This week I planned on writing on a different topic but reading these chilling lines from I A Rehman’s column titled ‘Patterns of intolerance’ in Dawn made me revisit the topic: “A young non-Muslim woman has been living in Lahore for quite some time. A few weeks ago she married an American citizen — a crime her neighbours apparently did not forgive. A group of hotheads raided her home at night early this month and on their inability to break into the house they damaged the car parked in the porch and pasted a notice on it: ‘kalima parh lo warna’ (convert to Islam or else).”

I happen to know this young woman personally. She is one of the kindest, hard-working and honest people I know. Just because she happens to come from a religious minority community and decided to marry an American citizen when anti-American sentiment is at an all-time high in Pakistan does not give anyone the right to vandalise her property and/or terrorise her family. It is a shame that she could only register an FIR at the police station after great difficulty and help from an influential person. She is as much a citizen of Pakistan as anyone else but her treatment at the hands of her neighbourhood vigilantes and the police shows how difficult it is for minorities to live in a country where intolerance is fast becoming a norm. This incident was a grave reminder of how we as a nation mistreat our minority communities.