Muslim cleric claims minorities provoke persecution!

We have posted this video.  Although it is about the persecution of Ahmahdi's, it gives a vivid description of what it is like to be persecuted as a religious minority in Pakistan, and the tactics used by extremists.  It also shows clearly the pervasiveness of religious intolerance and bigotry across Pakistani society that we have just posted about here.  Reports come from many areas of Pakistan.  Many of the victims interviews concern the realm of education, an area where anti-minority persecution and slander is rife both among students and staff, as well as in text books and teaching, as major reports have demonstrated.  In addition, because of Pakistan's notorious Section 298 laws against Ahmadhi religious freedom, several of the interviews have had to be censored.

Some horrific highlights (or rather low-lights) include the arrest of a 5 year old on charges of blasphemy, the murder of a teacher convert to the Ahmahdi faith in front of his primary school students, after Islamic clerics came to the village with gunman and publicly announced that it was OK in Islam to rape Ahmahdi women and steal Ahmahdi property (around the 14 minutes mark), and Ahmahdi students receiving death threats for not converting, a case where , on finding out that a girl is Ahmahdi, a 'friend' tells other students that they can be killed as an infidel (around the 22 minute mark)

It shows the systematic way Islamic extremists target minorities -  sending out leaflets with the names of Ahmahdi business and shops so that they can be boycotted and attacked.  In addition, Ahmahdi's in prison on false blasphemy charges are discriminated against by staff not taking away their dishes to wash them on the grounds that the dishes are impure and defiled because they have been touched by 'infidels', a motif also featured in persecution of Christians, including, of course, the persecution of Asia Bibi.  Towards the end of the video (around the 20 minute mark) we see the sensitivites - where the editor of an Ahmadhi newspaper explains why they never sell to people outside the Ahmahdi community, to avoid being accused of 'proselytising Muslims'.  Even without doing this, they are the target of extremists.

At the very end, the fear and helplessness of minorities is clearly shown, and the pervasiveness of intolerance, when an Ahmahdi female victim says she works to help her students protect themselves because no matter how good or close their apparent friends may be, they will do nothing to help if a blasphemy charge is brought.

Perhaps most outrageous in a way is the comments of a Mullah at around the 12 minute mark, where he claims - despite so many victims of blasphemy laws being Muslim, women, the elderly, that Christian and Ahmahdi young men deliberately commit blasphemous acts to gain access to the West - he claims it is a tactic so that when the Mullah's and authorities file an FIR against them, the victims then go to Western embassies with the FIR and claim persecution to gain asylum.  TYPICAL!.  We have seen this pattern over and over from extremist clerics and rabble rousers - provoke attacks and then blame the victim.