A Muslim cleric has claimed that Chinese companies in Pakistan have been prohibiting their employees from offering Namaz, one of the five basic tenets of Islam.
“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 said.
In a video that surfaced on social media on June 26, the cleric, while delivering a sermon, also urged 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.”
China is considered to be 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.
However, this is not the only time Chinese companies in Pakistan have found themselves surrounded in a controversy.
It was recently reported that the Imran Khan government had unearthed a scam of over $630 million involving power projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Beijing’s continued and aggressive repression of homegrown Chinese Muslims, especially the Uighur ethnic minorities in 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.
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.
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