Can a Christian be mayor of Lahore?: New Age Islam's Selection, 10 May 2016
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
10 May 2016
Can A Christian Be Mayor Of Lahore?
By Kaleem Dean
Among The Believers
By Shandana Minhas
Jirga Justice
By Sahar Bandial
The Lost Dreams
By Muhammad Hamid Zaman
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Can A Christian Be Mayor Of Lahore?
By Kaleem Dean
10-May-16
London mayoral elections received world’s media attention after the United Kingdom Labour party-nominated Muslim candidate for mayoral race, Sadiq Khan, defeated his opponent Zac Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire from the ruling Tory party. Much heat was observed in their election campaigns during the last few days before the polling day. Khan’s challenger, Goldsmith accused him of links with extremists; Khan was also questioned for his anti-Semitism ideology. But despite all kinds of political tactics — some of them downright unsavoury — used by his opponents, Khan acquired 13.6 percent margin victory over his rival, which itself is a record in the 16 years history of London mayoral elections. Now Sadiq Khan is the mayor of 8.6 Londoners.
After the announcement of the result, while speaking to the cheering supporters Khan said, “This election was not without controversy, and I am so proud that London has today chosen hope over fear and unity over division. I hope that we will never be offered such a stark choice again. Fear does not make us safer, it only makes us weaker and the politics of fear is simply not welcome in our city.” The news of the newly elected Muslim mayor of London was much lauded in the Muslim world, and especially in Pakistan because of his humble Pakistani background. His father chose London to be their home and Khan with his eight brothers and sisters grew up in public housing. Khan, emotional and grateful after his victory thanked the city where he grew up, “I'm only here today because of the opportunities and helping hand that our city gave to me and my family. My burning ambition for our city that will guide my mayoralty is to ensure that all Londoners get the opportunities that my city gave to me.
According to the 2011 census, there are three million Muslims living in the United Kingdom making them 4.5 percent of the total population. Now diverting from that into a different direction, let us think for a moment about political participation of minorities in Pakistan. In Pakistan, now for the past few years, we claim to have democracy in the country. After the Pakistan People’s Party’s five-year tenure, Pakistan Muslim league-Nawaz received public mandate to run the country. During the last eight years, how many laws were made to give equal rights to all citizens of Pakistan irrespective of their colour, caste, creed, gender, and religion? Is it not true that the constitution of Pakistan bars a non-Muslim from becoming president and prime minister of Pakistan, and a judge of the Federal Shariat Court, which has the authority to challenge any un-Islamic law in the country? In the neighbouring India, we can find several examples where non-Hindus were given high profile offices like presidency, foreign and defence ministries.
During the last 69 years, minorities of Pakistan have been separated from the mainstream political system. Many of them have been deprived of their right to vote and to elect their own representatives. Time and again, the importance of electoral reforms for minorities has been highlighted, but successive governments seem least concerned about development of a very important organ of the social body. If one organ is paralysed, a healthy structure cannot be ensured. Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis and other minorities have played their patriotic role in the development of the country, whether it is in health or education sector, armed forces, media or bureaucracy. In all walks of life they have proved their loyalty to their motherland. But the fact remains that in 190-million population, it is impossible for a Christian or Hindu to compete for the premiership of the country. The existence of discriminatory laws that non-Muslims cannot hold country’s biggest offices is a clear division between minorities and majority. Any amendment to the constitution revising or repealing such provisions that bar minorities to become president or prime minister of Pakistan will be a great catalyst to engender equality among the people of Pakistan. And it will also be good for Pakistan’s image globally. As stated earlier that with only three percent of the total participation, it is impossible for any non-Muslim to even think of competing for a high position. In the comity of nations, we can attain a better place by ensuring safety, security and proper political participation of minorities in the mainstream society. They can be given opportunities to contest elections for general seats with political support of their respective mainstream parties. Bringing a good number of Christians and Hindus in parliament will make our society more tolerant and egalitarian.
The input of minorities for the betterment of the country should be given importance, and legislation should be passed so that all citizens may enjoy equal status. It probably appears to be wishful thinking right now but all things are possible when there is a will. Lauding Sadiq Khan is wonderful, but would this not be an opportune occasion for Pakistani political elite to think about potential political induction of minorities in the political system? Democracy cannot be defined in its proper terms when a small but significant section of society is badly ignored. Is democracy only for the majority community? In Pakistan, for minorities there is not much that is left in the political system.
If the son of a Pakistani bus driver can become a prominent member of western political system because of the democratic values of the United Kingdom, why can a Christian not become mayor of Lahore or a Hindu mayor of Karachi? In the United Kingdom’s multicultural society people have respect and tolerance for one another without caring about their religious affiliations. This is one of the reasons 1.3 million Britons voted for Sadiq Khan; in approximation Muslim voters could be 15 percent of the total turnout, but those were divided among Labour, Tory, and other parties. It is obvious that most of the voters were white Britons who trusted a Muslim candidate to be the mayor of London. In all his talks and interviews, Khan was very proudly a patriotic British. Minorities living in Pakistan are Pakistanis first. It is about time minorities were not isolated, and were given full opportunities to live their lives as proud Pakistanis. The present political system is moving toward becoming a theocracy, which was never the dream of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. All should be equal in their motherland, just as they have been created equal by God.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/10-May-16/can-a-christian-be-mayor-of-lahore
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Among The Believers
By Shandana Minhas
May 8, 2016
If the measure of a life is survival, then Maulana Abdul Aziz seems to be a very lucky man. His loved ones have fallen – his father shot before his eyes, his son lost in the siege of the Laal Masjid in 2007 while Aziz was in jail – but he himself has survived possible death by bullet, knife, bomb. He has even survived death by Burqa.
While security forces and his well-armed students fought it out in 2007, he was caught sneaking out of his besieged fortress in women’s clothing and subsequently paraded on PTV, still wearing the burqa. When asked how he justified his own escape while those given to his care were left behind, the Maulana said it was Jaaiz to use disguise to save your life during a war. Perhaps the Maulana is not a survivor through sheer luck after all. Perhaps the Maulana is a survivor because he is canny enough to know most Pakistanis are ignorant enough of their faith to avoid discussions on the finer points of it?
The details of the son watching his father die, the humiliation on state-owned TV, are in the documentary Among The Believers, co-directed by Indian filmmaker Hemal Trivedi and Pakistani filmmaker Mohammed Naqvi. The film has recently been in the news after the Central Board of Film Censors in Islamabad refused to grant it a screening certificate for a film festival, on the grounds that it “contain dialogues which projects the negative image of Pakistan in the ongoing fighting against extremism and terrorism”. The attempt at censorship made many want to watch the film, which is a good thing because it is excellent. The best film I have seen about the state of our nation since the rest of the world turned a baleful glance on us and asked, ‘What is wrong with you, Pakistan?’
The documentary’s excellence lies partly in the fact that that is not the question it chooses to ask. There is nothing of the native informant about it. The question it asks, instead, is, ‘How do you break a child’s spirit?’
Enter Maulana Abdul Aziz, totemic figure of unregulated madrasa education.
Early in the film, he introduces us to a six-year-old boy. He tells us the boy and his mother both came to the Lal Masjid – the mother is at Jamia Hafza – after his father left them. He tells us this in front of the boy, because the boy’s feelings are of no consequence, a reality the boy grasps because his body speaks submission and servility as he crouches before the Maulana. Then Aziz has the boy stand and deliver, in a sudden staccato burst, a speech about jihad and what the believers will do should the unbelievers threaten them. At the end of the speech he hands the boy a hundred rupee note. There are a lot of currency notes in the film. The big ones go directly into the Maulana’s pocket.
