Christians in Pakistan risk greater persecution from blasphemy laws, while living in poverty
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Wednesday, July 5, 2023
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Among Muslim-majority countries, Pakistan has the strictest blasphemy laws.
Key Points:
- Among Muslim-majority countries, Pakistan has the strictest blasphemy laws.
- People jailed under these laws risk a sentence of life in prison and worse still, even death.
Hindu converts to Christianity
- The evangelizers assumed that these elites would use their influence to convert members of the lower castes.
- However, this approach led to few converts.
- The missionaries’ new approach proved successful, in part because conversion to Christianity offered hope of escape from Hinduism’s caste system.
- By the 1930s, for example, many members of the largest menial caste in India’s Punjab region had converted to Protestant Christianity.
Lower socioeconomic status
- Even today, most Pakistani Christians living in major cities are consigned to poorly paid jobs in the sanitation industry.
- Pakistan’s government has adopted a systemic policy of reserving sanitation posts for religious minorities.
- In contrast, during the same year, the average monthly income for all Pakistanis was US$255.
Blasphemy laws target minorities
- Originally, for example, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were general in nature.
- These changes included making blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad punishable by a minimum sentence of life in prison, and possibly death.
- Since Zia’s rule, hundreds of blasphemy cases have been filed.
- A mob burned them alive after he accused them of blasphemy.