. According to the 2017 census results, the population is 1.6 percent Hindu, 1.6 percent Christian, 0.2 percent Ahmadi Muslim, and 0.3 percent others, to include Bahais, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians. In a September editorial, the largest Urdu daily, Nawa-i-Waqt, described the 1974 legislation declaring Ahmadis officially non-Muslim as a historic day in the countrys history. According to her parents, the girl had been abducted and raped after being forcibly converted to Islam in Karachi. The constitution states, Subject to law, public order, and morality, every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice, and propagate his religion. It also states, A person of the Qadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves Ahmadis) is a non-Muslim. The courts continued to enforce blasphemy laws, punishment for which ranges up to the death penalty. Inflammatory anti-Ahmadi rhetoric continued to exist on social media and was at times spread by senior members of mainstream political parties. The penal code does not explicitly criminalize apostasy, but renouncing Islam is widely considered by clerics to be a form of blasphemy, which can carry the death penalty. * Name has been changed to protect identity, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. According to the governments immigration website, the Ministry of Interior could grant visas to foreign missionaries invited by organizations registered in the country. Pakistan's blasphemy laws have come under hefty criticism, as. [see also: Population country ranks ] Nationality: In July, religious and right-wing parties criticized the governments plan to permit construction of a new Hindu temple in Islamabad. Government officials and politicians attended and spoke at multiple Khatm-e-Nabuwat (Finality of Prophethood) conferences held in major cities and at religious sites around the country. A full bench of the Supreme Court may grant a further appeal. Though Kareem had meant it as a post of religious devotion, it caught the attention of an extremist Sunni Muslim group, who called him a traitor to Muslims. Azerbaijan has the second highest Shia Muslim population in the world accounting for 83.6% of the total population while the sect accounts for 85% of the Muslim population in the country. As one senior security official speaking on condition of anonymity, alleged: We cant ignore the role of regional and international powers in sectarianism in Pakistan Iran supports the Shia militia here.. Minority rights activists criticized these advertisements as discriminatory and insulting. Non-Muslims are required to have the head of their local religious communities verify their religious affiliation. According to legal advocacy groups, some lower courts continued to conduct proceedings in an intimidating atmosphere, with members of antiblasphemy groups, such as the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), often threatening the defendants attorneys, family members, and supporters. At least three top Twitter trends praised the killer and called him the savior and pride of Pakistan. Video footage from a National Assembly session in July showed opposition lawmakers immediately criticizing Prime Minister Khan when he failed to use the phrase after speaking the name of the Prophet Mohammed in an address to parliament. Indonesia is the country with the Largest Muslim population in the world. In court proceedings, the girl retracted her video statement and said she wanted to return to her parents. Syed Kareem* has been in hiding for weeks. Christian advocates also called on the government to allow them to travel to Israel. Shia Numbers are in the range of 320 Millions to 350 Millions and according to some estimates its in the range of 400 Millions. note: provisional results of Pakistan's 2017 national census estimate the country's total population to be 207,774,000. country comparison to the world (CIA rank, may be based on non-current data): 5. The Khan government, meanwhile, has been accused of both turning a blind eye to rising sectarianism from hardline Sunni groups, which reportedly enjoy patronage from state and military officials, and also using their support for political gain at a time when the government is weak and the economy is collapsing. She denied her abductors claim that she had willfully married him and converted to Islam, and instead asked the court to allow her to reunite with her Hindu husband and minor son. In February, a crowd occupied and vandalized a 100-year-old Ahmadi mosque in Punjab. The constitution states that no person attending any educational institution shall be required to attend religious instruction or take part in any religious ceremony relating to a religion other than the persons own. Citing a sanitation job advertisement issued by the Sindh provincial government, HRCP stated such advertisements infringed on human dignity and violated the constitutional guarantee of equality of all citizens. In Islamabad, the deputy inspector general of police said as many as 15,000 police, Rangers, and Frontier Corps personnel were involved. On July 31, Hindu business owner and member of the Khairpur Chamber of Commerce and Industries Raja Kishan Chand was killed by unknown gunmen in that city. According to the CSJ, 2020 saw the highest number of blasphemy cases in a single year in the countrys history. Kuwait (City) The majority of Kuwaiti citizens are Muslim, with an estimated 60-70% Sunni and 30-40% Shia. In July, a teenager killed U.S. citizen Tahir Naseem in a Peshawar courtroom, where Naseem was on trial for blasphemy. Those wishing to be listed as Muslims must swear they believe Mohammed is the final prophet and must denounce the Ahmadiyya movements founder as a false prophet and his followers as non-Muslim. Most minority religious groups said they continued to face discrimination in government hiring. Population of Pakistan (2020) View live population, charts & trends: Population of Pakistan Pakistan Population 220,892,340 see live Yearly Change + 2.00 % Global Share 2.81 % Global Rank 5 Fertility in Pakistan Instances of torture and mistreatment by some