Early in the film, we meet the Laal Masjid’s ‘Dean of Admissions’. He tells a man who has brought a boy for enrolment that, if he finishes memorizing the Quran, not only will the boy go to heaven he will also take with him ten relatives who would otherwise go directly to hell. He says it with a completely straight face. A little later in the film, he tells us the early years are the best time to mould children. If you set them on a path young, they can never really deviate from it, you see. He doesn’t just say it. He believes it too. Which Maulana must he have been given to, when he was a child?
Given to Abdul Aziz, and darting in and out of the film lighting up the screen with their fragile, damaged, beauty, are the girl child Zarina and the boy child Talha. Zarina’s folks have nine children and cannot feed them so she was given to the Laal Masjid outpost in her village before running away. Talha’s folks…we never know why Talha was given to others to raise. But in the brief interaction between Talha and his father we feel the weight of unspeakable things. Things that eat poverty and ignorance. Towards the end of the film, Talha is asked if, after years of rising at five and sleeping at nine, and all the swaying and chanting, he understands the meaning of the Quran. That will come later, he tells us, daring us to suggest otherwise. The Dean of Admissions should be proud. As for Zarina, I can’t tell you about Zarina. We should all be proud, for letting the unspeakable things eat our children. Children like Abdul Aziz, whose assassinated father was once a favoured instrument of state policy.
The film does not project a ‘negative image of Pakistan’; it offers us borrowed grace, in the form of the constant presence of Pakistanis who have been fighting from the beginning of our descent to lift us up again. Not the soldiers we are constantly told are our only saviours, but the ordinary people who have been in the ideological trenches for decades now, fighting for love, light, knowledge, joy. Some of the names we are familiar with. Some of them we will never know. Some of them we will know only after they have been shot dead. And we will marvel again at the luck of Maulana Abdul Aziz, ultimate survivor. It’s blind, un-Islamic luck, right? It couldn’t be some powerful guardian angels? It couldn’t be some friends at the very top?
Incidentally, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey was the title of a book by V S Naipaul, published in 1981, charting his six-month travel through countries full of the ‘recently converted’, such as Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia. I haven’t read it. I wonder if it is in the Lal Masjid library along with all the other books we do not understand.
Shandana Minhas is a writer
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1099456/among-the-believers/
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Jirga Justice
By Sahar Bandial
May 10th, 2016
The writer is a lawyer and a member of the law faculty at LUMS. She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge
The writer is a lawyer and a member of the law faculty at LUMS. She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge
The Galiyat is known for its unmatched beauty and calm, its pine-scented air and the hills full of daisies. One often encounters little girls with sparkling eyes, skilfully carrying home a lot of firewood on their heads or trotting on its winding streets selling wreaths of wild flowers. They always stop to exchange greetings or a smile. To conceive of brutality, fear and injustice in these seemingly perfect hills is difficult.
Yet the harrowing image of the singed body of 16-year-old Ambreen, brutally murdered in the village of Makol, drew light to a different — and darker — reality of the lives of the women living on these hills. Ambreen was drugged and hanged to death upon the edict of a local jirga as punishment for aiding an elopement. Her corpse was then set ablaze beyond recognition. Ambreen is not the first female casualty of the parallel system of informal justice imparted through jirgas across Pakistan. Countless women have been murdered, raped, sold or exchanged in marriage, or paraded naked on the orders of local jirgas, as retribution or in reconciliation for ‘offences’ most often committed by their male kin: a love marriage by a brother; murder or rape committed by an uncle; theft by a son; illegal occupation of property by a husband (Aurat Foundation, 2015). Women are commoditised into instruments of executing ‘justice’ for violation of both the formal law and of culturally-rooted notions of morality. Jirga justice is then patriarchal and misogynistic. With members of most jirgas drawn from the local elite, jirga justice also reinforces social and economic privilege. The rape of a labourer’s daughter in Umerkot last month by a notable is, on a jirga’s order, then to be compensated through a mere exchange of maunds of wheat.
