• Pakistan
is the world’s fifth most populous country, and over its existence has shown an
unbroken downward trend in the standard of its treatment of religious and other
minorities. It is currently rated as the
sixth most dangerous country in the world for persecution of minorities.
• report is a rare This collaboration between researchers
and activists from all the main minorities in Pakistan.
•The targeting of various minorities in Pakistan has grown
through time, and in part can now be described as ‘genocidal’ in scope.
•Efforts to stem the
flow of refugees and asylum seekers from Pakistan
have led a number of Western countries, including the UK and Australia,
into highly questionable relationships with Pakistani state agencies that are
directly complicit in much of this targeted and genocidal activity, notably Pakistan’s main
Intelligence Agency, the notorious ISI.
• In the UK,
the treatment of ‘failed’ asylum seekers held in administrative detention is
particularly poor, with racist and degrading treatment far from uncommon,
including elements of physical and mental torture and other inhumane treatment
of already traumatized rape victims and children. Reports include women stripped naked and
filmed semi-nude by private security guards.
Pakistani Christian refugees, and women refugees generally, for example,
are particularly badly treated by the asylum adjudication process in the UK.
• Pakistani minority refugees represent a massively
increasing portion of those seeking asylum in the UK, and the UK Border Agency (UKBA)
has a very poor record in assessing these claims, with a high proportion of
refusals being overturned at higher tribunals.
A number of their rejections contain bizarre and sometimes outright
self-contradictory justifications for refusing asylum, and a consistent pattern
has emerged of UKBA grossly over-estimating the integrity and moral rectitude
of Pakistani police as a whole, over-estimating the viability of internal
flight as an alternative to seeking asylum, combined with a decidedly
rose-tinted perception of the realities of life for minorities in Pakistan. Christians in Pakistan’s
perception and complaint –whether justified or not - is that Muslims are given
visa’s and asylum in the UK,
but by and large Christians aren’t.
Hindu’s have more of an avenue of escape as Pakistan
has a long border with India,
an option not so viable for Christians.
• Hindus (and Sikhs, to an extent) are viewed with greater
suspicion due to ongoing conflicts with India. In addition, Indian citizens who stray across
the unmarked border are treated – however implausibly – as spies, and have been
known to be held incommunicado in the prison system for decades without trial,
undergoing torture and inhumane conditions, and without the Indian state or the
Red Cross being informed.
• Widespread and compelling evidence shows Pakistan’s
notorious ISI intelligence agency is engaged in torture, lengthy detention
without trial, and starvation of prisoners, both directly and by proxy, through
various extremist groups, including the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan’s High Court has tried to
take them to task for these kinds of abuse several times recently.
• US and UK
pressure on Pakistan’s
authorities in the ‘War on Terror’ effectively make those nations morally
complicit in the ISI’s nationwide illegal detention infrastructure. For instance claims that MI5 officers on the
ground were unaware of such mistreatment are directly and robustly contradicted
by the testimony of ISI officials. UK government
promises of transparency over MI5 and MI6 operational guidelines around
third-party torture have yet to be fulfilled.
• On occasion, the UK authorities have functioned within the
UK itself as an extension of the ISI’s state terror campaign, using British
taxpayer’s money to covertly monitor peaceful human rights activists as alleged
‘terrorists’, as well as sending officers on long, pointless and fruitless
trips to the USA and Pakistan to get information that was already known. In one instance, they have continued to
prosecute two Balochi activists for activities that a new Pakistani administration
has long since publicly said were baseless and politically motivated.
•The concept of Genocide need not necessarily involve mass
killing per se. It will also include
deliberate and systematic targeting of the intended victims’ language, culture,
social life, history, language and religious and cultural buildings and
shrines, as well as deliberate and systematic wounding of target populations
physically and mentally, and practices such as forced prevention of birth and
forced transfer of children. Anything
that is organized with the goal of annihilating a population or culture and the
imposing of the oppressor’s culture can be considered ‘genocidal’.
•The definitions of ‘minorities’, ‘institutionalized
discrimination and racism’ and other relevant terms are discussed, along with
‘cultural genocide’ and why it should be given more attention as a concept and
a tool for assessing potential genocide situations.
•Journalists are targeted by extremist Islamic groups with
the silent complicity of state agencies.
These groups are intimidating all areas of Pakistani society, to the
point of being able to assassinate government ministers and state governors who
oppose their agenda, and enjoy the patronage of powerful state agencies, in
contrast to human rights activists who are often brutally targeted by those
same state agencies.
• Security forces participate in gruesome murders and
‘disappearances’ of various minority and human rights activists on a regular
basis, along the lines practiced by Hitler, targeting the cultural and
intellectual elites of their victim population.
These forces also foment denial of their acts (a classic symptom of
genocide) via various front groups, claiming conspiracy against Pakistan by
‘Hindus, Zionists and Christians’.
• The Pakistani military and intelligence forces are
engaging in an ongoing genocidal campaign in Baluchistan, an originally
autonomous state in the West of the country that was invaded and occupied by Pakistan after
only a year in the late 1940’s. There
are reports of widespread bombardment of villages and civilians. Currently, the state forces, as well as
acting directly, appear to be using some Taliban-linked groups as proxies. Teachers, lecturers, politicians, poets,
journalists, musicians, philosophers, human rights activists and other
intellectuals are ‘disappeared’, some never to be heard of again, others whose
bodies appear weeks later bearing marks of extreme torture in many cases. Evidence suggests a network of detainment
centres where the tortures occur, and those who have escaped confirm torture,
including rape, and the forcing of Baluchi men to rape Baluchi women prisoners
on pain of having their own genitals cut off.
Pakistan also
connives with Iran against
their common ethnic foe, handing some prisoners over to Iran to be
hanged.
• The conflict in the Afghanistan border zone raises
particular issues with regard to minority rights due to the emergency laws in
place in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Provincially /
Partially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA).
Another significant human rights issue in the area is the ongoing CIA
and US
military run drone strikes which result in disproportionate loss of civilian
life. In addition, the Taliban and its
allies routinely target minorities for extortion of money, as well as targeting
schools, particularly girl’s schools, which are often church-run. More generally and widely, extremist groups
like the Taliban are engaging in a rising tide of kidnappings for funds, and
religious minorities and foreign aid or medical workers are a particular
target, especially as the Taliban oppose immunization and believe such programs
to be espionage covers or plots.
•On top of extremist infiltration of both the armed and
security forces as well as the legal community, among others, blasphemy laws
and other systematically discriminatory legislation – largely based on Sharia
law – provides a framework to nurture and grow ongoing and intensifying attacks
on religious minorities and on freedom of religion and expression, to the point
that Pakistani society and state as a whole can now be unequivocally described
as undergoing a process of Islamicisation.
For instance, women’s testimony is legally worth half that of a man, and
a non-Muslims testimony is half that of a Muslim, resulting in absolute legal
discrimination that cycles into and from deep societal discrimination. Denial of justice to minorities, already
entrenched in Pakistani society, is growing rapidly in intensity. Blasphemy laws trigger religious terrorism,
lynch mobs and societally instigated genocidal practices – both spontaneous and
organized. Attempts to reform the
application of blasphemy laws to reduce such abuses have fundamentally failed
to do so. In this area the Pakistani government
seems to have bent over backwards to accommodate the worst kinds of Islamic
extremism, even including officially banned terrorist groups. Virtually every case of blasphemy is either
as a result of mental illness or is fraudulent, ensuing on some personal or
business dispute, or made out of religious hatred or a desire for gaining
property or for the purpose of religious or ethnic cleansing of a
neighborhood. Mobs will routinely call
for those arrested for blasphemy to be handed over to be hanged, stoned or
burnt alive. In the last twelve months
in two separate incidents in different regions, vagrants accused of blasphemy
and arrested – both of them believed to be mentally ill Muslim men – were
beaten and burnt alive by mobs who stormed police stations and dragged them out
into the road. There were several
similar assaults on police stations by gun wielding mobs with the same intent
on other occasions.
• Targeted persecution of Christians and other minorities
occurs in every area of Pakistan,
both geographically and socially.
Kidnap, rape, forced conversion and marriage of minority women and girls
occurs on a daily basis, sometimes as part of the sex slave trade, with a
smaller number of teenage and prepubescent boys also targeted in abuse rings
and prostitution rackets. Muslim clerics
and Islamic courts approve, routinely illegally converting and marrying off
such under-age girls, as converting someone to the ‘superior’ religion of Islam
is deemed a virtue. Non-Muslim women are
seen as lawful prey. Some Islamicist groups in Pakistan even teach that
any Muslim man who marries or even just rapes a non-Muslim women will be
rewarded with seventy virgins in heaven forever, thus making the reward for
rape equal to that of a suicide bomber or martyr. Commercial sale of kidnapped women as
‘wives’, or giving them to supporters and followers as wives is sometimes
practiced by quite senior state and national politicians. Sexual harassment and rapes without forced
marriage and conversion are endemic and an entrenched routine in some
villages. Police are nearly always
complicit with the kidnappers to some level, sometimes actively covering their
tracks, more often than not mocking, pressuring or beating up victim’s
families, and sometimes participating in rape themselves. Pakistani police can quite often be
accurately described as criminal gangs themselves. Those police that do genuinely try to uphold
law and freedom are often sidelined or outmaneuvered or outgunned. Particularly in Karachi, police can function as proxy armies
for political groups. In one case, the
police burned a Christian man alive and raped his wife in front of their
children.
• Attacks on and desecrations of minority religious
buildings, statues, shrines, religious clerics and buildings are common. Death threats, extortion, fraudulent seizure
of land and property, often in collusion with authorities or police, are
routine. Intimidation of impoverished
minorities into selling their properties at dirt-cheap prices is routine in
both urban and rural areas, further continuing the enforced impoverishment of
such minorities. In the worst attacks
well trained gunmen open fire on Christians in churches. In one such instance the attackers included a
squad of burqa-clad female extremists toting – and using – powerful
weapons. Mosque loudspeakers are very
commonly used to whip up religious lynch mobs to enforce suppression of
minorities, particularly Christians.
• Christian hospitals, churches and orphanages are often
targeted for forcible or fraudulent acquisition, on occasion abetted by corrupt
church leaders.
• Rape and sexual assault of largely poor young Christian
nurses in the hospital system are routine, and cover-ups are standard. Prosecutions are virtually unheard of, and as
for successful prosecutions, well…….
Vulnerable minority patients are routinely targeted for conversion by
Islamicist groups who roam some hospitals freely, searching for such victims. Christians and other minorities are routinely pressured to
convert, including by financial inducement, offers of women to marry, promise
of employment or promotion and/or threats of being laid off, threats or force
and torture by neighbors, police, religious school students, converted family
members and employers. Sometimes simply
refusing to convert is deemed as worthy of death or other severe
sanctions. In one case, a Christian farm
laborer refused pressure to convert, and as punishment his two year old
daughter was taken out into the fields and raped so badly that even after five
rounds of reconstructive surgery, she will never be able to marry or bear
children, and has to urinate out of a surgically constructed opening on her
stomach. Whilst these operations were
going on the family had to live underground for years, moving from house to
house to avoid Islamic extremist clerics hunting them down to kill them for the
blasphemous act of daring to refuse to convert, until finally, after special
pleading to a Canadian government minister, they were allowed to claim asylum
in Canada.
• Disruption of church services is fairly common. In one case last year, Muslims burst into a
church whilst the children were rehearsing Christmas carols, smashed the church
up and beat the children for daring to disturb the Mosque prayers. There have also been grenades thrown at a
children’s Christmas service, where the local media then accused the parents of
the injured children, many of whom were injured themselves, of throwing the
grenades.
• Non-mainstream and dissident Muslims are also routinely
targeted.
• Violence between Shia and Sunni communities, as is usual
through the Middle East, is in large part due to extremist groups on either
side that are waging a proxy war funded by Iran and Saudi Arabia (with some
other Gulf State support) respectively.
Elements of Pakistan’s
military and intelligence agencies also sponsor extremist groups responsible
for violence against ‘other’ communities.
• Ahmahdi’s are a particularly targeted group. The notorious blasphemy laws include sections
banning the group from describing themselves in Muslim terms, and the community
is regularly faced with blasphemy charges, violent attacks and intense
discrimination. For instance, recently
the Lahore Bar Association banned certain brands of drink from court premises
because they are made by an Ahmahdi owned firm.
• During recent floods, religious minorities faced
widespread discrimination, being denied food and medical treatment by both
Mosque based and government distribution centres at many locations, unless they
converted to Islam. There are also
reports of discrimination in the compensation and recovery processes,
particularly pertaining to the granting of agricultural land to those whose
fields had been destroyed.
• A number of measures designed to reduce discrimination in
practice are subverted to perpetuate discrimination. For instance, there are reports that
land-mafia grabs evade rules designed to prevent communally owned minority
property being seized by marrying minority girls and then using the marriage as
a basis for seizing property by force or by legal stratagem. Quotas designed to reserve 5% of government
jobs for minorities to encourage minority graduates in practice perpetuate
discrimination by forcing educated minority members into low-grade sanitation
and cleaning jobs, whilst all too often illiterate Muslims are given
supervisory posts.
• In addition, efforts to try and improve minority political
representation by allowing minorities to have an extra vote for a certain
number of minority seats designated in accordance with official figures for
minority populations have had some impact, but have also raise issues. There is considerable evidence to suggest
that census figures have been systematically manipulated through the history of
the Pakistani state to hide the true size of minorities in Pakistan,
particularly the Christian population, and given the way minority voting is
organized this effectively amounts to a partial political disenfranchisement of
considerable parts of the population.
Perhaps more seriously, these minority candidates are selected by the
political parties which are dominated by Muslim interests, not by free
election. This means that the candidates
are beholden to their political sponsors more than the minority communities
they are supposed to serve, leading to a widespread perception that many
minority politicians – with a number of noble exceptions – are disconnected
from the concerns of the community.
• The Presidency and several other top-level positions are
explicitly denied to non-Muslims, and in most cases non-Muslims are not allowed
to be judges, or else have extreme restrictions in what cases they are allowed
to handle.
• Other groups targeted have included the Jewish
population – there are now no openly
Jewish people in Pakistan,
although there is believed to be a few hundred left who survive by pretending
to be Christians or Muslims.
• Police are trained in Sharia laws and practice. The legal code actually outlines laws of
evidence follow Sharia principles, in that the testimony of a non-Muslim is
worth half that of a Muslim, and that of a woman is half that of a man. This is especially problematic in the frequent
occurrence of cases of kidnap, rape, forced conversion and marriage of minority
women and young girls to Muslim men.
Already intimidated by death threats or threats of blasphemy charges
against their family, even when they do dare speak out, female minority victims
of such crimes testimony is worth a quarter of their abusers, even if you leave
aside the fact that their accusers are often powerful and influential
businessmen or politicians, and have sympathetic Islamic scholars backing them
up. Hindu and Scheduled Caste women are
particularly vulnerable as the state does not recognize their religious
marriage ceremonies and contracts. The
police and legal system in Pakistan is notoriously corrupt, and as well as the
normal societal prejudice and discrimination, minorities face an additional
hurdle in that they are usually the poorest, and the least able to bribe their
way to justice.
• In addition, traditional tribal elder councils are a
parallel system of justice in Pakistan,
to whom police often defer. Islamic
courts also have a huge influence on the practice of law and order, and this is
enshrined in the constitution.
• Further discrimination is found over the issue of
intra-faith marriage. Because Islam is
seen as the superior religion, it is perfectly acceptable for a Muslim man to
marry a non-Muslim woman – the act of marriage is seen as automatically
converting her to Islam in many circles – because it is the man (dominant) who
is the Muslim and the more powerful in the relationship. However, it is socially utterly anathema for
a non-Muslim man to marry a Muslim woman as it is seen as a non-Muslim
demonstrating dominance over a Muslim, and an affront both to Islam and the
woman’s family, and it will usually occasion violence. The whole non-Muslim community or family is
held responsible, and the elopement almost automatically considered a
kidnap. Muslim women will sometimes
demonstrate, saying it is literally impossible for a true Muslim woman to consider
such a relationship.
• Domestic and sexual violence against women and children is
extremely common, even normal and normative in much of Pakistani society. Street children are almost always sexually
abused within a couple of days of going on the streets, and the majority of
both boys and girls on the street have been sexually abused by police
officers. Gangs often target children,
especially minority children, for enforced prostitution. For instance, this is a particular problem
facing the beleaguered Christian slum of Essa Nagri in Karachi, a community which also faces regular
violent attacks by Taliban groups.
Similarly, Muslim run brothels are routinely placed in minority
neighborhoods, leading to sexual harassment of local woman, who are seen as ‘easy
women’. Another tactic is to induce poor
minority men with beautiful wives or daughters into drugs, then blackmail them
with threats of blasphemy or death into handing over the women into
prostitution.
• Homosexuality is deeply frowned upon, although an
underground community exists under the radar.
However, in parts of Pakistan
there is a traditional acceptance of pederasty, and minority boys and teens are
especially vulnerable to homosexual rape.
In Karachi,
a number of Christian teens were seized in a series of incidents by police and
never seen again, but the body of one was found the next day in the sewer, and
after the Christian community forced police to conduct an autopsy, was found to
have been raped and to have been killed by police bullets. There is also a traditional class of
transgender, known as hijras, who also face grave discrimination, although the
government is taking some steps to recognize them.
• Hazaras, particularly the Shia Hazaras, who form the
majority of this ethnic group, are often targeted, and their strikingly
different appearance mean they can be easily identified.
• Sikh’s, Bahai’s, Zoroastrians, and traditional tribal
religions also face similar general discrimination, as do many Afghan
refugees. Agnostics and atheists are
known to exist in Pakistan,
but keep generally underground and don’t express their beliefs openly.
• Some of those minorities who convert to Islam do so for
safety and freedom from fear. Some have
gone on record as saying that, even though officially most Imam’s say this is not
an acceptable reason for converting, and it can be safely assumed that fear and
safety is at least a partial factor behind a good number of conversions where
those converting do not openly state this.
• Some of these converts find they are still badly treated
and so want to return to their original faith, but given that every school of Sharia law deems such apostasy as a
capital crime, at least for men, this is problematic. Any Muslim-born convert faces the same
issue. In this area, Pakistani law does
not actually follow Sharia (although there was an attempt in 2006 to make it
so, with death for male converts and imprisonment until ‘repentance’ for women,
and all property and children removed to Muslim relatives or the state) but
social attitudes generally do. Converts
from Islam face discrimination and violence, sometimes from their own
families. The convert can face being
divorced and their children being permanently taken away from them, sometimes
even by the courts. Converts generally
have to live underground and in fear of their lives. In one instance, a convert from an extremist
family was beaten badly, and hospitals completely refused him medical
assistance out of fear of the extremists.
• Problems of discrimination against minorities, and against
converts in particular, are made far worse by Pakistan’s system of ID cards which
designate a persons’ religion. This
means that minority citizens can be easily identified (in fact, ID cards with
race or religion or other such ID markers are seen by experts as one of the
pre-conditions for future genocide). The
system is set up so that it is easy for someone to change their entry to
Muslim, but impossible for someone to change their entry from Muslim to another
religion, meaning that someone who calls themselves a Christian, but has Muslim
on their ID card is easily identifiable as an apostate and vulnerable to being
lynched. Even when Muslim has been put
on the ID card in error, it is virtually impossible to change, as one Christian
politician with a Muslim sounding name found to his very great political
detriment recently.
• Discrimination manifests in other areas of society. In the prison system, time can be taken off
sentences for successfully memorizing the Quran, but no such opportunity exists
for minority members to gain freedom by memorizing their own sacred
writings. Similarly, extra marks are
awarded in schools for memorizing Quranic material.
• Minority students can face a great deal of discrimination
in the education system, even in private schools. They can face harassment and pressure to
convert from both teachers and fellow students. Christians students are sometimes schooled
by the parents never to mention Jesus or get into religious debates, or to give
pat answers like ‘I am a Christian, I don’t know about your prophet, I can only
talk about Jesus’. Minority teachers are
often afraid to teach material that has Islamic content in case they are
accused of blasphemy. Islamic content is
not confined to religious studies, but spills over into a great many
subjects. Minority children are often
forced to clean the toilets, and even do teachers personal cleaning, like their
houses or underwear. There are also
reports of Christian and other minority students completing their school
courses successfully but being denied their certificate of completion so that
they cannot enter college education.
• Pakistani textbooks routinely overlook the contributions
of minority communities and personalities to the history and social and cultural
life of Pakistan,
and use defamatory and untruthful language about the beliefs and practices of
minority religions. This attitude is
shared by many teachers, and the problem appears to be getting worse, not
better. There is concern that the UK taxpayers
money is being used to subsidize this discriminatory education via the literacy
program sponsorship.
• Minorities also face discrimination in employment. Even for menial jobs, they will usually have
to pay a bribe, and then usually face considerable pressure to convert. Some are denied promotion or fired after
refusing to convert. Nationalization
programs forced many Christians in particular out of educated jobs, impoverishing
the communities further, and trapping many in menial cleaning jobs. Christians are routinely described as
‘chuhras’ or ‘sweepers’, a derogatory term equivalent to ‘dirty nigger’. Their very touch is often seen as
contaminating, and they and other minorities are sometimes required to have
separate drinking and eating utensils and to drink from separate water
containers. Sanitation jobs are often
advertised as for Christians / non-Muslims only. Even though many in such jobs work for the
state, they are deliberately denied civil servant status and associated
benefits by the device of firing them and rehiring them at regular intervals so
they are forever ‘temporary’ workers.
