On July 21, the government returned a 200-year-old Sikh gurdwara to the Sikh community in Quetta. In 2017, TLP was responsible for forcing a law minister to quit over a perceived softening in the blasphemy laws. Local authorities did not allow the repair or unsealing of Ahmadi mosques damaged or demolished by rioters in previous years. It forbids discrimination against any religious community in the taxation of religious institutions. According to 2017 census total house hold in Pakistan are 32205111. The constitution states this requirement shall not affect the personal laws of non-Muslim citizens or their status as citizens. At least 40 cases were registered against Shias in one month In May, the Federal Investigative Agency raided the Lahore home of Ahmadi missionary and youth worker Rohan Ahmad, arresting him on charges of cybercrime, blasphemy against the Quran, and propagating the Ahmadi faith through a WhatsApp group in September 2019. Civil society activists and media reported young Christian and Hindu women being abducted and raped by Muslim men. 1 These two groups have been at odds for centuries. The main functions of Population Census Wing are as under: 1. The Punjab Provincial Assembly also unanimously passed a resolution in May insisting that the federal National Commission on Minorities not include a representative from the Ahmadi community until community leaders submitted in writing that they accepted their status as non-Muslims under the constitution. In April 2021, Human Rights Watch spoke to one Pakistani Shia man who spent nearly a month in UAE detention and was released and deported in late December 2020. According to religious minority activists, provincial governments also often failed to meet quotas for hiring religious minorities into the civil service. The charges carry up to three years imprisonment and a fine. For 40-year-old Tehseen, Kashif was her whole world. At years end, he was still being held at Camp Jail, Lahore, and had not been charged. The court also barred her alleged husband and his family from meeting her and ordered police to arrest those who facilitated the marriage. Non-Muslims may not appear before the FSC. 163,601,094. Syed Kareem* has been in hiding for weeks. Shia and Ahmadi Muslims were the most often accused, accounting respectively for 70 and 20 percent of all cases. According to NGOs and media reports, individuals convicted and sentenced to death in well-publicized blasphemy cases dating as far back as 2014 including Nadeem James; Taimoor Raza; Junaid Hafeez; Mubasher, Ghulam, and Ehsan Ahmed; Shafqat Emmanuel; and Shagufta Kausar remained in prison and continued to await action on their appeals. Members of parliament and officials of the Ministry of Human Rights and the Ministry of Law and Justice held consultations with church leaders from prominent Christian denominations and with NGO representatives, but the denominations, church leaders, and NGO representatives had not agreed on elements of the draft law pertaining to divorce and interfaith marriage by years end. The government has never executed anyone specifically for blasphemy. According to Ahmadiyya leaders, the government effectively disenfranchised their community by requiring voters to swear an oath affirming the finality of the Prophethood of Mohammed, something that they stated was against Ahmadi belief, in order to register as Muslims. To seek office, Ahmadis would be forced to do so because by law they are considered non-Muslims, even though they self-identify as Muslim. In September, unidentified gunmen killed two prominent members of the local Shia community in the Kohat District of that province. Persecution seems to be waiting for the Shia minority, said Hamza Baloch, a founding member of Secular Shia Voices, an advocacy group. Islam is the largest and the state religion of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. (Goyal, 2020) There has been an even greater decline in major cities with historically large Hindu populations. According to civil society reports, there were many individuals imprisoned on blasphemy charges and at least 35 under sentences of death, compared with 82 individuals imprisoned on blasphemy charges and 29 under sentences of death in 2019. In May, the Cabinet approved a proposal creating a National Commission for Minorities within the Ministry of Religious Affairs. On August 22, another teenage Christian escaped from the home of Mohamad Nakash, a Muslim who had kidnapped her in April and had been holding her since. . The four men were charged with defacing antiquities. Prime Minister Imran Khan gave verbal approval to build the temple following a request from the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Hindu and Christian members of the National Assembly. Others said parliamentarians occupying reserved seats had little influence in their parties and in the National Assembly because they did not have a voting constituency. In April, some members of the Hindu community in Karachis Lyari area were denied food packages provided by a local charity, according to local sources. In January, two Christians, Kamran Sandhu and Nauman Aslam, applied for seats reserved for minorities in the Gujranwala Electric Power Company (GEPCO) in Punjab. The constitution establishes Islam as the state religion but states, Subject to law, public order, and morality, every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice, and propagate his religion. According to the constitution, every citizen has the right to freedom of speech, subject to reasonable restrictions in the interest of the glory of Islam, as stipulated in the penal code. Answer (1 of 19): The country Iran has the largest population of Shia. However, violence is inevitable because the anger and anxiety on both sides seem to be mounting. According to an unofficial and unverified estimate, between 700 and 5,000 Pakistan Shias from Karachi, Parachinar, and Gilgit-Baltistan, recruited by Iran, went to Syria to fight against the. Courts issued two new death sentences for blasphemy and sentenced another individual to five years imprisonment. The group also painted slogans insulting the Ahmadiyya community. Some religious minority leaders stated the system of selecting minority parliamentarians through the internal deliberations of mainstream parties resulted in the appointment of party stalwarts or those who could afford to buy the seats, rather than legislators who genuinely represented minority communities. Members of this religious group have suffered persecution specifically from Mughal Emperors. Sanjay Mathrani, a former participant in a U.S. government exchange program, was a featured speaker. Christian advocates also called on the government to allow them to travel to Israel. Targeted killings of Shia and Ahmadi Muslims and violence and discrimination against Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadi Muslims continued to occur. Sunnis are not only dominant but also the majority sect in Pakistan. The attackers relationship to organized terrorist groups was often unclear. By law, madrassahs are prohibited from teaching or encouraging sectarian or religious hatred or violence. Ahmadiyya community members said they were surprised by this instance of a senior government official condemning anti-Ahmadi violence, but added that they do not expect it to become the new norm. In 2018 the Islamabad High Court issued a judgment requiring citizens to declare an affidavit of faith to join the armed forces, judiciary, and civil services and directed parliament to amend laws to ensure Ahmadis did not use Islamic terms or have names associated with Islam. Despite their well-documented extremist positions, over the past two years TLP and ASWJ have been allowed to assemble, make public anti-Shia speeches, carry out rallies, run for political office and mobilise against the Shia community, ensuring their power and influence in Pakistan has gone from strength to strength. Perpetrators of societal violence and abuses against religious minorities often faced no legal consequences due to a lack of follow-through by law enforcement, bribes offered by the accused, and pressure on victims to drop cases. On October 9, the PTA blocked the video-sharing social media application TikTok, based on what it called immoral and indecent content. The bill would also require the words last of the prophets to be written after the name of Mohammed and specific honors for his companions revered in the Shia community (may Allah be pleased with them, rather than peace be upon them). The population of Pakistan in 2019 was 223,293,280, a 1.62% increase from 2018. Victims said their attackers singled them out as vulnerable due to their religious minority identity. AsiaNews, the official press agency of the Roman Catholic Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, reported that two members of a Christian family were shot and wounded after buying a house in a neighborhood inhabited primarily by Muslims on June 4 in the Sawati Phatak Colony of Peshawar. In all these cases, judges repeatedly delayed hearings, adjourned hearings without hearing arguments, or sent appeals to other judicial benches. Several minority rights advocacy groups dispute the provisional results of the 2017 census and state the numbers underrepresent their true population and their political influence, because minority seats in the national and provincial parliaments are allocated based on census figures. In July, the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) demanded that the federal interior ministry prevent the Ahmadi community from sacrificing animals on Eid al-Adha. Shia Muslims also fear their religious freedom is being legislated away. Page 2 of 41 Preface. Although students of other religious groups are not legally required to study Islam, schools do not always offer parallel studies in their own religious beliefs. Islamist political parties and Punjab Provincial Assembly speaker Chaudhry Elahi (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf PTI party) criticized the decision before written approval was issued, however, declaring new temples should never be built in an Islamic country. According to the CSJ, 2020 saw the highest number of blasphemy cases in a single year in the countrys history. On July 27, an antiterrorism court sentenced a member of SSP to 13 years imprisonment for facilitating terrorist activities. Although sectarian data is difficult to pin down in Afghanistan, an estimated 15 to 29 percent of the population is Shia (mostly the Twelver sect that dominates the Islamic Republic, but also some Ismaili Shia). According to legal advocacy groups, some lower courts continued to conduct proceedings in an intimidating atmosphere, with members of antiblasphemy groups, such as the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), often threatening the defendants attorneys, family members, and supporters. Her family said she had been kidnapped and forcibly converted. Phillip Smyth. Indonesia is the country with the Largest Muslim population in the world. They represent about 21 per cent of the total Muslim population, the highest number in a country after Iran. Minority religious leaders stated members of their communities continued to experience discrimination in admission to colleges and universities. Embassy officers met with civil society leaders, experts, and journalists to stress the need to protect the rights of religious minorities and to continue to support measures that decrease sectarian violence. A constitutional amendment devolves responsibility for minorities affairs, including religious minorities, to the provinces. A June 2020 online survey by the Netherlands-based Gamaan Group found 37% of Iranians identifying as Muslims of which 32% are Shia Islam, 5% Sunni Islam and 3% Shia . The six, all from Karachi, were returning from a pilgrimage in Iran; they remained missing at years end. Sectarian persecution of Shia Muslims has been a long-running fracture in Pakistan, exacerbated by the proxy wars fought on Pakistan soil by Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shia-majority Iran, as well as the US war on terror. Parliament, church leaders, and advocates continued to debate the text of a draft law to govern Christian marriages nationwide, because the existing regulation dated from 1872. Pakistan population is equivalent to 2.83% of the total world population. Most Pakistani Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, which is represented by the Barelvi and Deobandi traditions. The penal code bans them from posing as Muslims, using Islamic terms, carrying out Islamic customs, preaching or propagating their religious beliefs, proselytizing, or insulting the religious feelings of Muslims. The punishment for violating these provisions is imprisonment for up to three years and a fine, the amount of which is at the discretion of the sentencing judge. Sunnis represent approximately 75 percent of this population and Shias 20 . Opponents filed a petition to stop construction with the Islamabad High Court on June 29, and vandals destroyed the lands boundary wall on July 5. CLAAS helped both file an antidiscrimination petition in the Lahore High Court. 2.4.1 The Shia Muslim population is estimated to be between 20 and 40 million (in . Shia Muslims constitute 10 to 12 percent of the citizen population and an estimated 25 to 30 percent of the Eastern Province's population. Following the killing of Tahir Naseem, the Department of State issued a statement expressing outrage over the killing and noting that Naseem had been lured from his home in the United States by individuals who used blasphemy laws to entrap him. The constitution states the government shall make Islamic studies compulsory for all Muslim students in state-run schools. In Sindh, police provided enhanced security at churches and Hindu temples, especially in Karachi, on eves of festivals such as Christmas and Diwali. Several statues were destroyed. Their families believe they were taken into custody by the intelligence. On December 24, the PTA issued a legal notice to two Ahmadi U.S. citizens requiring them to remove their website, trueislam.com, or face fines, sanctions, or potential prison sentences. On January 26, for example, a local court sentenced four boys for vandalizing a Hindu temple in Sindhs Tharparkar District, the first attack on a Hindu temple in that area in more than 30 years; minority lawmakers and civil society activists reacted strongly to the attack. The court may suspend or increase the sentence given by a criminal court in these cases. ASWJ had previously been banned in Pakistan under the Anti-Terrorism Act before it was lifted in 2018 but is still globally considered a terrorist organisation. Members of religious minority communities said there