The land of pure today is in a dire need of some soft hearts and morally robust individuals who can defend the weak minority, the poor grief stricken, the unfortunate victims of crime and ethnic racial violence. Our emotions and values have become so rusted, our systems of justice are so hollow that raising voice against oppression is like calling trouble at home.
By name, we are an “Islamic Republic of Pakistan”; we brag about it at every forum considering ourselves the best of Muslims that God has made in the entire century. The clergy takes every possible discussion to speak on religious values along with motivating people to opt the lifestyle of the Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H). Unfortunately, the people who preach this and the people who are preached, neither of them practice the faith practically in their lives making the inner self as hollow and soulless as it could be.
When Jinnah laid the foundation of Pakistan, the bottom line of the Constitution was the ‘Madina Charter’; its core meaning is to protect the minority living in an Islamic state. Do I need to say any more on this? The kind of inhumane behavior the minority in our country is suffering is a shame to the ‘Madina Charter’, all we are doing is annihilating them in an Islamic State. Heart wrenching stories are waiting to be told, the recent onslaught on the Ahmaddiya community in Gujranwala setting ablaze the houses and burning an unarmed lady and innocent children in an alleged case of blasphemy, Luckily all the powerful who are hungry for revenge and vengeance or to settle any personal score, take an excuse of blasphemy endangering lives of the innocent without giving them a chance to explain.
This does not end on one incident; there are numerous cases of suffering of Christians and Hindus as well as forced conversions. There is no clause in Islam that permits this; people legitimizing it are sheer nuts thinking of doing a great service to religion. Apart from this, the story of ethnic Shia killings is very disturbing. In every corner of this country wherever these people reside, there is an angel of death circling their head all the time, they live a life hiding their identity in order to survive. Large numbers of Shia intellectuals who are contributing in every possible way to the community are made to taste a bullet just for the crime of being a Shia.
And there is no course of justice, no one ready to defend the poor and oppressed, their cases are delayed with every possible excuse eventually being discarded into trash. The advocate Rashid Rehman defending a blasphemy case against a college lecturer was gunned down in Multan; the former Governor Punjab Salman Taseer was murdered by his own bodyguard in broad daylight for standing defense. The victims of rape never get justice, they are made to suffer in silence; in fact the victim is made responsible for whatever she has gone through.
How could one hold responsible 3 and 5 year olds who have fallen prey to the monstrous rapists? Nobody till date has been given proper punishment to set an example, our media makes sure to highlight every tragedy but unluckily never has been a habit of follow up. The reason behind this is that the crime is brushed under the carpet by the dominant forces of that society; what would you shed tears at; if this is what the people with power do, the powerless will have no place to hide and seek refuge. After all the torture and tyranny we call ourselves the champions of Islam.
With utter shame and disgrace, the average Pakistani should acknowledge the fact that hardly there is any law in the country that defends the weak, women and orphans are being deprived of their rights, the widows never get their due share, the poor are made to beg, justice is being sold by the judges, the law enforcers keep their hands chained, where would a helpless man go and to whom for his right? Our clergy has polarized the nation’s mindset dividing the Muslims into various sections, urging one to be superior over the other. This is not the actual Islam.
In proper sense, this is hypocrisy and bigotry to Islam. In the name of religion, taking lives have been legal with no judge, jury and judiciary to take notice of it. Islam urges to be compassionate with the weak, and we are a complete opposite of it afflicting every voice in the bud. We lack of manners and morals, we are soulless and heartless not able to stop an atrocity happening in front of our eyes, not even able to cease in the name of Islam.
