Pakistan minority religious groups, including Hindus, Ahmadis, and Christians, have "faced unprecedented insecurity and persecution" in at least two recent years (2011 and 2012), according to Human Rights Watch.

[51] Estimates of the size of these groups vary—adherents of Shi'a Islam in Pakistan are thought to make up between 15-20% of the population,[52][48][53] (roughly 30 million),[54][55][56] and Sunni between 70 and 75%,[57][46][47] (according experts such as the Library of Congress,[25] Pew Research Center,[46][47] Oxford University,[45] the CIA World Factbook).

[71] Like orthodox Muslims, Zikri revere the Quran, but unlike them they believe the Mahdi has already arrived[72] and do not follow the same ritual prayer practices.

[77] Some of the general reasons offered for sectarian violence in Pakistan, include Central and southern Punjab, served as a base for ‘mujahideen’ recruits.

Most of these ‘mujahideen’ returned to Pakistan after the Russian forces pulled out in the late 1980s, and brought with them a sizeable supply of arms, ammunition and a proclivity for violence.

Pakistan aided the Afghan resistance movement (especially starting in the mid-1980s) with weapons through the Pakistani intelligence services, in a program called Operation Cyclone.

[90] After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the weapons (particularly Kalashnikov assault rifles) did not disappear but were often smuggled into Pakistan by Afghan soldiers in need of money.

[105] In April 2006, the entire leadership of two prominent Barelvi outfits, the Sunni Tehreek and Jamaat Ahle Sunnat were killed in a bomb attack in Nishtar Park, in Pakistan's largest city and business hub Karachi.

[106][107] On 12 June 2009, Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi, a prominent Barelvi cleric and outspoken critic of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was killed in a suicide bombing.

[116] On 22 March 2020, an assassination attempt was made on Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, a prominent intellectual leader and religious scholar of the Deobandi movement, which he survived.

[117] On 10 October 2020, Maulana Muhammad Adil Khan, another prominent religious scholar and head of Jamia Farooqia, was gunned down by unidentified attackers in Karachi in apparent sectarian violence.

[126] However, the first major sectarian massacre in Pakistan occurred in 1963, some years before the Iranian revolution, when 118 Shia were killed by a mob of Deobandi Muslims in Therhi, Sindh.

[129][130] Historian Moonis Ahmar writes, "in the formative phase of Pakistan, the notion of religious extremism was almost non-existent as the founder of the country, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, made it clear that the new state would not be theocratic in nature.

However, after his demise on September 11, 1948, his successors failed to curb the forces of religious militancy ..."[131][note 13] Although the sectarian literature attacking Shi'ism has been distributed into Punjab since Shah Abd al-Aziz wrote his Tuhfa Asna Ashariya, major incidents of anti-Shia violence began only after mass migration in 1947, when the strict and sectarian clergy from Uttar Pradesh brought their version of Islam to the Sufism-oriented Punjab and Sindh.

[citation needed] Sectarian Sunni extremists were "particularly harsh in damning Ashoura"—aka Azadari, or the Mourning of Muharram—as "a heathen spectacle" and a "shocking affront to the memory of the rightful caliphs".

In 1956, thousands of armed villagers gathered to attack Shia mourning Hussein in the small town of Shahr Sultan, but were prevented by Police at least from killing anyone.

In response to Shia outrage, TAS insisted the cause of the rioting and bloodshed was Azadari, not those attacking it, and demanded that the government ban the tradition.

The anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, efforts to curb Shia militancy in response to Iran’s 1979 revolution, the regime’s Islamisation program – all these Zia-era policies prepared the ground for organisations with sectarian agendas to flourish.

In response to the riots and revolt against Zia-ul-Haq's regime, the Pakistan Army led an armed group of local Sunni tribals from Chilas, accompanied by Osama bin Laden-led Sunni militants from Afghanistan and Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province into Gilgit City and adjoining areas in order to suppress the revolt.

In the 1980s Tanzim-e-Ahlesunnat (TAS) had come to be known as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, in the 1990s a new umbrella was set up under the name of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), whose members, though ostensibly a separate organization, were supported by SSP's lawyers and funding.

[170] In July 2020, the Punjab Legislative Assembly of Pakistan passed the Tahaffuz-e-Bunyad-e-Islam (Protection of Foundation of Islam) Bill, that heightened Sunni-Shia sectarian tensions.

[174] There are other Shi'i sect in Pakistan—including Ismailis and Bohras—but they have not been as frequently targeted by extremists as the Twelvers, because of their smaller numbers, and tendency to be more affluent and live in close-knit communities.

[181] Following the 2010 Lahore massacre, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said "Members of this religious community have faced continuous threats, discrimination and violent attacks in Pakistan.

The Government must take every step to ensure the security of members of all religious minorities and their places of worship so as to prevent any recurrence of today's dreadful incident."

[189] Recent attacks and insecurity have led sizable numbers of Zikri (like other minorities) to flee from Balochistan to "safer cities in Pakistan like Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad".

[190] The percentage of Pakistan's non-Muslim population has declined from 23% at the time of independence to 3% as of 2017, a trend blamed by some (Farahnaz Ispahani) on General Zia's coup in 1977 which "accelerated the pace toward intolerance of non-Sunni" Muslims.

The year before several Barelvi clerics had given fatwas (religious decree) against Taseer, declaring him wajib-ul-qatal (worthy of death) arguing that he had blasphemed by criticising the blasphemy law and by seeking to obtain a presidential pardon for Asia Bibi, a poor farm worker and Christian who was sentenced to death for blasphemy after Muslim farm workers accused her of insulting Islam during an argument.

[28] Qadri's execution was greeted by "an outpouring of public sympathy"[234] with protests held across the country and an estimated 100,000 attended his funeral, chanting slogans.

[28] According to a former top counter-terrorism official quoted by International Crisis Group, Labaik’s success in politicizing blasphemy "is turning so many people into extremists".

[237] More recently, in December 2021, a mob of about 800 in Sialkot, Punjab, set upon Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan national and factory manager who had allegedly torn a poster inscribed with Islamic verses.