The Constitution of Pakistan promises the delivery of (basic and fundamental) rights to its citizens, that includes access to education (non-biased), health facilities, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of movement and much more. But I haven't experienced the fulfillment of this promise in many years!
These days Islamabad is locked down by Muslim fundamentalists, conservative leaders and their followers armed with sticks, demanding the resignation of the federal law minister, and stony setup to the country's blasphemy law. This sit-in is led by Khadim Hussain Rizvi (chief of Tehreek-e-Labaik), a leader of many who loves to put “Ishq-e-Rasool” in each and everything, criticises national heroes like Abdul SattarEdhi, who spent his whole life to serve the nation, and has given his name to those who didn't have one. Rizvi a rising religious star whose great tool is uneducated people, and students of monasteries who stand behind him to comfort his idea to create hatred in the society against minorities in Pakistan. In last few months, his videos clips are being circulated in high frequency, in which he is cursing every single person who disagrees with his ideas. Now he is putting his maximum effort to destroy the Pakistani society by orchestrating a massacre in the name of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)'s love. He played a potential role to glorify the murderer of Salman Taseer. He is violating the law, constitution of Pakistan and trying to push Pakistan decades back.
Pakistan already tops the stage for its discordant saga to its minorities, and it's just because of these fundamentalists, who don't understand logic, humanity and just wait for the chance to set the stage in capital to show their narrow approach towards minorities and freedom of speech. It is not easy to get rid of these religious extremists, who are not hesitant to slay anyone. Because their minds were fed with love of saffroned virgins and hearts full of hate for those who even slightly disagree with their ideas.
I still remember one occasion when I was in the sixth grade, one of our relatives from my mother's town came to visit us. He happened to be a teacher in a monastery and use to ask a lot of question: what will you do in your life, translate this sentence and narrate the mathematical table of nineteen and so forth. In response, I was in a win-win situation and managed to answer all the questions like many of us. But in my case, I was given a status of failed one because I couldn't please that bearded uncle, for the answer to a very first question: "What will you do in life?" He gave me a real-time inspiration of his own son, who was of my age and accompanying him. On adjure of his father, he proudly said: "I will kill all the infidels and after my martyrdom, I will go to heaven." That was so encouraging and satisfying for me and I made my mind within a second to endorse his idea.
A few years later, when I started traveling out of Pakistan, I saw developed countries, experienced life there and found them better than Pakistan. Here I would like to mention, there is no such a beautiful country on earth than Pakistan, we've all four seasons, flora and fauna, and mesmerising landscape which made every tourist fond of Pakistan and its different cultures! But only landscape, flora, and fauna is not enough to live, there must be some practical approach to build a healthy society.
This religious dominance is the key factor which leads a sixth grader to the idea of slaying innocent people, for their different beliefs. It takes some time to eradicate this theme of hate, but this process needs to be triggered, as many nations did and they are the leading global economies now. In like manner, we need to separate religion from Pakistan's politics, the role of religious and political leaders must be defined in their due domain. Pakistan must create space for minorities in textbooks, they are the citizen of Pakistan, they must have access to equal rights.
Every developed country has a story and that story starts with education, separation of religion from politics and then innovation. It is high time to decide whether we need minds like Dr Abdus Salam, Edhi or people like Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who do not want to understand logic, and incite people to kill or to be killed in the name of blasphemy.
