Government Should Ensure the Religious Freedom

10/07/2020

News about the construction of temple in Islamabad with the help of government support is roaming here and there on almost each and every network of social media, from few days. The opinion of some people regarding this issue is somehow painful to hear. For instance people have an opinion that government should not provide the money and should forbid Hindus from constructing of temple in Islamabad.

Now here question arises that, if the government is not extending support to them, then who will provide support to them: India or someone else? Since our founding father Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had made it clear to us in his presidential address that ” You are free to go to your mosque, temple or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed, you all are the equal citizen of this state of Pakistan.”

It shows that our founding father was in favour of religious freedom to each and every citizen of this state of Pakistan. Now again the question arises that if our founding father has cleared this matter to us, then why we are nowadays making this issue. The second thing is that in our neighboring country India, millions of Muslims are living. In case, India snatches the religious freedom from them, will we be ready to accept that? What will be our response?

In addition to this today what the people of Kashmir is facing and we raise our voices for them in different international platforms, so maybe Hindus would also start raising their voice for their brothers in different international platform, so what will be our image in international politics? Will we be able to satisfy the international community about their concerns? The next point is that, there are thousands of mosques and madrasas in our country.

Therefore, if that much number of mosques and madrasahs could not have Islamize the state, so it should be cleared to us that a single temple also can not transform us into Hinduism. We are the Muslim only in name but not in our deeds. Just go back to Ramadan and observe the Muslims behaviour and check the prices of fruits,vegetables and daily consumables, hence you would knew about our love with Islam.

I would like to share the recent example that is, in initial days of this corona virus pandemic, when people felt that masks will be needed in future, they hid the masks in order to got more and more money through its excessive demand. There are hundreds of such examples.

Our constitution has provided the right to religion as a fundamental right to everyone. So we should welcome the government’s decision and allow all the minorities to freely follow their respective religious affairs. Moreover,we should be inclusive in this regard. By making, friendly environment for religious minorities, we can improve our image at international level.