Clerics criticised proposed anti-forced conversion law

There has been a meeting attended by senior officials of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), Ministry of Religious Affairs, and clerics belonging to the four mainstream schools of thought in the country – Shia, Barelvi, Deobandi and Ahle Hadis (Kalbe, 2021). During this meeting, clerics and senior officials rejected the title of the draft bill – Anti Forced Conversion -, declaring that “there was no forced conversion in the country and most of the cases were related to love affairs between individuals” (News Desk, 2021). One of the clerics later called the bill a “trap of the West”. The meeting formed a committee headed by Dr Inamullah Khan, head of research at the CII, to suggest an alternative name and eradicate controversial clauses in it (Kalbe, 2021).