Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation

• 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.