police personnel were part of broader human rights concerns about police abuses against citizens of all faiths reported by local and international human rights organizations; some police agencies took steps to curb abuses by incorporating human rights curricula in training programs. Islam is the state religion in Qatar. The constitution mandates that the government take steps to enable Muslims, individually and collectively, to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles and basic concepts of Islam and to promote the observance of Islamic moral standards. The militants were also convicted for running an al-Qaida media cell in Gujranwala. An additional six Sikh gurdwaras and seven Hindu temples were also reopened after renovation in Punjab. On July 19, members of the Hindu community staged a sit-in in Khuzdar, Balochistan, to protest the July 18 killing of local Hindu trader Nanak Ram by unidentified assailants in the Wadh area of Khuzdar District. Zaidi. The court ordered the chief executive officer of GEPCO to hire the two Christians, but he did not do so. . The constitution requires the government to amend the law as directed by the court. The website further stated extensions could be granted for two years with two reentries per year, excluding from India. The Punjab Sikh Anand Karaj Marriage Act allows local government officials in that province to register marriages between a Sikh man and Sikh woman solemnized by a Sikh Anand Karaj marriage registrar. NGOs lobbying for amendments to permit divorce in a wider range of circumstances praised the Ministry of Human Rights efforts to consult with stakeholders and the ministrys overall efforts to accelerate progress on the bill. At least one individual was accused of spreading blasphemous content through social media under PECA. Azerbaijan - 65-75% . The statement also called on the government to reform its blasphemy laws and court system and to ensure that the suspect in Naseems killing be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There is a 5 percent minimum quota for hiring religious minorities (primarily Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Kalash, and Parsis but excluding Shia and Ahmadi Muslims) at the federal and provincial levels of government. There were some cases in which police received custody of the accused from a court for 14 days for a senior officer to carry out an investigation. Some politicians acknowledged privately the bill was intended to ensure textbooks identify Mohammed as the final prophet, thereby excluding Ahmadis from the definition of Islam taught in public schools. In October, members of a State Youth Parliament team in Gujranwala defaced a public portrait of the countrys first Nobel laureate, physicist Dr. Abdus Salam, an Ahmadi. Shias account for 15-20% of the Muslim population in Pakistan. The non-Pakhtun population of Pakistan is predominantly Barelvi. The rallies occurred days after a unanimous resolution by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provincial Assembly condemning anti-Islam statements and the republication in France of the Charlie Hebdo cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. AsiaNews, the official press agency of the Roman Catholic Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, reported that two members of a Christian family were shot and wounded after buying a house in a neighborhood inhabited primarily by Muslims on June 4 in the Sawati Phatak Colony of Peshawar. Civil society representatives said the bill targets Ahmadis, who do not have representation on the ulema board and who are barred by the constitution and the penal code from identifying as Muslims. Senior Department of State officials, including the Office of International Religious Freedoms Special Advisor for Religious Minorities, the Charge dAffaires, consuls general, and other embassy officers met with government officials and senior advisors to the Prime Minister, including the Minister for Human Rights, and officials from the Ministry of Law and Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, and Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony to discuss blasphemy law reform; laws concerning Ahmadi Muslims; the need to better protect members of religious minority communities; sectarian relations; and religious respect. The government continued to prohibit citizens, regardless of religious affiliation, from traveling to Israel. On December 2, the Secretary of State redesignated Pakistan as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, as amended, for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom and announced a waiver of the sanctions that accompany designation as required in the important national interests of the United States. The embassy highlighted the principles of religious freedom and examples of interfaith dialogue in the United States on its social media platforms throughout the year. Answer (1 of 19): The country Iran has the largest population of Shia. The six, all from Karachi, were returning from a pilgrimage in Iran; they remained missing at years end. The gurdwara had been used as a government-run girls school since 1947. On February 22, a Christian woman from Lahore fled to a shelter after a Muslim factory worker forced her to convert to Islam and marry him. The womans family said she was pregnant at the time of her suicide and that police initially refused to file charges against the man because of his caste. On October 20, HRCP reported that an Ismaili Muslim mosque in Ghizer was attacked by unknown assailants, who opened fire on the building. On August 30, police charged Shia cleric Taqqi Jaffar with blasphemy for criticizing Mohammeds companions during a Karachi Muharram procession. Unknown assailants shot a Peshawar trader, also an Ahmadiyya community member, near his business on August 12. On October 10, 1993, the then Central government had announced elected . By Rafiq A. Tschannen on October 11, 2020 ( 1 Comment) Shia-Sunni rift on rise in Pakistan, but Imran Khan govt's silence may be strategic . by Senge Sering in Baltimore Post Examiner, Feb 27, 2023 The writer is the President of