The Christian Minorities in Pakistan: Identity, Issues and Sociological influences

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the conditions of the Christian minorities of Pakistan at both a macro and a micro level. The main objectives of this study was to: first, analyze how the conditions for the Christian communities have changed over the years by analyzing the sociopolitical situation in Pakistan for which we carried out a contextual analysis of the constitutions which have been implemented in Pakistan. Second, the study also aimed to analyze the small day-today interactions within the Christian community as well as the Christian communities’ interaction with the Muslim majority for which Life history interviews were carried out in which we focused on four life history interviews which were purposively selected.

The results showed that Pakistan’s constitution does provide safeguards to all the minorities in Pakistan, so it’s not that the process of law making was lacking in anyway. The problem lies within the process of implementation of the laws which provide protection to the minorities to freely live their lives in Pakistan. Another major result which we concluded from the interviews was that discrimination against Christians in Pakistan exists regardless of their socio-economic background and the participant’s experiences discriminatory behavior from people purely on the basis of religious differences. Hence, it’s important that the government takes action and more strongly enforce the implementation of laws which are there to protect the Christian minorities on a communal level.