, which is that Islam is NOT a religion of peace.
Persecution said:
President Dr. Arif Alvi called on French leaders to not let discriminatory attitudes against Muslims be made into law. The comments were made at an international conference on religious freedom and minority rights held in Islamabad on Saturday.
What utter and complete hypocrisy. How on earth can it be discriminatory to deal with violent religious extremism not matter what religion it comes from? There’s also a massive irony in holding a conference on religious freedom and minority rights in a place that has some of the strictest blasphemy laws in the world. Like all too many other Muslim religious and state leaders from across the world Dr Alvi is offended by everything but ashamed of nothing.
Dr Alvi went on, of course, to criticise the freedom of speech culture in Western nations. The Persecution report added:
He went on, however, to criticize the West’s freedom of expression as it pertains to ‘blaspheming’ the Islamic prophet Muhammad, calling such speech an insult to the global Muslim community.
In my view all religions, philosophies, politics and belief systems should be subjected to the right of challenge and debate. Yes, some of that challenge or criticism may well be seen by some as an ‘insult’ but accepting insults is part of the price that is paid for living in a free society. We should be able to debate the life and commandments of Mohammed just as easily and as freely as we can debate those of Moses or Jesus or Buddha.
Whining as loud as Dr Alvi has done does not make Muslim societies and cultures look strong, instead it makes them look weak, weak enough to be mortally disturbed by an insult. Adults shrug off insults but immature children do not. Dr Alvi seems to be treating Islam as an offended child here, which to be frank is not a good look.
