Taliban gun men on Friday May 28, targeted two mosques of minority Ahmadis in Lahore and killed seventy people. At least 90 people were injured. The last major attack on Pakistan’s cultural capital took place in March when a double suicide bombing killed dozens. This was for the first time Ahmadis were attacked. Hitherto, militants were targeting Shia Muslims.
Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim and follow all Islamic rituals. But they were declared non-Muslims in Pakistan in 1974 and in 1984 they were legally barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims.
“Punjabi …

BY now Pakistanis are accustomed to ‘non-state actors’ — nebulous creatures that are blamed for the nation’s ills and help the government defer the burden of accountability. In a nod to these elements, we learnt this month that the violence and intolerance that permeate this country’s campuses are the work of ‘non-student elements’.
This coinage comes from the Punjab University (PU), which re-opened recently as a 19-day faculty boycott came to an end. The faculty was protesting the beating — many describe it as attempted murder — of a professor. As …

The kidnapping of three Sikhs and beheading of one of them in the troubled FATA has earned a bad name for the country, where the track record of treatment of minorities is already poor. According to ISPR, the military rescued two of the kidnapped Sikhs after an operation and has shifted them to safety, while some news reports suggest they escaped the Taliban captivity in the Chapri Feroz Khel area between the Orakzai and Khyber Agencies and took shelter with the security forces in Tirah Valley. Conflicting reports aside, it …

TAXILA, Feb 22: In the wake of law and order situation and killing of an abducted Sikh allegedly by Taliban in Khyber Agency, the authorities have cut short the visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims from three days to one day who arrived here at Gurdwara Punja Sahib Hassanabdal to offer religious their rituals.
Earlier their stay was planned for three days from February 21 to 23 to participate in “Saka Nankana Sahib Anniversary” which is being observed for the second time after the partition of the sub-continent. Earlier they visited …

LANDI KOTAL, Feb 21: Militants have beheaded a kidnapped Sikh in Tirah valley of Khyber Agency after his relatives failed to pay ransom, according to his family.
Jaspal Singh and two other Sikhs were kidnapped from the Chora Tanga area of Tirah two weeks ago.
According to the family, the kidnappers had demanded Rs20 million by Feb 20 for Mr Jaspal’s release.
Sources said that a jirga of some local elders and relatives of the kidnapped Sikhs went to Tirah on Saturday in order to negotiate the release of the hostages, but the …

QUETTA, Feb 9: The community of Hindus in Quetta has called upon the Balochistan government to curb the rising cases of kidnapping for ransom and robbery being perpetrated against its members.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday with Minorities Minister Basant Lal Gulshan, a leader of Quetta Hindu Panchayat, Shyam Kumar, said the deteriorating law and order situation had served to heighten the vulnerability of the community.
He said the Hindus were a peace loving community and were as patriotic as any other community.
Mr Kumar said the community had played its due …

BEIJING – Three civilians were killed in rioting that struck the regional capital of China’s far west Xinjiang region on Sunday.
The dead were “three ordinary people of the Han ethnic group,” killed in rioting in Urumqi that witnesses and other sources have said involved members of the Uighur ethnic minority.
More than 20 others were injured in the incident and many motor vehicles were burned.

BOOK REVIEW: Thread not Scissors: Common Spiritual Heritage for Peace and Harmony; Compiled by Ahmad Salim; South Asia Resource Centre Islamabad 2009
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Thank God we have got over our love of the Taliban or we would have had to apostatise a lot of other ‘potentially excludable’ communities to make the national flag almost half white. Shia, Ismaili, Bohra and Barelvi all would have found themselves in the white patch
The white patch in our flag are the non-Muslims. There was no one in our midst who objected to this separate …

Bangladesh is dropped from the US watch list on religious freedoms.  The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), government aided panel had placed Bangladesh on the list of countries deemed to violate minorities’ right to religious freedom for the past three years from 2005 to 2008.
The Commission in its latest report released in Washington this past week noted that the election held last year end has brought about some qualitative difference. It asked Washington to encourage the new government in Dhaka to take early action on certain issues.
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