London [United Kingdom], Aug.12 : A former aid worker in Afghanistan and Pakistan has said that in Pakistan there is a widespread cultural attitude that non-Muslims are inferior to Muslims, and therefore, it comes as no surprise that the latter gets the license to commit heinous crimes against the former without fear of being punished.
Suggesting it is time to call a spade a spade, ditch political correctness and recognize that there is a need to tackle what is a "safeguarding issue at home and a foreign policy issue overseas", Dr.
Martin Parsons has endorsed Labour Member of Parliament from Rotherham Sarah Champion's call to deal with British Pakistanis grooming young white girls for sex firmly as per the law of the land.
Welcoming the conviction of 17 British Pakistanis on rape-related charges, Dr. Parsons has, in an article written for and published by the conservativehome.com website, said that having lived in Pakistan for a while, he has concluded that a high proportion of children abducted and abused are from the country's Christian and Hindu minorities and are regarded as inferiors by the majority Muslim community.
"In fact, most abductions occur in the Punjab and Sindh province, where the majority of the Christians and Hindus respectively live.
A 2014 report by a Pakistani NGO highlighted how these abductions are justified by forcing the victims to convert to Islam, which then enables the perpetrator to escape justice," he says.
"The prevalence and incidence of forced conversion and marriage are difficult to accurately estimate due to reporting deficiencies and the complex nature of the crime.
Estimates therefore range from 100 to 700 victim Christian girls per year. For the Hindu community, the most conservative estimates put the number of victims at 300 per year," he adds.
Dr. Parsons recalls that last November, the Sindh provincial assembly unanimously passed a bill prohibiting 'forced conversion', but this was withdrawn in January after the Council on Islamic Ideology in Pakistan put pressure on it on grounds that the law was "un-Islamic".
He says that in Pakistan, in the textbooks of classical Islam, such as the Hedaya taught in madrassas, Christians are referred to as "Dhimmis" or "inferiors" who are allowed to live in Pakistan provided they are subservient to Muslims.
Hindus, on the other hand, are not even given this status, and it is specifically stated that the evidence of neither is accepted against a Muslim.
Source: ANI
