IPS’ presentation at CII on ‘Rhetoric of Forced Conversion’
A three-member delegation from IPS visited Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) on November 25, 2020 and participated in an interactive discussion on the issue of forced conversion in Pakistan.
The visiting delegation comprised Institute’s research team members Syed Nadeem Farhat, Ghulam Hussain Sufi and Hafiz Usama Hameed, whereas the participants from CII included the session’s chair Dr Ikram ul Haq, secretary, CII, Dr Inamullah, director general, CII, and the Council’s senior research faculty.
Sufi delivered a presentation on the occasion titled ‘Rhetoric of Forced Conversions in Pakistan: Legal and Policy Implications’, which was based on an IPS study. He apprised the participants over how local and foreign NGOs twist facts and figures pertaining to faith conversion taking place mainly in Sindh, in order to pose the element of threat, fear and force behind the phenomenon. Even the incidents of voluntary conversion to Islam by adult and mature women, according to the presentation, were projected either as underage cases or as forced conversions following an abduction by local Muslims that was facilitated by Muslim clerics. These stories were then being used to malign the state, society and religious as well as cultural norms of Pakistan.
The speaker maintained that this lopsided propaganda had now become so prevalent in the media that even the government as well as the international institutions cite and refer to it without validating the original reports which actually are devoid of any empirical evidence. The scenario is resulting in creating immense pressure on the state to take certain policy and legal actions.
The presentation was followed by an interactive discussion in which it was revealed that many legislators who were tasked to address the issue did not even have the basic knowledge about the ground realities, local customs and their centuries old norms, none of which could be shackled with a single policy measure taken at the government level.
The discussion reiterated that no policy and legal measure should be taken without bringing all sides of the picture completely in focus. It was also stressed that steps should be taken to guide policymakers, state authorities and the society in general to counter such false propagandas which are harming Pakistan’s image both locally and internationally.
