“Pakistan Army, ISI must shut up shop if they can’t protect people”: Altaf Hussain’s bold stance on Shia genocide

Minorities under attack: Altaf lines up police, agencies, clerics, judges, army and… fires

By Saba Imtiaz

Karachi: In an impassioned speech that included critiques of clerics and the judiciary, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain asked the Pakistan Army, Inter-Services Intelligence and other agencies to shut up shop if they could not “protect people”.

“Leave them,” Hussain said before turning to his audience, “You have a right to defend yourself by any means.”

Altaf’s speech at an interfaith conference organised by his party in Karachi came after a series of statements by him and other party leaders on the increase in the number of attacks on Shias throughout Pakistan. Several clerics from Karachi as well as other cities of Pakistan such as Quetta, Lahore and Chakwal, were in attendance.

Apex Court of Pakistan Judges or Islamic Clerics in enforcedly converted Hindu and Christian girls’ case

Islamabad: April 18, 2012. (PCP) Eyes of Human right activists around globe were on Supreme Court of Pakistan hearing of a case today of forced conversion of Hindu girl Rinkle Kumari and others to Islam but unfortunately Division Bench of Supreme Court of Pakistan not bothered to listen victimized girls and ordered police to present them before Registrar Supreme Court of Pakistan to record their statement and to go with parents or with Muslim husbands.

A three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvezhad ordered to send Hindu women Rinkle Kumari, Dr. Lata and Asha Kumari to Shelter in last hearing on March 26, 2012, when they were crying “We want to go with our parents and begged that their life is in danger”

It surprised Human Right activists that why Judges ordered to send Hindu women in Shelter when in camera session and later in open court hearing of March 26, 2012, they begged Division Bench Judges to allow them to go with their parents?

It was already feared that in Shelters the Hindu girls will be threatened and blocked to unite with their families.

In today’s hearing by SC Bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary not permitted to speak victim Hindu girls but gave them in police custody to record their statement with registrar.

The Three Hindu women in police custody who were all Muslim women and men police officer walked to the Registrar office of Supreme Court of Pakistan and under police presence expressed their consent to go with their Muslim husbands.

The forced converted Hindu girls were in Shelter for three weeks where all staff was Muslim, the officer who escorted them from Shelter to Supreme Court building were all Muslims and to office of Registrar escorting officers were also all Muslims.

How a Muslim cannot put pressure on a convert to Islam who has openly demanded to go with her Hindu Parents when a Muslim has religious faith that to convert to infidels is their ticket to heaven? The Supreme Court of Pakistan Judges as a Muslim also were aware of such belief of Muslims as citizens of Islamic Republic of Pakistan but not bothered to hold open court hearing or camera session on hearing of April 18, 2012, and ordered a Muslim Registrar of Supreme Court of Pakistan to record their statements.

We the Muslims – by Amjad Nazeer

Islam, like all other religions is a moral and spiritual faith and has nothing to do with science or other similar areas of inquiry. Religion could be no more than a set of beliefs and ethical injunctions. Social institutions, scholars and the state must not join hands in mythologizing it. By mythologizing Islam, its associated personalities try mythologizing themselves.

Psychological disorders are not necessarily individual. At times their symptoms appear in a collective as well and are equally disastrous. A sizeable proportion of Pakistani Muslims are afflicted with a number of irrationalities and absurdities they are made to believe through clerics’ mania and Islamization of the society in general. ….

Read more: → ViewPoint

Muslim clerics distort Quranic verses to suit their purpose

See how Muslim clerics omit verses and parts of verses of Holy Quran, Surah Ahzaab (chapter 33) to falsely accuse Quran that Death Sentence for blasphemy is a Quranic Commandment. This is how they misguide the people that Quran prescribes punishment of death for blasphemy.

– You Tube Link

Islamofascism is a reality: Pakistan is destined to drown in blood from civil war: Pervez Hoodbhoy

The War within Islam

Islamofascism is a reality: Pakistan is destined to drown in blood from civil war: Pervez Hoodbhoy

A New Age Islam reader sent the following letter to the editor:

Here is a letter sent by Pakistan’s foremost progressive intellectual and physicist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy to a friend:

I am sharing with you some lines that I have just written for family and friends who are warning me:

Whatever one might think of Governor Salman Taseer’s politics, he was killed this Wednesday for what was certainly the best act of his life: trying to save the life of an illiterate, poor, peasant Christian woman.

But rose petals are being showered upon his murderer. He is being called a ghazi, lawyers are demonstrating spontaneously for his release, clerics refused to perform his funeral rites. Most shockingly, the interior minister – his political colleague and the ultimate coward – has said that he too would kill a blasphemer with his own hands.

Pakistan once had a violent, rabidly religious lunatic fringe. This fringe has morphed into a majority. The liberals are now the fringe. We are now a nation of butchers and primitive savages. Europe’s Dark Ages have descended upon us.

Sane people are being terrified into silence. After the assassination, FM-99 (Urdu) called me for an interview. The producer tearfully told me (offline) that she couldn’t find a single religious scholar ready to condemn Taseer’s murder. She said even ordinary people like me are in short supply.

I am deeply depressed today. So depressed that I can barely type these lines. …

Read more : http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamWarWithinIslam_1.aspx?ArticleID=3953

Pakistan awaiting the clerical tsunami: Pervez Hoodbhoy

by Farooq Sulehria

Taseer’s assassin is a Barelvi Muslim belonging to the Dawat-e-Islami, and 500 clerics of this faith supported his action. Most of these mullahs are part of the Sunni Tehreek and are supposedly anti-Taliban moderates. Those who claim that Pakistan’s silent majority is fundamentally secular and tolerant may be clutching at straws …

Read more : ViewPoint

Islamic scholar attacks Pakistan’s blasphemy laws

– In the wake of Salmaan Taseer’s murder, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi declares Islamic councils are “telling lies to the people”

by Declan Walsh in Islamabad

A prominent Islamic scholar has launched a blistering attack on Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, warning that failure to repeal them will only strengthen religious extremists and their violent followers.

“The blasphemy laws have no justification in Islam. These ulema [council of clerics] are just telling lies to the people,” said Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, a reformist scholar and popular television preacher.

“But they have become stronger, because they have street power behind them, and the liberal forces are weak and divided. If it continues like this it could result in the destruction of Pakistan.”

Ghamidi, 59, is the only religious scholar to publicly oppose the blasphemy laws since the assassination of the Punjab governor, Salmaan Taseer, on 4 January. He speaks out at considerable personal risk.

Ghamidi spoke to the Guardian from Malaysia, where he fled with his wife and daughters last year after police foiled a plot to bomb their Lahore home. “It became impossible to live there,” he said.

Their fears were well founded: within months Taliban gunmen assassinated Dr Farooq Khan, a Ghamidi ally also famous for speaking out, at his clinic in the north-western city of Mardan.

The scholar’s troubles highlight the shrinking space for debate in Pakistan, where Taseer’s death has emboldened the religious right, prompting mass street rallies in favour of his killer, Mumtaz Qadri.

Liberal voices have been marginalised; many fear to speak out. Mainstream political parties have crumbled, led by the ruling Pakistan People’s party, which declared it will never amend the blasphemy law.

Sherry Rehman, a PPP parliamentarian who proposed changes to the legislation, was herself charged with blasphemy this week. Since Taseer’s death she has been confined to her Karachi home after numerous death threats, some issued publicly by clerics. …

Read more : Guardian.co.uk