In light of all this, it is high time for Pakistan to be labeled a "Country of Particular Concern" by the U.S. Department of State. Otherwise, the crucial question persists: Why is it not?
--Raymond Ibrahim
The U.S. State Department lists only nine nations as "Countries of Particular Concern" (CPC)--a designation for those nations considered to be the worst violators of religious freedom. These include governments that "engage in or tolerate" systematic, ongoing, and unspeakable violations of religious freedom.
Asia Bibi and two of her five children, before her imprisonment on death row in 2010 for "blasphemy."
According to many human rights activists, this list is far from complete: "the State Department has seemed unwilling to recognize the grave unspeakable abuses of religious freedom in a number of Muslim-dominated countries that the USCIRF [U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom] considers CPCs: Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Tajikistan."