Promoting Interfaith Harmony

While the Vatican Pope Benedict XVI expressed his apprehensions for Christians suffering “persecution and even death” in Pakistan on the occasion of Easter message on April 4, the Government of Pakistan has promised to protect the rights and interests of minorities in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

This biased outburst of the Pope on the Easter Message, was prompted amid the alleged media reports that a Christian resident of Pakistan (Arshed Masih) was burnt alive for refusing to convert to Islam. It is a matter of grave concern that the Pope has been giving deplorable remarks against Islam at regular intervals.  Some times back in September 2006, the Pope’s churned out disrespectful remarks on the personality of Muhammad (PBUH) by saying that “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.  On another occasion, the Pope fleetingly criticized the Islamic concept of ‘jihad’. The Pope’s highly controversial and regrettable statement could fan religious disharmony in a manner similar to the escalation of the furore over the Danish cartoons in the year 2005. Most of the religious scholars and leaders while criticizing Pope’s remarks are of the opinion that the Pope is a respected personality not only for Christians but also for Muslims and he should avoid issuing controversial statements which can stall Islam-Christianity dialogue process.

Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has provided a lot of privileges and benefits to its religious minorities not only to reduce the “sense of alienation”, but also to inculcate an element of “oneness” amongst its civic society.  The Founder of Pakistan Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah visualized Pakistan as a country where all segments of society especially minorities would have ‘equal rights’.  The best proof is that Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus in Pakistan have flourished as protected minority communities, and many individuals rose to prominent positions in the arena of arts, science, politics, sports and even in Government’s high profile assignments. There are about 2.8 million of Christians enjoying all the rights of citizenry in Pakistan, having 93 Catholic churches spread allover the country. Since 9/11 incident on WTC in 2001, some hard-line militants overflowing with anti-American feelings displaced their anger by avenging terror on Christians in Pakistan. The Government took immediate steps to safeguard churches and Christian properties and presented a human rights agenda which took note of most of the human rights issues affecting ordinary people in Pakistan including safeguarding the human rights of minorities in Pakistan. Even then, some western media persons and anti-Pakistan elements were distorting the image of Pakistan for their personal gains.  Similar attempt was made by the author of Sunday Times Ms. Marie Colvin by accusing Pakistan for abuse of minorities rights in Pakistan and alleging that Jamat-ud-Dawa was engaged in motivating and conversion of Christian children into Islam for subsequent use in terrorist/militant activities.  Later, a French TV team comprising Ms Marijana (US national) and Mr Manola (French national) discovered that the Sunday Time report was a fabricated story. It was also revealed that it was part of malicious propaganda tactics by Pervez Masih and his family to seek American visa.

The US and Western electronic and print media is actively engaged in exploiting and projecting even minor incident of sufferings of Minorities in Pakistan.  The West’s intolerance against Islam has played significant role in the current religious stand-off.  The “Washington Post”, in an article titled “Intolerance in Europe” has pointed out that Europe’s Muslim communities increasingly are portrayed especially by European media — as havens for religious intolerance.  The dangerous increase in tensions between Europeans and Muslims is the blatant bigotry of many mainstream political leaders, journalists and other elites against Islam and its followers.  It is not wise to answer intolerance with intolerance.

The West considers that the democratic values are only embedded in the western “code of conduct”, which are ignored in the Muslim world.  Nonetheless, there are some conspicuous efforts from Pakistan side for a dialogue to respect each other’s religion.  Pakistan has endeavored to promote peace and stability in the Islamic world and discouraged the polarization between the world of Islam and the West.  Pakistan has envisaged a two-pronged strategy – to curb militancy and terrorism, and establish constructive and cooperative relations between the Muslim countries and the West.  The strategy calls on the Muslim countries to vigorously undertake internal reform of their societies, ensuring socio-political and economic progress of their populations.  In order to have a peaceful and secure world, we need to promote tolerance, understanding and respect for each others values, culture and trade.  The necessity for dialogue among different faiths needed to be driven forward and transformed into “bridges of friendship”, to ameliorate the sufferings of those who were the victims of intolerance and interfaith friction.  Pakistan believed in building linkages with other faiths and hoped that Muslim Ummah would pursue the goal of interfaith harmony.  It allows promoting peace, unity and brotherhood in religious seminaries, mosques and other worship places and refraining from spreading provocative literatures, materials and making fiery speeches so that feelings of the other faiths are not hurt.  Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, on his recent visit to Pakistan in early November, 2006, appreciated Pakistan’s role in promoting interfaith harmony.

In the past, there had been various calls from the European countries for dialogue on the issue of mutual respect for religious sensitivities.  However, so far, such a dialogue has not really taken off.  It is now time to enter into dialogue that would promote understanding of each other’s viewpoint on religion and other related matters.  The reaction in the Muslim world to the blasphemous cartoons, sacrilegious incident, or character assassination of religious personalities should, therefore, serve as an eye-opener for the West of the need to introspect their attitude towards Islam, especially to understand and accommodate its value system.  At the same time, there is a need to dilute the hard face of Muslims.  Bettering Islam’s image requires putting our house in order first and creating a society that is progressive and tolerant in its outlook and behaviour.

Khalid Khokhar

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on May 1 2010. Filed under Religion, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry