Post by Anwaar on Dec 23, 2005 14:22:44 GMT 4
A Pakistani Rosa Parks?
by Anwaar Hussain
A young Pakistani girl student belonging to the Christian faith has delivered a massive blow to our all prevalent collective hippocratic attitude toward our minorities with a simple query. She dared to ask a straight forward question of Pakistani Courts. Her question is;
Am I, a Pakistani Christian, equal to a fellow Muslim citizen?
A little background would help the reader understand her question.
This young practicing Christian girl belongs to a low income stratum of Pakistani society. Being an exceptional student, she had been competing to get into the King Edwards Medical College to become a doctor. To her misfortune she was beaten on the list by 20 marks by a Muslim student who got the extra 20 marks for being a Hafiz--e-Quran (having learnt Quran by rote). The girl has now filed a plea in the Lahore Court declaring that she and the Muslim student had equal marks but the latter got the advantage of religion. She called it a “discrimination against religious minority students and a violation of fundamental rights granted by the Constitution of Pakistan.”
Does she have a case? Let us see.
If the Constitution of Pakistan in article 22 of Chapter-1 dealing with Fundamental Rights had not stated the following provisions unambiguously, clearly and emphatically, she had no case;
(1) No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction, or take part in any religious ceremony, or attend religious worship, if such instruction, ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than his own.
(2) In respect of any religious institution, there shall be no discrimination against any community in the granting of exemption or concession in relation to taxation.
(3) Subject to law:
(a) no religious community or denomination shall be prevented from providing religious instruction for pupils of that community or denomination in any educational institution maintained wholly by that community or denomination; and
(b) No citizen shall be denied admission to any educational institution receiving aid from public revenues on the ground only of race, religion, caste or place of birth.
(4) Nothing in this Article shall prevent any public authority from making provision for the advancement of any socially or educationally backward class of citizens.
If the King Edwards Medical College had also stipulated that the Christian students too would get 20 extra marks for having learnt bible (or the Vedas in case of Hindu minorities) by rote, then she had no case.
If Muslim minorities in Western societies were not considered equal citizens by the laws of the states of their residence and not granted them rights denied to these Muslim minorities even in their countries of birth, then she had no case.
If one Zakia Mahasa, an American Muslim woman, had not made it to judgeship in Master Chancery in the Family Division of the Baltimore City Circuit Court, thus becoming the first Muslimah Judge ever to be appointed to a judgeship in the American courts, then the Pakistani Christian girl had no case. Zakia Mahasa’s competitors were not given 20 extra marks for having learnt Bible by rote.
If the City of Boston Mass. had not sold land for an Islamic complex at well below the market price, and a similar gesture had been extended by the state of Pakistan for a Christian Complex, she had no case.
If, despite enjoying the above mentioned rights, the Muslim minorities in those countries had not put the following further demands, getting most of them, she had no case;
* Setting up of a government advisory board uniquely for Muslims in America.
* Asking for Muslim-only living quarters or events in America and Great Britain.
* Setting aside bathing at a municipal swimming pool for women-only, as in France.
* Getting the noise laws changed to broadcast the Azaan, or call to prayer, in Hamtramck, Mich.
* Asking for taxpayer-funded schools and airwaves to convert non-Muslims in America.
* Allowing students in taxpayer-funded schools to use empty classrooms for prayers in New Jersey.
That is not all. Consider the following milestone events to get a glimpse of rights enjoyed in Western countries by Muslim minorities and whether our Pakistani Christian girl has a case or not;
In what Paul Stokes of London's Daily Telegraph called "a landmark case for religious discrimination," Mohammed Sajwal Khan won a case in Leeds against his employer, NIC Hygiene. Sajwal Khan requested to use his 25 days of holiday time and unpaid leave to go on the Hajj to Mecca. When he received no response, his union and his manager advised him that he could go. He traveled to Mecca in January-February 2004 and when he returned he was suspended without pay, then sacked for gross misconduct in March. A tribunal awarded him £10,000 in compensation. "Lawyers believe," writes Stokes, that Khan's "unfair dismissal and discrimination victory could have implications for similar actions such as those where companies insist on Christians working Christmas Day."
Further, universities in secular countries don’t normally provide prayer space for their students – that's something that religious denominations are invited to do at their own expense. But for Muslims minorities this assumption may be changing in Canada, starting with three universities in Montreal.
* Concordia University is in the process of expanding, at university expense, a dedicated prayer room donated to Muslim students and used by them for over two decades.
* A technical school affiliated with the Université du Québec denied Muslims a dedicated prayer room in 2003. The students took the case to court, where it now awaits a decision by the Quebec Human Rights commission.
* At McGill University, however, the issue is longest-lasting and most bitter.
Likewise, after years of complaints by Muslims that Marseille had no grand mosque, the mayor in 2001 offered a large building on the grounds of a disused slaughterhouse. The city said it wouldn't give away the property, but, to skirt a ban on direct state support for religion, it would lease it for 99 years at a token rent.