Does our law provide any room for the operation of such collectives of men imparting twisted and archaic notions of justice? The simple answer would be a ‘No’. Article 175 of the Constitution defines the limits of the formal judicial system, and provides that no other institution, unless established by the law, shall exercise the adjudicatory powers of a court. Jirgas, excepting those functioning in Fata and Pata, have no basis in any law and operate illegally outside the judicial scheme envisioned by the Constitution. ‘Justice’ delivered by jirgas, such as in Makol, contradicts not only moral conscience, but also the basic tenets of due process of law. Jirgas follow neither procedural nor substantive law, and instead deliver edicts on an adhoc basis rooted in ignorance or prejudice. In enforcing their own brand of law and justice, jirgas, according to our courts, essentially usurp the functions of both parliament and the judiciary. The superior courts of this country have given a clear verdict that jirgas themselves are “unlawful and illegal”, violate fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution and enjoy no protection under the law.
Yet despite these judicial pronouncements and interventions by the courts, particularly in jirga-sanctioned cases of swara or vani, this parallel system of justice endures across the country. The ‘Darul Qaza Sharia’ (Islamic courts) set up by the Jamaatud Dawa earlier this year to provide justice with the “consent of the parties” in Lahore (home to the provincial high court) is a case in point. Paradoxically, women, too, have in the past resorted to calling an all-women’s jirga in Swat to settle matters of unpaid salaries, water shortage and murder. While the standing of a women’s jirga is contestable, one must question why the need to convene it even arose. The inaccessibility of and delays in the dispensation of justice by the formal legal system compel individuals to seek recourse through a quicker and less complex mode of settlements of disputes. The impunity permitted at times by the state, to members of Jirgas, on account of their influence or power is another explanatory factor for the continued persistence and relevance of jirgas in our society. Although the cause of Ambreen’s murder cannot be reduced to a simple causal equation, it is important to realise that her death is in part a consequence of the failures of our judicial system. Other women are more likely to meet a fate like her’s until these flaws are corrected.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1100062/jirga-justice/
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The Lost Dreams
By Muhammad Hamid Zaman
May 10th, 2016
Our heads should hang in shame. It can no longer be blamed on deranged individuals that our society continues to create unspeakable horrors in crimes against women. When a young girl, whose only crime is to help a friend marry someone she loves, is burned with her body tied to the seat of a car, it is not just an individual monster who finds comfort in such heinous acts. The presence of a whole council that debates and agrees to this heinous act, and those who carry it out, suggests a problem much deeper than what we have been willing to acknowledge. The absence of national and provincial political leadership in this matter is deeply troubling, but perhaps should not surprise any of us. It is not just the moral failure of those who participate in such tragedies, it is also a reflection on the greater society at large, including those who stay quiet.
The presence of a parallel justice system run by supposed elders of a tribe, who do not deserve the dignity of being called human is a failure of our national system, of governance that knows of these jirgas, of police and intelligence systems, and all those who see such signs on a daily basis and continue to ignore them. When the members of a group of political parties block a bill to protect women and when a group of people take to the streets to defend the status quo and bully us all, there is little reason to assume that tomorrow will be any better than today. Those who refuse to acknowledge the depth of the problem, either because of political expediency or because they only want to portray a good image of the country will be judged harshly by the moral verdict of history and rightfully so.
What happened with Ambreen may be a new low in our long history of unimaginable horrors against girls and women, but it is part of a much bigger trend. When women, who want to be part of the political process, feel unsafe in a political rally in Islamabad, in the presence of tens of thousands, either because of morally bankrupt men or hired goons, we should no longer claim to be a healthy society, or worse, one that is trying to become one. Any effort to deny the existence of our collective failure, whether it is cloaked in denial of isolated incidents or in the forms of ludicrous promises of providing justice in the future, or worse, analogies that such incidents happen everywhere, is one more sign that our soul and humanity left the body long ago.
The health of society cannot be measured by the motorways, economic corridors or the tall claims of development; neither can it be quantified by the size of the military. It can only be described by how we treat one another, especially those whose aspirations we have suppressed for generations.
