{"id":14679,"date":"2016-01-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2016\/01\/21\/slow-genocide-of-minorities-in-pakistan-farahnaz-ispahani\/"},"modified":"2016-01-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T12:00:00","slug":"slow-genocide-of-minorities-in-pakistan-farahnaz-ispahani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2016\/01\/21\/slow-genocide-of-minorities-in-pakistan-farahnaz-ispahani\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow Genocide of Minorities in Pakistan: Farahnaz Ispahani"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.livemint.com\/Politics\/F4r3Tmf51k8Sm6DGjPRaEN\/Slow-genocide-of-minorities-in-Pakistan-Farahnaz-Ispahani.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>PAKISTAN, January 19, 2016 (Live Mint by Farahnaz Ispahani): From 23% in 1947, Pakistan&#8217;s minorities today constitute a mere 3-4% of the population, says Farahnaz Ispahani, media advisor to the president of Pakistan from 2008 to 2012 in her book Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan&#8217;s Religious Minorities.<\/p>\n<p>She blames the successive Pakistan presidents and prime ministers for launching a slow genocide against minorities in the country to shore up their political base. She specifically blames Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the Pak army general who was the country&#8217;s 6th president, for creating a militant group to target Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians. <\/p>\n<p>When asked about the title, Purifying the Land of the Pure, Ispahani said, &#8220;Pakistan itself means pure land. The reason I chose it is because I have traced in my book, using historical archives, how Pakistan which set out to be a secular, albeit Muslims majority, state, ended up becoming what it is today. When Pakistan was being formed in 1947, Pakistan&#8217;s population of non-Muslims was 23%, today we are somewhere between 3%-4%. So there has been a purification of minorities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Much more at &#8220;source&#8221; above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source PAKISTAN, January 19, 2016 (Live Mint by Farahnaz Ispahani): From 23% in 1947, Pakistan&#8217;s minorities today constitute a mere,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}