Another stratagem to stop minority workers gaining permanent status in
state jobs is to accuse them of theft and get them fired.
• Many minority women work as maids in the homes of Muslim
families, and they are pretty much always the first to be accused when items go
missing. They are also very vulnerable
to rape and sexual assault by their male employers, as well as general abuse
and maltreatment. In one case, the
entire Christian population in a village was only allowed to remain on the
condition that the women maids did not withhold sex from their Muslim
employers, and were expelled when some Christian men complained.
• In the private sector, minorities are often systematically
denied full pay and otherwise treated in a discriminatory fashion. Demanding full rights is likely to get you
fired. In one case, Christian brothers
demanding full pay and other promised bonuses were fatally poisoned by their
employer. One corrupt bus company made
it a practice to force minority staff to do illegal acts, to the point of
trying to force Christian managers to assassinate former directors in dispute
with the current directors, and it also made it a practice to fire those who
refused and then bring charges of theft, blasphemy and other crimes to keep
them quiet.
• In rural areas, employers are often also effectively
landlords, making minorities especially vulnerable.
Employers often loan money to employees for
necessities such as medical care or weddings.
It is common practice to charge high rates, but there is often one rate
for Muslim employees and an exorbitantly higher rate for non-Muslims. Changing of conditions and increasing
interest rates by orders of magnitude are also common, and this discrimination
is also practiced by general money lenders.
In rural areas, this has led to Christians and other minorities to be
seen as slaves, who are sometimes ‘sold’ along with agricultural property and
their debts to new owners. In fact, in
some cases, Muslim landlords and farmers expect and try to force Christians to
work for free for them, even when they have no debt. Refusal can have dire repercussions. In some cases, outstanding loans have been
‘redeemed’ by kidnapping and raping the women in the family, and in a few cases
partially met by forcing the ‘debtor’ at gunpoint to ‘donate’ a kidney to the
growing black market organ donor business.
• The widespread practice of bonded labor facilitates this
attitude. Bonded labor is technically
illegal, but is still widely practiced, particularly in the brick-making
industry, and religious minorities form a high percentage of bonded laborers –
effectively slaves. Loans for medicine
and survival turn into chains of servitude, with such victims being kept in
private prisons often, given virtually no food, and families can be kept
enslaved for whole many generations in this way. In some cases, ‘owners’ – and this applies to
more mainstream landlords who have given loans - have abused their position by
seizing other family members or family property and not deducting it from the
debt, or not accounting for pay withheld against the debt.
• Minority communities are often targeted economically. Discrimination in and of itself has economic
effects, but extremist groups also target minority groups for funds, extorting
protection money under the guise of ‘jizya’, a Sharia concept whereby minority
religions are deemed to enter into a covenant with the Islamic administration
whereby they pay a tax that guarantees certain levels of religious freedom and
safety. Criminal gangs use this concept
to justify their extortion of money from vulnerable minority communities.
•The concept of Jizya is closely linked to a concept of communal
responsibility. The actions of just one
member that are considered to violate the agreement, the whole community is
held responsible and liable for the consequences. This is applied on a broader international
scale, and so, for instance, Pakistani Christians are often targeted for
violence to ‘punish’ them for actions by Western states which are deemed
Christian states, in the same way that Muslims states are wholly Islamic.
• Such a concept means that events, particularly blasphemy
charges, can be staged or manipulated to spark a kind of pogrom or economic
warfare. Other causes can include a
minority religious person standing up for their rights. In general, these attacks are more likely
when a community is deemed to get above itself – either Christians attracting
converts and interest from Muslims, or a community or family becoming more
prosperous than the Muslims around them, thus upsetting the social order and
ideology where Muslims must be dominant, or an Imam wanting to suppress a local
church that has services at the same time as Muslim prayers. Christian communities seem to be a
particular target of these kinds of attack.
Typically, Islamic Madrassas and mosques will organize the attacks using
mosque loudspeakers to call for Muslims to defend Islam against the infidels,
and whole communities are burned, vandalized, looted and destroyed, with
especial care taken to destroy all means of economic livelihood and wealth
generation or retention, as well as religious books and items.
