Source: The Express Tribune
By Abbis Haider
The author is a graduate of King Edward Medical University and has studied journalism and sociology from Punjab University. He is currently conducting research in health in the US.
A month ago, I got a very disturbing call at 8pm. One of the best engineering professors at a leading American university told me, in a flabbergasted tone, that something is troubling him and is related to Pakistan.
“I have not seen such overt discrimination ever in my life,” he said.
A few days before the distressed phone call, he and I had an interesting conversation regarding basic human rights when my column on pluralistic ramifications of Sufism and its association to the land of the subcontinent was published in a local newspaper in the US.
He appreciated that I had tried to highlight the mystic culture of Pakistan, and the liberal and humanistic tangents that embody it. He said he was glad to hear that the Pakistani Muslim youth of today was showing an interest in the subject.
In sharp contrast to the laudatory phrases that he had used for Pakistan earlier, the phone call featured agitation and disappointment because of an application sent to him by a well-reputed university in Pakistan for a faculty position.
He is a member of an external committee that reviews applications for the candidates who apply for faculty positions in universities in Pakistan. He showed me the excerpt of the oath which every individual has to take when he or she applies for a faculty position in a renowned public university in Pakistan.
The oath requires you to vow that you are not a member of the Ahmadi community.
“I don’t know what to talk to you about or what to say to you,” he said, disgruntled with the content of application.
He hoped I would raise my voice against these discriminatory practices and speak for the rights of the marginalised communities in my country.
Categories: Asia, Pakistan, Pakistan Inter-Faith, The Muslim Times