The Top Ten 2021 Highlights from ADL’s Task Force on Middle East Minorities

2021 was a challenging year globally and it also impacted the work of the ADL Middle East Taskforce. Like so many, we could not organize in-person events, previously co-hosted with well-respected Washington, DC think tanks. Webinars replaced live audience programming. Although events remained accessible online, the advantage and impact of an in-person event was largely missing. But, it was still …

  Farahnaz Ispahani is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, DC and the author of the book Purifying The Land of The Pure: The History of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities (Oxford University Press, 2017). In 2015, she was a Reagan-Fascell Scholar at the National Endowment for Democracy, in Washington, DC.  Ispahani was a Public …

The US-Taliban Deal Ignores Human Rights and Women

Farahnaz Ispahani The Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban ignores human rights concerns. The recently signed peace deal between the United States of America and the Taliban, whom the U.S. deemed as terrorists until recently, reflects not just American military withdrawal from Afghanistan but also an abandonment of Afghan women, children, and religious minorities. Given the well-documented record of their …

Farahnaz Ispahani’s Interview on NPR: The Stakes For Pakistan Prime Minister’s D.C. Trip

NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asks Farahnaz Ispahani, who served in Pakistan’s Parliament, about Prime Minister Imran Khan’s upcoming White House visit. Tomorrow, President Trump will welcome Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to the White House. Prime Minister Khan won election last year after charting an unusual path to political power as a former cricket captain and an international playboy. Both countries …

Does Panchsila work in today’s Indonesia? by Farahnaz Ispahani

Following your own religious beliefs shouldn’t be a crime, but in Indonesia, new technologies are helping authorities identify and potentially prosecute religious minorities who follow “deviant teachings.” Indonesian English language media and Human Rights Watch have expressed alarm as Indonesia Launched a so-called ‘Snitch’ App targeting religious minorities. It is feared within human rights circles that the app has the …

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES AND THE TREATMENT OF PAKISTAN’S RELIGIOUS MINORITIES BY FARAHNAZ ISPAHANI

Abstract Although Pakistan was created as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, religious freedom was one of its founding principles. Seventy years later, Pakistan is better known for religious extremism and the persecution of Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities. Pakistan’s blasphemy law is a state-sanctioned tool of religious oppression used to target members of minority faith communities whether Ahmadiya, Christian, …

NDI: Commitments for Credible Elections Needed to Reaffirm Bangladesh’s Democracy

Saturday, October 13, 2018 Dhaka, Bangladesh – Heading into Bangladesh’s elections for the Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament), a pre-election delegation of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) found that, while Bangladesh has several fundamental elements in place for holding credible elections, including a tradition of political pluralism and strong public support for democratic principles the polls will take place amid a high degree of …

Why Pakistanis must speak up against blasphemy laws By Farahnaz Ispahani

Asia Bibi’s case illustrates how blasphemy laws are used to persecute the weakest of the weak among the country’s religious minorities. After a long and tortured eight years, Asia Noreen Bibi — a poor agricultural worker, who has been sitting on death row on allegations of blasphemy — finally had her appeal heard by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. But, like many …