Last night, at a fundraiser for The Citizens Foundation to build schools for the poor, I had the pleasure, honour and joy of listening to Dr Nergis Mavalvala. A deeply humble scholar, she told her story and that of her path. It was a moving story filled with dreams, great mentors and a caring family. While listening to her, I thought of Ambreen and her surroundings — and what were her dreams? What did she like to do? What were her aspirations and above all, why did we, as a society, trade her dreams with unthinkable torture?
Ambreen’s murder is one more sign that we are working hard to turn the clock of civilisation and human dignity backwards. But it does not have to be this way — we can and must demand more of our system, of our leaders and above all, of ourselves. We can no longer assume that the currents of time and civilisation will take us forward — it hasn’t and it won’t. Only a determination that everyone, be it Nargis or Ambreen, will be safe and able to dream safely, with a fair shot at realising those dreams, will create a society worth living in.
Muhammad Hamid Zaman is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor of Biomedical Engineering, International Health and Medicine at Boston University.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1100048/the-lost-dreams/
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Reckoning with Torture
By Adnan Sattar
May 10, 2016
For those who still care, May 3, 2016 was one of the most chilling days in the history of our country. Following the release of the pictures of the shockingly scarred dead body of an MQM worker, Aftab Ahmad, the director-general of the Rangers admitted that Ahmad had indeed been tortured in custody. The paramilitary force had claimed earlier that Ahmad died of natural causes.
The same day it emerged that an activist belonging to the nationalist group Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, Kehar Ansari, had suffered torture while in the custody of ‘security agencies’. Thankfully, Ansari survived to see another day.
Anyone who lived in urban Sindh through the beleaguered 1980s and 1990s would be no stranger to mutilated corpses sewn up in gunny bags, dark tales of secret cells run by political mafias, and lives torn apart by terror and ethnic violence. The alleged involvement in such acts of those responsible to deliver Karachi of mayhem amplifies the horror of it all, echoing the time-worn question: quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who shall guard the guards?)
Leaders from across the political spectrum hailed the inquiries ordered by the DG Rangers and the COAS. But investigating torture – one of the most serious crimes under international law – on a par in gravity with slavery and genocide – should not be a matter of the largesse of the leadership of the very same institution whose members are presumably involved in the crime.
It is significant also that bleeding-heart politicos and pundits otherwise obsessed with the issues of corruption were unable to spot the evident conflict of interest involved here.
Admittedly, something is better than nothing. An investigation, albeit internal, is to be preferred over blatant denial. Now there are encouraging reports in a section of the media that the Rangers may welcome a judicial enquiry. There are strong legal reasons why we need an independent inquiry into all cases of alleged torture and ill-treatment in custody.
The Committee against Torture, the body mandated to oversee the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (ratified by Pakistan in June 2010), has repeatedly called upon state parties to “establish a systematic and independent system to monitor the treatment of persons arrested, detained or imprisoned.”
The Optional Protocol to the Convention – which Pakistan has not signed up to – defines as its purpose under Article 1, the establishment of “a system of regular visits undertaken by independent international and national bodies to places where people are deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
To say that Pakistan is a party to the Torture Convention is to tell only half the story. The remarkable thing is that upon ratification the country entered reservations in respect of a number of articles subjecting them “to the Provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan and the Sharia laws”, in what can only be seen as an attempt to water down the country’s substantive obligations. In 2011, Pakistan withdrew some of these reservations to obtain the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) status with the European Union. However, it might help to recap the initial reservations as they illustrate certain abiding gaps in Pakistan’s domestic legal framework with regard to torture and other forms of ill-treatment in custody.
The reservations entered into included the requirement under Article 12 of the convention that a “prompt and impartial investigation” be carried out “wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed”. A reservation was also made with regard to Article 4 of the convention, which requires that all acts of torture, including complicity and participation in torture, be made criminal offences under domestic law. Further, Pakistan also opted out of Article 14, which obligates states to ensure that the victims of torture are able to obtain redress and have an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation. Another reservation concerned the obligation to prevent acts of ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ (let us call it ill-treatment), which resemble but do not amount to torture in the strict legal sense.
