I want to focus today on a lesser known aspect of Christian minorities in Pakistan: the non-stereotypes. (Anthony Permal, The Friday Times)

In 1994, I read an article in Dawn newspaper about the murder of a Christian Pakistani. The accompanying photograph had the following caption, which I quote verbatim, as I have never been able to get these words out of my mind: ‘the victim was a sweeper (Christian)’. Complete with parenthesis.

Today, similar to that morning 17 years ago, I still find it insulting that the only recognizable stereotype of the Christian minority being propagated by media both in and out of Pakistan is of the Punjabi-speaking, downtrodden, poor sweeper or ‘jamaadar’.

…

I have seen Christian doctors in hospitals being refused by patients because of the doctor’s faith. I have seen a passport officer throw Christians’ and even Ahmadis’ passports across the floor. I have witnessed teachers being overlooked for promotions and told it was due to performance, and later discovering the preference of the principal for another propagator of ‘the true faith’.

I have witnessed employees in one of Pakistan’s leading establishments in the 90s (it is thankfully defunct today) who – despite being MBA, BBA, M.Com and MSc holders – refused to share a table with a fellow Christian during lunch. I was that Christian employee.

In fact, I have seen discrimination of the highest degree in our very own bastion of hospitality to foreigners: Jinnah Terminal. I was returning from Dubai to be with my father for Christmas, and a fellow passenger who is also a Christian was carrying a bottle of Chivas Regal for his father, whose 70th birthday was that weekend. The customs official who happened to stop the passenger did not take the bottle away because it was illegal to bring into Pakistan. Instead, his words were: ‘le ja bottle ja kar andar rakh de, yeh Issai log Pakistan mai bas yehi kaam karte hain, sharab pee kar tamasha kharra karna in ki aadat hai.’ In translation: ‘take this bottle away and keep it in the cupboard, this is the only thing Christians in Pakistan know to do, drinking alcohol and making a scene everywhere is their habit.’

If we are to recognize and own this discrimination in order to wipe it out, we have to start being honest with ourselves.

- Anthony Permal

FULL STORY

No, Pakistan (The Friday Times)

PHOTO CREDIT

Flickr

CC BY 2.0