Source: Daily Times via Wasim Sroya:
What is needed is a paradigm realignment of the country; unless Pakistan is declared a secular state there will not be any tangible development on the human rights front. According to the Minority Rights Group International, Pakistan had the world’s highest increase of threats against minorities and ranked the sixth most dangerous country for minorities overall. Pakistan was ranked after Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Almost 98 percent of the people in Pakistan are Muslim, yet they remain insecure and intolerant to the two percent minority. Will Pakistan continue to be a country where Sikhs are prevented from praying, Ahmadis and Shias are slaughtered in and en route to places of worship, shrines of patron saints are destroyed by suicide bombers, or where foreign aid workers are abducted for ransom? Or will it be a country where religious pluralism, as was envisioned by Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, would flourish?

Complete: