Quarterly Newsletter Oct – Dec 2024
Pakistan has a history of faith-based violence. The Constitution of Pakistan guarantees equal rights to all citizens including the right to protection of life, fair trial, freedom of expression, and the right to profess, practice and propagate the religion. However, these constitutional safeguards neither properly worked nor could ever be translated into actual liberties of thought and religious belief.
In practice, not only minorities including Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadis face persecution based on their religious thoughts but also people of the Muslim majority community become a victim to faith-based extremism. And this is not a new phenomenon. It has been observed for the past many decades.
The purpose of this policy brief is to highlight growing trends of extremism among personnel of law enforcement agencies while dealing with cases of blasphemy and to provide some recommendations on it.