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| Harassed in the name of faith |
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Sunday, July 05, 2009
I live with my retired father in the Ghalib Market neighbourhood of Gulberg. A few days ago, some people from a tableeghi jamaat were in the area, staying at a big mosque near the said market. One evening, when I was at work and my old father was alone at home, some of them were visiting houses asking people to come and join them in the mosque for a lecture. They also came to our house and started ringing the bell and banging at the gate. My father, who is a heart patient, got extremely perturbed and agitated and went down in a hurry to open the gate to see what the emergency was -- and as he opened the gate he slipped and fell, hurting his ankle quite badly.
The men, when they saw this, promptly ran off, leaving the poor man lying there in pain. Later a neighbour saw him and quickly helped him up and gave first aid. Thank God, nothing worse happened.
What I would like to know from the state of Pakistan is how can irresponsible and semi-ignorant people go from door to door harassing people, and force them to go to the mosque or anywhere else without their consent; or, for that matter, even just have the liberty to ring people's bells and bang heir doors? Anywhere else in the world this would constitute some form of trespass on private property and the police would arrest all such people impinging on the right of citizens to live in peace. But here, no one does anything against them -- simply because they profess to be doing something in the name of religion though their actions -- in terms of harassment of ordinary law-abiding people -- are quite to the contrary.
When will we learn as a nation? How long will we have to bear this insufferable curse of these self-righteous, self-proclaimed 'thekaydars' of religion? We are a majority Muslim state, most of us are practising Muslims and do not need to be told what to do in such matters. It is high time that we decided what sort of Pakistan we wanted -- one held hostage to these yahoos, or a civilised entity, where all people have their individual rights properly protected and safeguarded.
Saiqa Khan
Lahore
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ISSN 1563-9479 