continued to be an inconsistent application of laws safeguarding minority rights and enforcement of protections of religious minorities at both the federal and provincial levels by the Ministry of Law and Justice, the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Human Rights. Sunni Muslims who want to distribute zakat themselves may request an exemption, and Shia Muslims are exempted by filling out a declaration of faith form. The population of Pakistan in 2020 was 227,196,741, a 1.75% increase from 2019. Analysis of census data and demographic research. NGOs expressed concern about what they stated was the increasing frequency of attempts to kidnap, forcibly convert, and forcibly marry young women from religious minority communities, especially young Hindu and Christian women. In late December, the PTA publicly used this new authority for the first time to demand the removal of sacrilegious content. On July 13, hundreds of members of the Bheel community, including women and children, marched and demonstrated against the demolition of their homes by revenue officials whom they said were in collusion with an influential landlord of the area in Mithi, Sindh. Members of civil society reported that converts from Islam lived in varying degrees of secrecy for fear of violent retribution from family members or society at large. On July 31, Hindu business owner and member of the Khairpur Chamber of Commerce and Industries Raja Kishan Chand was killed by unknown gunmen in that city. At the same time, NGOs reported that sometimes lower-ranking police would file charges of blasphemy, rather than a senior police superintendent who had more authority to dismiss baseless claims, or that police would not carry out a thorough investigation. In February, a crowd occupied and vandalized a 100-year-old Ahmadi mosque in Punjab. In a recent study conducted by the Law and Society Alliance, a New Delhi-based think tank headed by N.C. Bipindra, the population of G-B is now approximately 1.5 million, with around 39 per cent Shia, 27 per cent Sunni, 18 per cent Ismaili and 16 per cent Nurbakhshi. His ordeal began with a Facebook post in early September, where he condemned the killers of a Shia Muslim martyred centuries ago. The government continued to prohibit citizens, regardless of religious affiliation, from traveling to Israel. Islamic and minority religious leaders endorsed the code. In a September editorial, the largest Urdu daily, Nawa-i-Waqt, described the 1974 legislation declaring Ahmadis officially non-Muslim as a historic day in the countrys history. It stated that more than 40 cases against religious minorities were registered under the blasphemy laws in August alone. It also states that no religious denomination shall be prevented from providing religious instruction for pupils of its denomination in an educational institution maintained by the denomination. 0.5% Shia, and 0.3% Ahmadi. Minority rights activists said most government employment advertisements for janitorial staff continued to list being non-Muslim as a requirement. On October 22, a private business school, the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi, cancelled an online seminar that was to feature U.S.-based Ahmadi economist Dr Atif Mian, citing pressure by extremists.. According to a 2019 report by Pakistan's National Commission for Human Rights, an independent watchdog, at least 509 Hazara have been murdered for their faith since 2013. Sitting by his grave, she tells the story of the day she lost her brother in the attack, a sequence of bomb blasts which killed at least 45 . . NEW DELHI: Successive Pakistan governments under the garb of development have undertaken an exercise to change demographic composition of Gilgit Baltistan and local Shia population has been reduced to less than 50 per cent compared to 1948. NGOs, legal observers and religious minority representatives continued to raise concerns regarding the failure of lower courts to adhere to basic evidentiary standards in blasphemy cases, and the slow pace of adjudicating these cases, which led to some suspects remaining in detention for years as they waited their initial trial or appeals, and to some convicted persons spending years in prison before higher courts overturned their convictions and freed them for lack of evidence. Shia Islam is the second largest denomination of the Islamic Faith, after Sunni Islam, having about 15% of Muslims worldwide. Representatives of the Kalash, an indigenous group in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, continued to report their youth were under pressure from Muslim schoolteachers and others to convert from their traditional beliefs. The youngest was three years old. On January 30, police arrested two Shia men in Tando Mohammed Khan, southern Sindh, and charged them with blasphemy. Speakers at these rallies warned Shia of dire consequences, including beheadings, if they continued to blaspheme