Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Former Pakistani President, Asif Al Zardari, has expressed a deep concern over the recent reports of a forced conversion of a Kailash teenager girl, which resulted in a clash between the Muslim supporters of conversion and her community in Bamburete, Chitral on Thursday.

According to the media reports,the 14-year old Kalash girl had converted to Islam under the influence of a local Muslim and later left her home to live with the man’s family living in the same village. However, the very next day, she said that she had made a mistake by converting to Islam and returned to her home. This infuriated the local clergy and created a chaotic situation in the area. In his statement, the former President said that faith is a matter of one’s own conscious and free will and nobody has a right to force conversion on anyone. The self-styled custodians of faith and morality ought to know that there is no compulsion in the religion, he said. Unfortunately, the self-righteous clergy and the right wingers have been allowed to carry out their hypocrisy for too long now as they continue to masquerade their extremist agenda as a divinely sanctioned religion, he noted. This hypocrisy must not be allowed to take roots; it will not be, he remarked. Zardari said that the Party stands by the right of the teenager Kailash girl to embrace whatever faith she may wish to practice, based her own volition and free will. The former President also called for a probe into the incident, protection to the Kailash girl and punishment to the goons.