Religious Minorities in Pakistan PDF Download

Author: Iftikhar Haider Malik
Publisher: Conran Octopus
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Author: Farahnaz Ispahani
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190621664
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
When Pakistan emerged as an independent state in 1947, it sought to provide a new homeland and safe harbor for South Asia's Muslims, the largest religious minority in the subcontinent at the time. Yet this project was not exclusive. Taking its name from Pakstan, an acronym composed of the key letters of its constituent regions-Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan-Pakistan at first welcomed all of its new citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Non-Muslims comprised 23 percent of the total population, and non-Sunnis comprised a quarter of the Muslim population. Today, non-Muslims comprise a mere 3 percent of the population, and in recent years all non-Sunnis have been subjected to increasing levels of persecution and violence. What happened? In Purifying the Land of the Pure, Farahnaz Ispahani analyzes Pakistan's policies towards its religious minority populations, beginning from the time of independence in 1947. She notes the period of transition from an inclusive policy to an exclusive one, citing the influence of a number of religious and political leaders who invoked a new vision for Pakistan. The word "pakistan" is Urdu for "Land of the Pure"; thus, in their view, it followed that the objective for Pakistan's creation should be more specific and narrow: to create an Islamic State. In 1949, Pakistan's Constituent Assembly ratified this objective, which set the country on the path it was to follow. But as Ispahani carefully notes, the event that accelerated the pace towards intolerance of non-Sunnis was General Zia-ul-Haq's forceful ascent to power in 1977. His military regime promoted Sunni Islam at the expense of other denominations so that by the end of his reign, Pakistan was no longer a welcome place for minorities. Many fled, but those who remained faced escalating persecution, from both state and non-state actors. Tens of thousands died in the ensuing "purifying" attacks. Ispahani traces this history, stressing how the contradictions at the heart of the Pakistani state-building project have fueled the intolerance. Concise yet sweeping in its coverage, Purifying the Land of the Pure is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding why Pakistan remains plagued by radicalism and violence.

Author: Farahnaz Ispahani
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9351775534
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Pakistan was carved out in 1947 to protect the subcontinent's largest religious minority. But soon after Independence, political, religious and social leaders proclaimed it an Islamic State.Purifying the Land of the Pure is an analysis of the country's policies towards its religious minority populations, as well as an attempt to set the record straight about why Pakistan was created and where it moved away from Jinnah's modern pluralist vision to that of a purely Sunni Islamic nation. Farahnaz Ispahani brings to the subject an uncommon combination: the rigour of a scholar and the ground-level experience of a parliamentarian. A crucial addition to the literature on Pakistan.

Author: Daniel Philpott
Publisher: Law and Christianity
ISBN: 1108425305
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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The first systematic global study of how Christians respond to persecution, presenting new research by leading scholars of global Christianity.

Author: A. D. Asimi
Publisher: Word Alive Press
ISBN: 1770691146
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

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Created by foreign Missions during the British Raj, the small Christian community in the Pakistan area has existed for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Due to its low socio-economic and elemental religious background, it has always suffered from an image problem. Under the British Raj, the security and well-being of this community was assured to a very large degree. But with the establishment of Pakistan-a constitutionally Islamic state and society-the circumstances of this small minority have drastically changed. Less than two percent of the population, this minority is being constantly challenged on socio-economic and religious grounds. The Islamic elements in the land are ill-disposed toward it and, every now and then, resort to lawlessness towards members of this small minority. The author of this book has attempted to sharpen awareness of the problems of the Christian minority in Pakistan, and has proposed some steps that might alleviate these problems to a certain degree, including the development and practice of an Islam-reconciled Christianity. The thrust of his argument is that, when one is decidedly weak, and must remain so for the foreseeable future, it is best to acknowledge it and behave accordingly. One cannot safely dwell in the water while being on the wrong side of the crocodile.

