No arrests were made, and no one was charged. The Sindh provincial government has legislation allowing couples to seek divorce and granting Hindu women the right to remarry six months after a divorce or a spouses death. During the year, courts overturned some blasphemy convictions upon appeal and acquitted others after the accused had spent years in prison. 3.72; Encyclopaedia Britannica 4 Oct. 2019; US 18 Dec. 2019), or "some 17-26 million people" (Encyclopaedia Britannica 4 Oct. 2019). Timeline: Modern Sunni-Shia Tensions - Council on Foreign Relations On October 11, unidentified militants abducted six Shia pilgrims near the Pakistan-Iran border region of Panjgur, in Balochistan. Sunnis are generally believed to be 80-85 percent of the Muslim population, and Shia Muslims, including Hazara, Ismaili, and Bohra (a branch of Ismaili), are generally believed to make up 15-20 percent. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), a national NGO, expressed concern over a surge in blasphemy cases against religious minorities, particularly the Shia community, and the continued potential for sectarian violence. Projections 0 100,000,000 200,000,000 300,000,000 400,000,000 Population 235,824,862 While the law requires a senior police official to investigate any blasphemy charge before a complaint may be filed, a requirement that NGOs and legal observers stated helped contribute to an objective investigation and the dismissal of many blasphemy cases, some NGOs said police did not uniformly follow this procedure. The population density in Pakistan is 287 per Km 2 (742 people per mi 2 ). 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. Shias live in terror as sectarian violence increases in Pakistan Pakistan - United States Department of State The statement also called on the government to immediately reform its often abused blasphemy laws and its court system, which allow such abuses to occur, and to ensure that the suspect is prosecuted to the full extent of the law., In an official tweet in November following the killing of Ahmadi physician Tahir Ahmad, the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom said the killing was the latest in a series of recent killings targeting the Ahmadiyya community. Some activists reported receiving death threats because of their work. Other NGOs also said that 2020 had seen an increase in blasphemy cases. Then, in mid-September, a march of more than 30,000 people, organised by extremist Sunni Muslim groups, gathered in Karachi over two days to call Shia Muslims unbelievers and blasphemers and called for their beheading. Following the killing of Tahir Naseem, the Department of State issued a statement expressing outrage over the killing and noting that Naseem had been lured from his home in the United States by individuals who used blasphemy laws to entrap him. Political parties elected by the general electorate choose the minority individuals who hold these seats; they are not elected directly by the minority constituencies they represent. Speaker of the Punjab Provincial Assembly and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) party leader Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi made numerous statements denouncing Ahmadis and any effort to undermine the status of Mohammed as Islams final prophet. Download Historical Data Save as Image From: To: Zoom: Current Historical U.N. Pakistan's Shias Face Double Threat: Extremists and Their Own 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. And up to 18 million of Pakistan's 74 million jobs may be lost. Members of civil society reported that converts from Islam lived in varying degrees of secrecy for fear of violent retribution from family members or society at large. In Pakistan, Shia Muslims make up around 20% of the population, and while the country is tragically home to some of the worst sectarian violence in the world, in 2017 alone 95% of sectarian killings and violence worldwide was focused solely on Shia Muslims. This requirement effectively prohibits Ahmadi Muslims from holding elected office, as they recognize a prophet subsequent to Mohammed. The government did not permit Ahmadis to teach Islamic studies in public schools. Pakistan Population 1950-2023 | MacroTrends Throughout the year, Islamic organizations with varying degrees of political affiliation held conferences and rallies to support the doctrine of Khatm-e-Nabuwat. 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 teacher survived the attack and told media the man had been following and harassing her for days. The government has never executed anyone specifically for blasphemy. Police stated they believed he was targeted because of his religious beliefs. For 40-year-old Tehseen, Kashif was her whole world. In all these cases, judges repeatedly delayed hearings, adjourned hearings without hearing arguments, or sent appeals to other judicial benches. Reports indicated parents and pastors were frequently paid by the traffickers for the women, and that some pastors were complicit in the trafficking. Pakistan's Perpetual Shia Shame - Baltimore Post-Examiner According to the provisional results of a national census conducted in 2017 (the most recent), 96 percent of the population is Sunni or Shia Muslim. 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. Shia Muslims constitute 10 to 12 percent of the citizen population and an estimated 25 to 30 percent of the Eastern Province's population. The law prohibits publishing any criticism of Islam or its prophets or insults to others religious beliefs. 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. Shias in Pakistan reputedly account for about 20 percent of the population or 42 million out of the population of 210 million making it the second largest Shia population in the world . In November, the government finalized its Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content Rules 2020, which sought to codify the PTAs authority to regulate content the government deemed unlawful. The rules not only enhanced the PTAs ability to compel online content platforms such as Facebook, Googles YouTube, Twitter, and Wikipedia to remove content but also extended the regulators purview to include local internet service providers that could also be held liable for such content. Provinces of Pakistan Population Detail Information About Provinces Wise Population extremist, and militant groups have come together to harass the Shia population right in the eyesight of the country's security apparatus. They also met with representatives of other embassies, leaders of religious communities, NGOs, and legal experts working on religious freedom issues to discuss ways to increase respect among religions and to enhance dialogue. 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. According to religious minority activists, provincial governments also often failed to meet quotas for hiring religious minorities into the civil service. 1.. 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. The blasphemy charges against Jaffar were followed by anti-Shia rallies throughout the country and at least three rallies in Karachi by Sunni groups on September 11 and 13 attended by thousands of individuals. In late December, the PTA publicly used this new authority for the first time to demand the removal of sacrilegious content. At years end, she and her alleged husband had not appeared in court in Karachi, despite multiple court orders to do so. The population of Pakistan in 2020 was 227,196,741, a 1.75% increase from 2019. Population Census | Pakistan Bureau of Statistics This statistic was all taken from many independent sources for the year 1999. On January 26, for example, a local court sentenced four boys for vandalizing a Hindu temple in Sindhs Tharparkar District, the first attack on a Hindu temple in that area in more than 30 years; minority lawmakers and civil society activists reacted strongly to the attack. Minority rights activists criticized these advertisements as discriminatory and insulting. 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. Pakistan has the third largest Shia population after India and Iran. In September, several religious groups from the Deobandi and Barelvi schools of Sunni Islam organized a series of rallies in Karachi to denounce Shia defamation of revered Sunni religious figures. Pakistan is said to have a Shia population of at least 16 million, like India. A New Era of Sectarian Violence in Pakistan | Crisis Group

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