Gilgit Baltistan Institute in Washington D.C. After Iran and India, Pakistan has the world's third-largest Shia community, accounting for ten percent of the total population. Throughout the year, some government officials and politicians engaged in anti-Ahmadi rhetoric and attended events that Ahmadi Muslims said incited violence against members of their community. According to Pew Research Center, adherents of Shiite Islam in Pakistan make up between 15-20% of the country's total population. Taking into account the Ahmadi boycott of the official census, however, community sources put the number of Ahmadi Muslims at approximately 500,000 to 600,000. Download Historical Data Save as Image From: To: Zoom: Current Historical U.N. Shiite Muslims protest in Karachi, Pakistan, against a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Shikarpur, Pakistan, on Jan. 30, 2015. The stronghold of Barelvism remains Punjab, the largest province of Pakistan. To seek office, Ahmadis would be forced to do so because by law they are considered non-Muslims, even though they self-identify as Muslim. Pakistan Pakistani Shias live in terror as sectarian violence increases The Sunni majority is using blasphemy laws to target and murder those they call 'heretics' Shah Meer Baloch in Islamabad. On September 8, Mehwish Hidayat, a Christian woman, was reunited with her family after being abducted by a Muslim man and spending three months in captivity. This statistic was all taken from many independent sources for the year 1999. Sunni groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba,. The Washington-based United States Institute for Peace said 3,800 Shias were murdered between 2007 and 2013, with 325 of those killings occurring in 2012. Analysis of census data and demographic research. Status of Societal Respect for Religious Freedom, Section IV. At the same time, NGOs reported that sometimes lower-ranking police would file charges of blasphemy, rather than a senior police superintendent who had more authority to dismiss baseless claims, or that police would not carry out a thorough investigation. The constitution also grants the FSC revisional jurisdiction (the power to review of its own accord) over criminal cases in the lower courts relating to certain crimes under the Hudood Ordinance, including rape and those linked to Islamic morality, such as extramarital sex, alcohol use, and gambling. The NCHR was also mandated to conduct investigations of allegations of human rights abuses, but legal sources said the commission had little power to enforce its requests. Human rights activists reported numerous instances of societal violence related to allegations of blasphemy; of efforts by individuals to coerce religious minorities to convert to Islam; and of societal harassment, discrimination, and threats of violence directed at members of religious minority communities. However, violence is inevitable because the anger and anxiety on both sides seem to be mounting. Embassy officers met with civil society leaders, experts, and journalists to stress the need to protect the rights of religious minorities and to continue to support measures that decrease sectarian violence. In the absence of specific language in the law authorizing civil or common law marriage, marriage certificates are signed by religious authorities and registered with the local marriage registrar. According to civil society reports, there were many individuals imprisoned on blasphemy charges, at least 35 of whom had received death sentences, as compared with 82 individuals imprisoned on blasphemy charges and 29 who received death sentences in 2019. Bibi remained in custody at years end. No arrests were made, and no one was charged. There is no option to state no religion. National identity cards are required for all citizens upon reaching the age of 18. In January, after going missing, a 15-year-old Hindu girl appeared in a video with Ali Raza, a Muslim man, in which the two claimed they had willingly married and she had converted to Islam. Targeted killings of Shia and Ahmadi Muslims and violence and discrimination against Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadi Muslims continued to occur. On October 7, Dr. Qibla Ayaz, then chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, inaugurated a national code of conduct to promote interreligious harmony in the face of increased sectarian violence and mistreatment of religious minorities. The '2019 International Religious Freedom Report,' of the US Department of State, released on June 10, 2020, has voiced concern over the targeted killing in Pakistan of Shia Muslims, including ethnic Hazaras, who are largely Shia, and Ahmadi Muslims in attacks believed to be driven by faith. The PTA cited public complaints against an unauthentic version of the Quran uploaded by the Ahmadiyya community on the Google Play Store and information that portrayed Mirza Masroor Ahmad as a Muslim on Wikipedia, which the PTA characterized as misleading, wrong, deceptive, and deceitful. The PTA successfully removed the same Quran application from the Apple Store in July. In April, police arrested Ramzan Bibi, an Ahmadi Muslim woman, after a neighbor accused her of blasphemy against Mohammed a crime that carries the death penalty in an argument over Bibis charitable donation to a non-Ahmadi mosque. On October 6, the Lahore High Court acquitted Sawan Masih, a Christian man sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2014, but Masih continued to face death threats and had to go into hiding with his family. Representatives of religious minorities said a glass ceiling continued to prevent their promotion to senior government positions, but one NGO also stated that due to insufficient higher education opportunities compared to the majority religious community, few religious minorities met the qualifications to apply for these positions. The last census was conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics in 2017. The Sindh provincial cabinet adopted regulations to implement the Sindh Hindu Marriage Act in December 2019, which provided more specific rules for implementation. Doha. In