The element that distinguishes ill-treatment from torture is the absence of the requirement that the treatment be inflicted for a specific purpose – ie, extraction of evidence or a confession, intimidation or coercion of a third party, or as punishment or discrimination. Although it is a matter of some controversy within human rights jurisprudence, a distinction is also made between torture and other forms of ill-treatment based on the severity of the suffering imposed.
On the doctrine of relative intensity, acts such as repeated beatings, mock executions, electric shocks, sleep deprivation and rape would typically (but not exhaustively) constitute torture. International human rights bodies have found violations of the prohibition of ill-treatment in cases involving lack of adequate food, solitary confinement and very poor conditions of detention. Conditions that give rise to ill-treatment frequently facilitate torture so the distinction between the two is often blurred in practice.
Little surprise then that the delegations of Austria and the Czech Republic at the UN found Pakistan’s reservations on various articles of the Torture Convention as incompatible with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, according to which a party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.
Turning to the domestic legal framework, although Article 14 (2) of the constitution expressly prohibits the use of torture for extracting evidence, the country does not have specific legislation that incorporates the obligation of impartial and independent investigation of alleged acts of torture, or the right to fair and adequate compensation for the victims – just to take two examples. The definition of torture provided for in the constitution is itself restrictive; it fails to cover acts aimed at punishing an individual or intimidating and coercing a third party.
Reference is made at times to sections 339, 340 and other provisions of Chapter XVI-A of the Pakistan Penal Code as covering certain aspects of torture. The said provisions, however, deal with ‘wrongful restraint’ only, and come nowhere near defining the elements of the crime of torture or providing an appropriate penalty. The terms ‘torture’, ‘ill-treatment’, ‘cruel or inhuman treatment’ do not feature anywhere in the penal code or any other law. The domestic jurisprudence on the subject is woefully under-developed.
In sum, not only do we need an impartial and independent inquiry into the circumstances leading to the death of Aftab Ahmad and the treatment experienced by Kehar Ansari, the time is ripe also for a root-and-branch review of our legal framework. It is essential to ensure that all aspects of the international prohibition of torture and ill-treatment in custody are fully reflected at the national level.
As an immediate preventive measure, the authorities could perhaps take a cue from the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which, in one of its general comments, has advised that detainees be held in places officially recognised as places of detention and the “names of persons responsible for their detention be kept in registers readily available and accessible to those concerned”.
To guarantee the protection of detained persons, the committee further stated that the time and place of all interrogations, together with the details of those present, should be recorded and kept available for judicial proceedings.
Torture is one of the worst forms of the abuse of power. And like all abuse of power, it thrives in secrecy and silence.
Adnan Sattar is an independent researcher.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/118761-Reckoning-with-torture
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Sadiq Khan’s Victory: a Miracle of Democracy
By Nasir Saeed
10-May-16
Labour politician Sadiq Khan has been sworn in as mayor of London at Southwark Cathedral, becoming the city’s first London’s first Muslim mayor. Pakistani Muslims in the United Kingdom (UK) and Labour party are celebrating the victory of Khan as he is the first Muslim to lead a significant city of Europe. Winning the nomination from within the party was not easy, and he faced competition from people like David Lammy, and Harriet Harman, ex-deputy leader of the labour party. And then he was contesting the mayoral election against Tory Zac Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire.
Becoming London’s first Asian and Pakistani Muslim mayor will have a far-reaching impact on the UK and some other European countries’ politics. It may inspire many ethnic minority members to become involved in politics. Khan doesn’t come from a very rich family and on several occasions he has proudly said that he is the son of a London bus driver, who migrated to the UK in 1970, and grew up in a public housing estate. During the ceremony he said, “Some of you may not know this, but I grew up on a council estate, just a few miles from here” and “back then, I never dreamt that I could be standing here as the mayor of London.” Khan is the third one to become the mayor of London after fellow Labour politician Ken Livingstone and Conservative Boris Johnson.