Similarly, after five Muslim men were detained for having prayed at a New York Giants game on Sep. 19, 2005, the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority has decided to create prayer areas at Giants Stadium and Continental Airlines Arena. As far as anyone knows, this is the first such sports stadium worship zone. This in the US of A, that supposedly greatest of all evils that we Muslims don’t tire of denigrating, self included.
So does our Pakistani Christian girl have a case? You bet she has.
It is now time to say the unsayable.
We Muslims, most of us, have been practicing hypocrisy on a grand scale. While we have shackled our minorities in the brutal clutches of Blasphemy like Laws, we cry ourselves hoarse protesting against the discriminatory practices of Israel. Not even a whimper is heard from us Muslims regarding the discriminatory practices in some of our Muslim states.
Just a few examples will suffice.
In the Gulf States one can clearly see how laws and even salaries are based on religious and ethnic origin. This is racism at its worst. Have we ever protested against this at International fora?
Today the Israeli displaced Palestinian refugees can settle and become citizens of the United States and most of the Western countries. How many Muslim countries, with the exception of Jordan, are willing to give them similar support? Forget about the Palestinian refugees, while we Muslims throng on the immigration lists of the Western countries, how many Muslim countries are willing to give citizenship to each others’ citizens? Almost none.
We loudly and consistently condemn United States and Israel for their ill treatment of Muslims but are silent when Muslim regimes abuse the rights of Muslims and slaughter thousands of them. Remember Saddam and his use of chemical weapons against Muslims (Kurds)? Which Muslim country censured him? How many of us raised the banner in support of the Kurds or the persecuted Shias in Saddam’s Iraq?
Remember the Talibaan? A huge number of them were Hufaaz-e-Koran. Do we also remember their treatment of women, their desecration of Bamiyan Statues and their mutual slaughter? Have we ever condemned them for their excesses? Have we demanded international intervention or retribution against them? How about the horrendous treatment meted out by the Sudanese government to the unfortunate Dharfur Christians? How many of us even know of their plight.
Enough said, or is it?
In December 1955, Rosa Parks changed a nation. She refused to vacate her seat for a white man thus delivering a fatal blow to the rampant racism in the United States of the times. That America would never the same again, common Americans made sure of that. It was these common Americans who turned Rosa Parks into the Rosa Parks.
Will this young Pakistani Christian girl prove to be our Rosa Parks? Will this December we common Pakistanis rise to the occasion and ensure that? Do we have it in us?
Will we or won’t we?
by Anwaar Hussain
A young Pakistani girl student belonging to the Christian faith has delivered a massive blow to our all prevalent collective hippocratic attitude toward our minorities with a simple query. She dared to ask a straight forward question of Pakistani Courts. Her question is;
Am I, a Pakistani Christian, equal to a fellow Muslim citizen?
A little background would help the reader understand her question.
This young practicing Christian girl belongs to a low income stratum of Pakistani society. Being an exceptional student, she had been competing to get into the King Edwards Medical College to become a doctor. To her misfortune she was beaten on the list by 20 marks by a Muslim student who got the extra 20 marks for being a Hafiz--e-Quran (having learnt Quran by rote). The girl has now filed a plea in the Lahore Court declaring that she and the Muslim student had equal marks but the latter got the advantage of religion. She called it a “discrimination against religious minority students and a violation of fundamental rights granted by the Constitution of Pakistan.”
Does she have a case? Let us see.
If the Constitution of Pakistan in article 22 of Chapter-1 dealing with Fundamental Rights had not stated the following provisions unambiguously, clearly and emphatically, she had no case;
(1) No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction, or take part in any religious ceremony, or attend religious worship, if such instruction, ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than his own.
(2) In respect of any religious institution, there shall be no discrimination against any community in the granting of exemption or concession in relation to taxation.
(3) Subject to law:
(a) no religious community or denomination shall be prevented from providing religious instruction for pupils of that community or denomination in any educational institution maintained wholly by that community or denomination; and
(b) No citizen shall be denied admission to any educational institution receiving aid from public revenues on the ground only of race, religion, caste or place of birth.
(4) Nothing in this Article shall prevent any public authority from making provision for the advancement of any socially or educationally backward class of citizens.
If the King Edwards Medical College had also stipulated that the Christian students too would get 20 extra marks for having learnt bible (or the Vedas in case of Hindu minorities) by rote, then she had no case.
If Muslim minorities in Western societies were not considered equal citizens by the laws of the states of their residence and not granted them rights denied to these Muslim minorities even in their countries of birth, then she had no case.
If one Zakia Mahasa, an American Muslim woman, had not made it to judgeship in Master Chancery in the Family Division of the Baltimore City Circuit Court, thus becoming the first Muslimah Judge ever to be appointed to a judgeship in the American courts, then the Pakistani Christian girl had no case. Zakia Mahasa’s competitors were not given 20 extra marks for having learnt Bible by rote.