its 2020 World Watch List report, the international NGO Open Doors listed Pakistan, noting that Christians face extreme persecution in every area of their lives, with converts from Islam facing the highest levels. According to Open Doors, all Christians in the country are considered second-class citizens, inferior to Muslims. The NGO stated Christians are often given jobs perceived as low, dirty and dishonorable, and can even be victims of bonded labor. The NGO also said that Christian girls in the country were increasingly at risk of abduction and rape, often forced to marry their attackers and coerced into converting to Islam.. Total. At years end, he was still being held at Camp Jail, Lahore, and had not been charged. The hashtag infidel, infidel, Shias are infidel began trending. On August 12, armed gunmen attacked the house of Ahmadi Muslim Syed Naeem Ahmad Bashir in the Sahiwal District of Punjab, firing into the courtyard at night, where they reportedly expected the family to be sleeping. The Sindh Hindu Marriage Act also applies to Sikh marriages. The girls family said they feared she had been forced to convert and marry a Muslim. Users are advised to report such content on content-complaint@pta.gov.pk for action under PECA 16 (the 2016 PECA act)., In a January press release, PTA stated it was proactively playing its role in blocking/removal of unlawful content, with social media platforms being approached in this regard, and it encouraged the public to report such content directly to PTA and avoid sharing it on social media platforms and other websites.. 2. The official state religion of Iran is Shia branch of Islam. It distributes the funds through a government-run charity as stipends for poor families and students, payment for medical treatment, and support to Sunni mosques and madrassahs registered with the government. NGOs and legal observers also stated police often did not file charges against individuals who made false blasphemy accusations. The population of Pakistan in 2019 was 223,293,280, a 1.62% increase from 2018. Pakistan ranks number 5 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population. Although a sizeable. On October 9, the PTA blocked the video-sharing social media application TikTok, based on what it called immoral and indecent content. The constitution provides for freedom to manage religious institutions. It states every religious denomination shall have the right to establish and maintain its own institutions. India with 21 million is in second place closely followed by Pakistan (20 million). Shia leaders, meanwhile, denounced the specific honors prescribed by the bill to Mohammeds companions, which they said risked stoking discord between Shia and Sunnis, given their fundamental disagreements over some of the companions status within Islam. Smaller minorities are collectively labelled as 'other'. In all these cases, judges repeatedly delayed hearings, adjourned hearings without hearing arguments, or sent appeals to other judicial benches. The Katas Raj Hindu temple was reopened for Hindus after renovation in the Chakwal district of Punjab. The Hindu community in Sindh and Balochistan remained vulnerable to targeted killings and kidnappings for ransom. Throughout the year, Islamic organizations with varying degrees of political affiliation held conferences and rallies to support the doctrine of Khatm-e-Nabuwat. On July 21, the government returned a 200-year-old Sikh gurdwara to the Sikh community in Quetta. The penal code bans them from posing as Muslims, using Islamic terms, carrying out Islamic customs, preaching or propagating their religious beliefs, proselytizing, or insulting the religious feelings of Muslims. The punishment for violating these provisions is imprisonment for up to three years and a fine, the amount of which is at the discretion of the sentencing judge. On December 30, a mob estimated at 1,000 people incited by a cleric attacked an historic Hindu temple site in Karak District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, destroying the shrine of Hindu saint Shri Paramhans Jee Maharaj and an adjacent building under construction. Subsequently, Arfana Mallah, a professor at Sindh University Jamshoro who criticized Soomros arrest and the blasphemy laws, was herself accused of committing blasphemy and had to apologize publicly. On July 22, Saeed Amanat, a Muslim man, abducted a 15-year-old Christian girl on her way to church in Faisalabad, Punjab. It has an estimated 23 million people who adhere to Islam. Shias are around 20% of the world muslim population. Groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States and other governments, such as ISIS, also committed violent acts. The Charge dAffaires, consuls general, other embassy officers, and visiting senior U.S. officials engaged government officials and senior advisors to the Prime Minister, including the Minister for Human Rights, and officials from the Ministry of Law and Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, and Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony to discuss blasphemy law reform; laws concerning Ahmadi Muslims; the need to better protect members of religious minority communities; sectarian relations; and religious respect. The Ministry of Human Rights and the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training held consultations with minority faith representatives during the year in a review of textbooks for derogatory material. In May, the Federal Investigative Agency raided the Lahore home of Ahmadi missionary and youth worker Rohan Ahmad, arresting him on charges of cybercrime, blasphemy against the Quran, and propagating the Ahmadi faith through a WhatsApp group in September 2019. The event received positive coverage in local media. In a letter written to the Interior Minister, the LHCBA quoted the section of the constitution stating that Ahmadis are non-Muslim. In December, using expanded authorities granted by the government in November, the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority publicly demanded the removal of sacrilegious content from the Google Play Store and Wikipedia.