Outgoing mayor Boris Johnson congratulated Khan on securing a huge mandate and wished him every possible success. During the election campaign Goldsmith tried to smear Khan, saying he was associated with extremists, and Khan faced allegations about his past dealings with Muslim extremists and anti-Semites. But on his success Goldsmith also wished Khan well, and even his sister and former wife of Imran Khan, Jemima Khan, congratulated Khan on his success. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said, “I look forward to working with him.”
Khan joined the Labour party at the age of 15; he studied law, worked as a university professor and also served as chairman of Liberty, a civil liberties pressure group. He was elected as MP first time in 2005 from the Tooting constituency. In 2007 when Gordon Brown became the prime minister, Khan was given his first job in government as a whip and then as a minister of communities. In 2009 he became transport secretary; he was the first Muslim minister in the British Cabinet. Now Khan is London’s first Muslim mayor, a miracle of true democracy where everybody is treated equally and has equal opportunities. We also saw this miracle of democracy eight years ago when for the first time in history, Americans elected their first black president, Barack Obama.
It makes me think if we will ever see the fruits of true democracy in our country, where every citizen is treated equally and has equal opportunities without distinction of race, colour or religion. It is said that we have democracy in Pakistan, but, in fact, we don’t believe in democracy but in dynastical politics and even behave like a civil dictatorship. We treat our minorities like aliens — despite of their role in the making of Pakistan — and have deprived them of their equal rights and status through our national narrative and several articles of the constitution. On April 30, 2016, a ceremony was held in the Awan-e-Sadr where President of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain lauded the services of Dewan Buhadar S P Singha, a Christian leader, for his role in the creation of Pakistan. To recognise his services the government has issued a commemorative postage stamp of 10-rupee denomination. Undoubtedly, it is a matter of honour and joy for the whole Pakistani nation, and particularly for Christians. But it took 69 years for this recognition. I think this is the first time in Pakistan’s history that any Pakistani Christian’s image has been published on a postage stamp and afforded highly esteemed stature.
Although this step will serve to ease and lesson their suffering for some time, unfortunately, there is no respite for Pakistani Christians. A few days later I read that Pakistani Christians protested in front of the Lahore High Court against the Punjab government’s plans to takeover the land of four churches in order to build the Orange Line Metro Train project.
Though we have a democracy, it is always under threat because of our own wrongdoings. And we cannot even think of any non-Muslim becoming chief minister or governor of Pakistan. We are not even willing to give non-Muslims a party ticket to contest in general elections. Sadly, at present we do not have even a single elected non-Muslim MPA or MNA, while in the UK there are around nine Pakistani Muslim elected MPs, and several members in the House of Lords.
The world is changing, and we will have to as well. The co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, has expressed his views about equal rights for all citizens in Pakistan, irrespective of their religion. He said that minorities must have the opportunity to hold important government positions. He further said, “If a Muslim can become the president of India, then why can’t a person belonging to the minority community hold an important official position in Pakistan? In 2013 he expressed his wish to see a Christian prime minister in Pakistan in his lifetime. I don’t think it is ever possible unless we have true democracy in Pakistan, which is a long way to go.
Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif said, the “nation’s future lies in a democratic and liberal Pakistan”, which started a new discussion in the country, and he was heavily criticised for what was seen as an ‘audacious’ statement. There is a dire need to change our thinking, attitude and treatment towards minorities. Political rhetoric and praising their role for their services for Pakistan is not enough. There is an urgent need to put into practice what we say, and we need to learn lessons from the rest of the world, whether it is India, UK or USA.
Nasir Saeed is a freelance columnist
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/10-May-16/sadiq-khans-victory-a-miracle-of-democracy
URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/christian-be-mayor-lahore-new/d/107247