FOREIGN Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Wednesday unveiled a three-pronged “preventive and action-oriented” strategy to deal with religious intolerance and hatred leading to violence, noting that people of every faith had been the victim of these scourges.
He was delivering the keynote address to the inaugural session of the 8th meeting of the Istanbul Process, on the theme of the “10th anniversary of UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18: Looking Back and Moving Forward”.
The strategy has the potential to address the growing challenge of religious intolerance and hatred that poses great threat to inter-faith harmony as well as peace and security of different regions of the globe.
It envisages review of the discriminatory state laws, policies and practices; promotion of the inter-faith harmony, tolerance and peaceful co-existence, and an international instrument to prohibit dissemination of ideas which incited acts of religious intolerance and hatred.
Pakistan has done well by hosting the event via a video link on an issue that is a source of concern for all saner minded people of the world especially the Muslim Ummah, which is bearing the brunt of Islamophobia due to discriminatory policies and laws in many countries.
The call for reviewing discriminatory state laws, policies and practices; and promoting inter-faith harmony, tolerance and peaceful co-existence assumes greater significance in view of what is happening in some Western countries and India where all symbols of Muslim/Islamic identity are under constant attack despite their claims of being champions of human rights, democracy and secularism.
The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) had to take strong notice of ongoing campaign against Hijab in India but the instances of discrimination are increasing with the passage of each day as Muslim students on Wednesday were denied entry in several pre-university colleges in India’s southern Karnataka state as they were asked to remove their hijab before entering classes.
As Muslims are not getting justice from the judicial system of these countries despite the fact that religious freedom is protected under their Constitution as well, the strategy proposed by the Foreign Minister offers a way out.
However, given the prevailing anti-Muslim bias in the Western world and India, it would be a long way to realize the goals envisaged in the strategy.
Mere highlighting of the issue would not resolve the problem and the situation demands all Muslim countries struggle hard through the platform of OIC to protect rights of believers in different parts of the world.
