Dear Pakistan and India, stop trying to
convert your minorities
By Shakir Lakhani Published: May 8, 2017
So, it is not only in Pakistan that forced conversions take
place.
My attention was recently drawn to a news story according to
which non-Muslim employees of Mian Mir hospital in Lahore are forced to recite verses from the Holy Quran daily at the morning
assembly. The news further stated that those who refused to do so were penalised
by being marked absent for the day (and thereby losing a day’s wages).
If true, this is indeed shocking news. Once a non-Muslim says the words of the Kalima, he or she automatically
is converted to Islam, and cannot go back to his or her original
religion. It goes without saying that such men or women cannot continue living
with their spouses or their parents. If they do, they are in danger of being
labelled apostates and risk being lynched by infuriated mobs. Therefore, the
hospital administration is violating the Constitution which guarantees religious freedom to the citizens.
I was reminded of the Christian school which I attended, where every morning
and after every break the Catholic boys would recite the Lord’s Prayer, while
non-Christian students would stand and merely listen. Of course, there was no
attempt by the teachers to force the non-Christian boys to recite the words of
the prayer, but some boys did so out of ignorance. Despite that, we used to
feel very uncomfortable during the recitals, so I can understand how the
non-Muslim staff of the Lahore Mian Mir hospital felt when they were forced to
recite Quranic verses. Naturally, they protested and brought the matter to the
attention of the authorities.
Some Indian relatives of mine visited
Karachi recently and said that their children are being compelled to recite
verses of Vande Matram, which is sung in praise of a
Hindu goddess. They are also compelled to read the Ramayan, which is about Hindu gods and
goddesses. The helpless Indian Muslim children have no choice but to submit,
considering the highly charged atmosphere in today’s India, where there is a
movement to declare India as a Hindu state, making Muslims
and other minorities second-class citizens.
Recently, the government tried to pass a
law making forced conversions a crime, but the religious
lobby successfully resisted and the law has been shelved, and it is
doubtful if it will ever be passed. Sometimes, Hindu and Christian women are
kidnapped or raped and then forced to marry their rapists or
abductors. There is a popular misconception in Pakistan that the population of
women is greater than that of men. This is not true. According to available
data, the male-female ratio in the country is 1.06, meaning that there
are 106
men for 100 women in Pakistan (those clerics who advise Muslims
to practice polygamy are apparently not aware of this fact). Perhaps it is due
to the lesser number of women in Pakistan that non-Muslim women are kidnapped
and forced to marry Muslim men.
But the situation is worse in India,
where the movement called “ghar wapsi” (returning home) has been
launched to convert all Indian Muslims and Christians to Hinduism by 2021 (four
years from today). There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Indian Muslims are either being killed or converted en masse. Between 1991 and
2001, the number of Muslims in India increased by 45% over 10 years,
but in the next decade, it only grew at 25%, as a result of which the Indian
Muslim population in 2011 was only 172 million (it should have been 200
million if the growth rate had remained at 45%).
So,
it is not only in Pakistan that forced conversions take place. But that doesn’t
mean we should not take action to stop people like the Mian Mir Hospital
administrator who are forcing non-Muslims to convert against their will. The
government should take action to prevent this obnoxious practice from taking
place.
Post a Comment