Author: Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069121073X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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The first book to explore the modern history of Islam in South Asia The first modern state to be founded in the name of Islam, Pakistan was the largest Muslim country in the world at the time of its establishment in 1947. Today it is the second-most populous, after Indonesia. Islam in Pakistan is the first comprehensive book to explore Islam's evolution in this region over the past century and a half, from the British colonial era to the present day. Muhammad Qasim Zaman presents a rich historical account of this major Muslim nation, insights into the rise and gradual decline of Islamic modernist thought in the South Asian region, and an understanding of how Islam has fared in the contemporary world. Much attention has been given to Pakistan's role in sustaining the Afghan struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, in the growth of the Taliban in the 1990s, and in the War on Terror after 9/11. But as Zaman shows, the nation's significance in matters relating to Islam has much deeper roots. Since the late nineteenth century, South Asia has witnessed important initiatives toward rethinking core Islamic texts and traditions in the interest of their compatibility with the imperatives of modern life. Traditionalist scholars and their institutions, too, have had a prominent presence in the region, as have Islamism and Sufism. Pakistan did not merely inherit these and other aspects of Islam. Rather, it has been and remains a site of intense contestation over Islam's public place, meaning, and interpretation. Examining how facets of Islam have been pivotal in Pakistani history, Islam in Pakistan offers sweeping perspectives on what constitutes an Islamic state.

Author: Kajsa Ahlstand
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
ISBN: 0718843010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
In a world where almost all societies are multi-religious and multi-ethnic, we need to study how social cohesion can be achieved in different contexts. In some geographical areas, as in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, people of different religious belonging have, through the ages, lived side by side, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in dissonance. In other geographical regions, as in Scandinavia, societies have been quite religiously homogeneous but only recently challenged by immigration.In both locations the relations between religious minority and majority are very much on the agenda. In order to discuss the situation for non-Muslims in Muslim majority societies, a consultation was convened with both Muslim and Christian participants from Pakistan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Sweden. Some of the participants work in academic settings, others in faith-based organisations, some in jurisprudence and others with theological issues. Non-Muslims in Muslim Majority Societies is the result of thatconsultation. The intention of the book is to trigger reflection and further thinking, through papers that discuss issues such as freedom of religion, minority rights, secular and religious legislation, and inter-religious dialogue in Muslim majority societies. Although the articles are presented as 'works in progress' and remain tentative in many of their conclusions, this book is an important contribution to the global debate over religious tolerance and religious pluralism.

Author: Ali Usman Qasmi
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 178308233X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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This path-breaking work traces the history of the political exclusion of the Ahmadiyya religious minority in Pakistan by drawing on revealing new sources. This volume is the first-ever scholarly study of the declassified material of the court of inquiry that produced the Munir-Kiyani report of 1954, and the proceedings of the national assembly that declared the Ahmadis as non-Muslims through the second constitutional amendment in 1974. The book chronicles the details of anti-Ahmadi violence and the legal and administrative measures adopted against them, and also addresses wider issues of politics of Islam in postcolonial Muslim nation-states and their disputative engagements with the ideas of modernity and citizenship.

Author: Haroon Khalid
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9357081046
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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The formation of Pakistan and the search for an Islamic identity are inextricably interlinked. In recent years, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the country owing to the twists and turns of global politics has complicated matters. The religious intolerance that almost always accompanies fundamentalism has placed the minority communities of Pakistan in a precarious position. A White Trail is an ethnographic study of these communities and their lives. At a time when almost all accounts of religious minorities in the country focus on the persecution and discrimination they experience, this work delves deeper into their lives, using the occasion of religious festivals to gain a deeper insight into the psyche of Pakistani Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians and Bahais. It seeks to understand, through the oral testimonies of the members of these communities, larger socio-political issues arising from the situation.

Author: Nadeem Aslam
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451493796
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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When shots ring out on the Grand Trunk Road in the fictional Pakistani city of Zamara, Nargis’s life begins to crumble around her. Soon her husband—and fellow architect—is dead and, under threat from a powerful military intelligence officer, she fears that a long-hidden truth about her past will be exposed. For weeks someone has been broadcasting people’s secrets from the minaret of the local mosque, and, in a country where even the accusation of blasphemy is a currency to be bartered, the mysterious broadcasts have struck fear in Christians and Muslims alike. A revelatory portrait of the human spirit, in The Golden Legend, Nadeem Aslam gives us a novel of Pakistan’s past and present—a story of corruption and resilience, of love and terror, and of the disguises that are sometimes necessary for survival.