Zahir Janmohamed September 3, 2003

Tags: intolerance , racism , secularism

href="/tag/Pakistan">Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state."[1]

Fifty-six years later, I wonder what Jinnah would tell my family and countless others who lost loved ones because of rising religious intolerance in Pakistan. On April 2, 2000, my uncle Dr. Sibtain Dossa was fatally gunned down at his medical clinic by Islamic radicals wishing to cleanse Pakistan of its minority Shia Muslims.

Over the past few years, extremist Islamic groups in Pakistan have mounted a unilateral terror campaign. But Americans and Christians have not been their only targets. Women, secular advocates, and even Muslims—Ahmadis, dissenting Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims—have also come under attack.

On Sunday, two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a truck full of policemen, killing eleven and wounding nine in the Pakistan town of Quetta near the Afghan border. Nearly all of the victims of the attack belonged to the minority sect of Shia Islam. The attack on Shias was the third in Quetta in less than two weeks. Speaking of the attack, Rahmat Ullah, a Pakistani senior police accurately noted, “It was sectarian terrorism.”

The gruesome cycle of violence against Pakistan’s minority citizens could not have occurred without the complicity of the Pakistani government. Consider the example of Azam Tariq, a religious cleric and former leader of the radical group Sipah-e-Sahabah. In an interview with the BBC in 1995, Mr. Tariq openly praised the Taliban and endorsed attacks on Shias in Pakistan. Instead of bringing him to justice, Mr. Tariq was rewarded. Today he is a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly.

But why then have the attacks on Pakistani Shia Muslims drawn so little response, from both Americans and Muslims alike?

There is a tendency to view the Muslim community (and its segment of radicals) as a monolith, acting as a common unit with a common agenda and little dissent. This outlook on Islam has prompted a slew of articles with generalized titles such as, “Why Do They Hate Us.”

But in Pakistan, many Islamic radicals hold equal (and sometime more) animosity to dissenting Muslims (particularly Shia Muslims) that to westerners. The Sipah Sahabah have even killed many of their own Sunni clerics, because they dissented against their divisive agenda. Often implementing a skewed understanding of Islamic sharia (religious law) and not just hatred of the west, therefore, becomes their raison d’etre. The recent electoral victory of radical Islamic party in the North Western Frontier Province near the Afghan border is just one example of this.

If the US wishes to gain credibility in Pakistan, it should equally pressure Pakistan to protect all of it residents who stand threatened by the rise of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan, not just westerners and Christians.

As Muslim lobby the US to treats its religious minorities with respects, Muslims themselves have turned their heads as its minority groups—particularly Ahmadi and Shia Muslims—are butchered by their “fellow” Muslims.

After all, much of the Muslim world turned its head when Sadaam Husain was executing Shias in Iraq and ignored the Taliban’s mass beheading of Shias in Afghanistan.

This does not absolve Shia Muslims of any guilt. Many Shia cleric have irresponsibly inflamed sectarian tension by denouncing beloved Sunni icons like the Prophet’s companions. But a Muslim group that condemns violence when Islamic radicals kill Christians but remains silent when Islamic radicals kill Shia Muslims is not a human rights group but a PR firm.

My last memory of my uncle was sitting with him, in the sprawling garden next to the tomb of Jinnah in Karachi. I asked if Pakistanis—particularly Shia Pakistanis—still respected Jinnah.

“We do,” he told me. “Because at least Jinnah tried to create an open Islamic country where all could flourish.”

That seems to summarize the history of Pakistan—it has always tried but never achieved Jinnah’s goal.