KARACHI, KOMPAS.com – Thousands of anti-Shia protesters sparked public concern that rising religious group tensions between Shiites and Sunnis could spark a new chapter of sectarian violence in Karachi, Pakistan.
Launch AFP on Friday (11/09/2020), the concern was caused because of the thousands of anti-Shia protesters in Karachi Pakistan on Friday (11/09/2020), including demonstrators who have links to Sunni extremists.
Anti-Shia protests were carried out following a series of accusations of insulting key Shiite leaders in Pakistan.
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In August, a television broadcast of the Ashura procession showed clerics and participants allegedly making statements disparaging historical Islamic figures.
Ashura commemorates the assassination of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680 A.D., which marked the moment of religious division and the birth of Shiite Islam.
Demonstrations on Friday showed thousands of protesters giving speeches near the tomb of the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, with participants chanting “infidels” and “God is great.”
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“We will not tolerate defamation anymore,” said Qari Usman of the Islamic political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in his speech.
Pockets of demonstrators held banners for the anti-Shia extremist group Sipah-e-Sahaba, which has been linked to the killing of hundreds of Shiites over the years.
Defamation of religion is a very sensitive issue in conservative Pakistan, where the law can impose the death penalty on anyone deemed insulting Islam or a Muslim figure.
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In fact, unproven charges have led to mass killings and vigilante murders.
Sectarian violence has erupted suddenly for decades in Pakistan, with anti-Shia militant groups growing up inside the country, bombing holy sites and targeting Ashura processions.
Thousands of people were killed in the previous decade triggering a crackdown by security forces in 2015, which resulted in a dramatic decline in sectarian violence.
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The crackdown culminated in July 2015 when Malik Ishaq, head of the outlawed militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) was killed in a gun battle with police along with 13 fellow militants.
The shootout wiped out most of the top leaders of the LeJ, the driving force in violence targeting Shiites, who make up about 20 percent of Pakistan’s 220 million population.
Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and also a major business and industrial center, was once rife with political, sectarian and ethnic militancy with thousands of people killed.
However, years of operations by the security forces that began in 2013 have brought the unrest quite abated, but scattered attacks are still occurring.
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