Farooq Naeem—AFP
Police say situation under control after dispersal of mob attacking the home where the teenager was hiding.
Hundreds of Muslims clashed with members of the Kalash minority in Chitral on Thursday after a teenager claimed she was forced to convert to Islam, police and residents said, bringing violence to a previously peaceful part of the embattled country.
Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd attacking a house in the Kalash tribe’s valley of Bumburate, where the 9th grade student had gone to give a police statement about her conversion, said activist Luke Rehmat.
The Kalash, Pakistan’s smallest religious minority, celebrate their gods through music and dance—an anomaly in largely Muslim Pakistan. They number only around 4,000, according to Rehmat. Increasingly their youth are converting to Islam, prompting activists to campaign to preserve the traditions of the ancient, diminishing tribe.
The teenager had “returned to her home saying embracing Islam was a mistake and she wanted to live with her family, which infuriated the Muslim community,” Rehmat said. She went to a neighbor’s house to speak to police, the homeowner told AFP, but hundreds of people began to gather outside as word spread through the close-knit community. A local police official said the Muslim crowd claimed the teenager had opted to convert to Islam of her own free will and was being ‘forced’ to return to the Kalash faith.
“The Kalash community had also gathered to save the family and when the Muslims chanting slogans attacked the house with sticks and pelted stones everybody was running for their lives,” Rehmat, who was out of breath from fleeing the scene, told AFP by telephone. “Dozens” were injured, he said, though apparently none seriously.
“Law enforcement agencies reached here on time otherwise they would have killed all of us,” said local Kalash politician Imran Kabeer.
It was not clear what happened to the teenager.
Police in Chitral said the district police chief had gone to Bumburate with other senior officers, adding that the situation was under control. They said they hoped to resolve the matter through dialogue, adding that if negotiations did not prove fruitful, a case could be registered against both communities for disturbing the peace.
The owner of the house that was attacked was also in Chitral, where he said police were refusing to let him return home. “They came out in a mob to attack my house and to kill my wife and my children,” he said, asking to remain anonymous. “They threw stones at the roof and at the windows. Police were firing in the air.”
Chitral, a northern district of Khyber-Pukhtunkwa province, has long attracted tourists for its beauty and has hitherto been notable for having been spared the country’s violence.