The deadly attack on a Shia Mosque in Islamabad has once again underscored that minority Muslim communities in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan are not safe and face recurring insecurity. Shias, Hazaras, Ahmadiyyas, Ismailis, Dawoodi Bohras, Zikris, and Sufi and Barelvi Muslims are subjected to sectarian violence, discriminatory laws and weak legal protection, which leave them vulnerable to attacks on mosques, shrines and people. Critics and activists have expressed concerns over the functioning of the government officials and security personnel, which has only fuelled the attacks on Islamic minorities in Pakistan.
At least 36 people from the Shia community were killed and over 170 were injured after an attacker opened fire at a Shia Mosque in Islamabad before setting off a suicide bomb. “I have seen many crime scenes. But this was horrible, very horrible,” said a police official named Shahid Malik. Shia accounts for 10-15 percent of the country’s population, which makes them not just a religious minority but vulnerable to harassment, subjugation and fatal attacks by the dominant Sunni group.
Pakistan’s authorities and police have repeatedly been blamed for failing to protect the Shia minority from sectarian violence. “Such a terrorist act in the federal capital is not only a serious failure in protecting human lives but also raises significant questions about the performance of the authorities and law enforcement agencies,” said Raja Nasir Abbas Jafri, a Shia leader. Earlier, 40 Shia Hazaras were separated from the rest of the passengers in the bus and later shot at, killing 26 of them.
In 2013, 84 people died and over 200 were injured after an improvised explosive device (IED) targeted a Shia Mosque in Quetta. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the armed pro-Sunni sectarian group, had claimed the responsibility for the attack. Local religious leaders had slammed Pakistan government for not protecting minority Muslim communities. US Based news editor Malik Siraj Akbar said Lashkar-e-Jhangvi received support from Pakistan’s military in its efforts to force the Shias in Balochistan to either convert to Sunni Islam.
International Crisis Group said the militancy against minority Muslims has expanded in Pakistan and now runs across the range of Sunni groups, thanks to the Islamabad government’s failure to deny civic space to propagate sectarian hatred. “The state’s failure also to prosecute those responsible for sectarian attacks is feeding into a permissive legal environment. In many instances, government policy has amplified rather than tamped down sectarian rhetoric,” said the Belgium-based group.
Other prominent Islamic minority that often gets targeted is Ahmadiyya community. In October 2025, a gunman opened fire at an Ahmadiyya mosque in Lahore. “This heinous act is yet another chapter in the ongoing wave of violence and hatred directed against the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan — a community that continues to suffer in silence under state-sanctioned discrimination and societal persecution,” said Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Canada.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), at least 34 cases of attacks on religious sites owned by the Ahmadiyya community were reported in 2023. Even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) highlighted the desecration of Ahmadiyya graves and minarets, and destruction of a historic 100-year-old mosque in Punjab’s Daska. “Our community has always faced prejudice – sometimes viciously, sometimes more subtly. However, this year, the flames of hatred are far more intense,” said Zaheer Aslam, an Ahmadiyya businessman from Daska.
Ismailis, another minority Muslim sect, has been a target of Sunni extremists in Pakistan. A decade ago, at least 43 of them were killed after six attackers opened fire at the bus the victims were travelling in Karachi. “We swear that we will make you and your families cry tears of blood and will not rest until we have cleansed this land of you and established sharia,” read the pamphlets that were found at the crime scene. The Bohra community too has borne the brunt of Sunni violence. Two worshippers died after a bomb exploded outside the community’s Saleh Mosque in Karachi.
The Islamabad government has not just failed to act against abuses by the security and intelligence agencies, which continued to allow extremist groups to attack religious minorities. About 50 devotees gathered at Balochistan’s Sufi shrine of Shah Noorani lost lives in a bomb explosion. As many as 75 were killed after the crowded Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Sufi shrine in Sindh province was attacked in 2017.
Muslim minorities are witnessing aggravated violence thanks to the development of exclusionary nationalism in Pakistan, stated a report on the rising marginalisation of religious communities in Pakistan, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. “Mounting sectarian violence against Shia, as well as discrimination against religious groups who until recently had managed to escape systematic targeting, such as Ismaili Muslims, points to the growth of an even more exclusionary form of nationalism based on a very specific understanding of ‘Muslimness’,” it said.