If the City of Boston Mass. had not sold land for an Islamic complex at well below the market price, and a similar gesture had been extended by the state of Pakistan for a Christian Complex, she had no case.
If, despite enjoying the above mentioned rights, the Muslim minorities in those countries had not put the following further demands, getting most of them, she had no case;
* Setting up of a government advisory board uniquely for Muslims in America.
* Asking for Muslim-only living quarters or events in America and Great Britain.
* Setting aside bathing at a municipal swimming pool for women-only, as in France.
* Getting the noise laws changed to broadcast the Azaan, or call to prayer, in Hamtramck, Mich.
* Asking for taxpayer-funded schools and airwaves to convert non-Muslims in America.
* Allowing students in taxpayer-funded schools to use empty classrooms for prayers in New Jersey.
That is not all. Consider the following milestone events to get a glimpse of rights enjoyed in Western countries by Muslim minorities and whether our Pakistani Christian girl has a case or not;
In what Paul Stokes of London's Daily Telegraph called "a landmark case for religious discrimination," Mohammed Sajwal Khan won a case in Leeds against his employer, NIC Hygiene. Sajwal Khan requested to use his 25 days of holiday time and unpaid leave to go on the Hajj to Mecca. When he received no response, his union and his manager advised him that he could go. He traveled to Mecca in January-February 2004 and when he returned he was suspended without pay, then sacked for gross misconduct in March. A tribunal awarded him £10,000 in compensation. "Lawyers believe," writes Stokes, that Khan's "unfair dismissal and discrimination victory could have implications for similar actions such as those where companies insist on Christians working Christmas Day."
Further, universities in secular countries don’t normally provide prayer space for their students – that's something that religious denominations are invited to do at their own expense. But for Muslims minorities this assumption may be changing in Canada, starting with three universities in Montreal.
* Concordia University is in the process of expanding, at university expense, a dedicated prayer room donated to Muslim students and used by them for over two decades.
* A technical school affiliated with the Université du Québec denied Muslims a dedicated prayer room in 2003. The students took the case to court, where it now awaits a decision by the Quebec Human Rights commission.
* At McGill University, however, the issue is longest-lasting and most bitter.
Likewise, after years of complaints by Muslims that Marseille had no grand mosque, the mayor in 2001 offered a large building on the grounds of a disused slaughterhouse. The city said it wouldn't give away the property, but, to skirt a ban on direct state support for religion, it would lease it for 99 years at a token rent.
Similarly, after five Muslim men were detained for having prayed at a New York Giants game on Sep. 19, 2005, the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority has decided to create prayer areas at Giants Stadium and Continental Airlines Arena. As far as anyone knows, this is the first such sports stadium worship zone. This in the US of A, that supposedly greatest of all evils that we Muslims don’t tire of denigrating, self included.
So does our Pakistani Christian girl have a case? You bet she has.
It is now time to say the unsayable.
We Muslims, most of us, have been practicing hypocrisy on a grand scale. While we have shackled our minorities in the brutal clutches of Blasphemy like Laws, we cry ourselves hoarse protesting against the discriminatory practices of Israel. Not even a whimper is heard from us Muslims regarding the discriminatory practices in some of our Muslim states.
Just a few examples will suffice.
In the Gulf States one can clearly see how laws and even salaries are based on religious and ethnic origin. This is racism at its worst. Have we ever protested against this at International fora?
Today the Israeli displaced Palestinian refugees can settle and become citizens of the United States and most of the Western countries. How many Muslim countries, with the exception of Jordan, are willing to give them similar support? Forget about the Palestinian refugees, while we Muslims throng on the immigration lists of the Western countries, how many Muslim countries are willing to give citizenship to each others’ citizens? Almost none.
We loudly and consistently condemn United States and Israel for their ill treatment of Muslims but are silent when Muslim regimes abuse the rights of Muslims and slaughter thousands of them. Remember Saddam and his use of chemical weapons against Muslims (Kurds)? Which Muslim country censured him? How many of us raised the banner in support of the Kurds or the persecuted Shias in Saddam’s Iraq?
Remember the Talibaan? A huge number of them were Hufaaz-e-Koran. Do we also remember their treatment of women, their desecration of Bamiyan Statues and their mutual slaughter? Have we ever condemned them for their excesses? Have we demanded international intervention or retribution against them? How about the horrendous treatment meted out by the Sudanese government to the unfortunate Dharfur Christians? How many of us even know of their plight.
Enough said, or is it?
In December 1955, Rosa Parks changed a nation. She refused to vacate her seat for a white man thus delivering a fatal blow to the rampant racism in the United States of the times. That America would never the same again, common Americans made sure of that. It was these common Americans who turned Rosa Parks into the Rosa Parks.
Will this young Pakistani Christian girl prove to be our Rosa Parks? Will this December we common Pakistanis rise to the occasion and ensure that? Do we have it in us?
Will we or won’t we?