Source : THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
By SADANAND DHUME
Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for WSJ.com.
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Perhaps the biggest potential defenders of liberal ideas such as freedom of worship are the minority Shiites and other heterodox Muslims. The Ahmadis have been under concerted attack since the 1970s, but in recent years radical Sunni violence against the country’s approximately 25-million-strong Shiite community has gone from episodic to regular.
This year alone, at least 60 Shiites from the tiny Hazara community have been slaughtered by Sunni extremist groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The very existence of these Muslims is threatened if Pakistan stays on its current path of denial and blaming the West for its most serious problems.
True, liberal ideas have yet to find an unapologetic political champion. President Asif Ali Zardari’s ruling Pakistan Peoples Party broadly stands for religious tolerance and a peaceful South Asia. But it has been ineffectual in office. While it has been in power, religious zealots have murdered the sitting governor of Punjab province and the only Christian cabinet minister.
Last Wednesday, police in Punjab demolished the minarets of an Ahmadi mosque under a harsh law that forbids the sect from identifying itself as Muslim or using Islamic symbols.
Categories: Interfaith tolerance, Pakistan