against the Prophet Mohammeds companions. The events were often covered by English and local-language media and featured anti-Ahmadiyya rhetoric which Ahmadiyya community representatives said could incite violence against Ahmadis. Salman Khan, the head of the Muslim family, remained at large. Pakistan's current population is estimated at approximately 185 million, of whom approximately 95 percent are Muslim. For example, in March, media reported that a woman from Meghwar committed suicide after being repeatedly raped by a man of an upper-caste Hindu clan in Deeplo, Sindh. Throughout the year, Islamic organizations with varying degrees of political affiliation held conferences and rallies to support the doctrine of Khatm-e-Nabuwat. Since 1980s, Parachinar, with majority Shia population, has seen the emergence of radical Saudi-sponsored Salafist groups, and sectarian violence has become a disturbing phenomenon, fueled by local and global terrorist organizations like the Taliban and ISIS. These conferences were organized by groups that stated they were defending the teaching that Mohammed is the final prophet but were often characterized by both secular and Ahmadi critics as engaging in hate speech against Ahmadi Muslims. Unofficial estimates vary widely with regard to the size of minority religious groups. The U.S. government estimates the total population at 234.4 million (midyear 2020 estimate). The law bans the sale of Ahmadiyya religious literature. Embassy officers continued to engage civil society leaders, local religious leaders, religious minority representatives, and legal experts in discussing ways to combat intolerance and promote interfaith cooperation to increase religious freedom. On October 7, Dr. Qibla Ayaz, then chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, inaugurated a national code of conduct to promote interreligious harmony in the face of increased sectarian violence and mistreatment of religious minorities. Azerbaijan has the second highest Shia Muslim population in the world accounting for 83.6% of the total population while the sect accounts for 85% of the Muslim population in the country. At least one individual was accused of spreading blasphemous content through social media under PECA. Shia leaders, meanwhile, denounced the specific honors prescribed by the bill to Mohammeds companions, which they said risked stoking discord between Shia and Sunnis, given their fundamental disagreements over some of the companions status within Islam. Hundreds of Shia Pakistanis gathered on Saturday to bury 11 coal miners from the Hazara community killed by the armed group ISIL (ISIS), ending a week of protests that sought to highlight the. The establishment of the UT of Ladakh was in concurrence with the age-old demand of Leh, a demand opposed by Kargil. Then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs government had granted the land to build the temple in 2016. This is probably an attempt to contain any outbreak of violence, because Shias in Pakistan are a sizeable minority. According to government figures, the remaining 4 percent includes Ahmadi Muslims (whom national law does not recognize as Muslim); Hindus; Christians, including Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants, among others; Parsis/Zoroastrians; Bahais; Sikhs; Buddhists; Kalash; and Kihals and Jains. The Sunni majority is using blasphemy laws to target and murder those they call heretics. The HRCP said forced conversions of young women of minority faiths, often lower-caste Hindu girls from rural Sindh province, continued to occur. In September, several religious groups from the Deobandi and Barelvi schools of Sunni Islam organized a series of rallies in Karachi to denounce Shia defamation of revered Sunni religious figures. The government may use the antiterrorism courts, established as a parallel legal structure under the 1997 Antiterrorism Act, to try cases involving violent crimes, terrorist activities, and acts or speech deemed by the government to foment religious hatred, including blasphemy. While they do not constitute a majority in any of Pakistan's four provinces, Shia do form a majority in the Pakistani-controlled autonomous region of Gilgit Baltistan. Several hundred protesters led by religious leaders took to the streets and chanted slogans against the alleged blasphemer. The constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and requires all provisions of the law to be consistent with Islam. Pakistan (212,300,000) India (200,000,000) Bangladesh . Unfortunately, due to the history that Pakistan has had, especially with regards to security, this remains a huge problem, said Chaudhry. According to the 2017 census results, the population is 1.6 percent Hindu, 1.6 percent Christian, 0.2 percent Ahmadi Muslim, and 0.3 percent others, to include Bahais, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians.
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