Chinese companies prohibit Pakistani employees from namaz

Islamabad [Pakistan], June 29 (ANI): Some Chinese companies operating in Pakistan do not seem to allow time to Pakistani employees to offer namaz, one of the five basic tenets of Islam.
In a video that surfaced on social media on June 26, a Muslim cleric, while delivering a sermon, is urging Pakistanis to be firm and tell the Chinese that in Pakistan "they'll have to follow local laws and the country does not belong to them."
"We cannot ignore namaz. People are afraid that they will lose their jobs. But it has now become a matter of self respect for us," the cleric is saying in what appears to be a sermon.
China is known to be an all-weather ally; a 'dearest friend' of Pakistan, from playing a central role in Asia's geopolitics to being the greatest economic hope and the most trusted military partner. But Beijing's continued and aggressive repression of homegrown Chinese Muslims, especially the Uighur ethnic minorities in its northwestern Xinjiang province, may soon enable the mainland to losen its grasp on Pakistani public opinion. And amid such condition Beijing will obviously find Pakistan a difficult ally to work with.
In a misguided attempt to thwart a terrorism problem that China primarily associates with the country's Muslim Uighur population, the city of Karamay in Xinjiang banned "men with beards and women with Muslim headscarves" from using public transportation. Additionally, the declaration bans people sporting the Islamic star and crescent from using public transport as well.
China's discrimination against Muslims is growing. The domestic consequences of its policies is controversial. However, according to media reports, Beijing, in 2014, publicly spoke with leaders from both Afghanistan and Pakistan about concerns over the uighurs staging attacks against the Chinese populations. While the governments in Kabul and Islamabad expressed interest in complying with the Communist Party's request to better monitor their northern borders, China still faces the prospect of alienating the Pakistani and Afghan public with its policies of religious intolerance. (ANI)

Raj Kantak

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