In a sunlit meeting room in Karachi, imams, pastors, a Hindu pandit and civil society representatives sat shoulder to shoulder around the same table this week, united by a single agenda: protecting the rights of Pakistan’s religious minorities and recognising one of their own for carrying that fight onto the world stage. The occasion was a strategic session of the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable Pakistan’s Karachi Chapter, a gathering that moved briskly between celebration, planning and a pointed legislative appeal.

The mood in the room was one of quiet resolve rather than ceremony. Water glasses and tea sat largely untouched as members leaned across a long white table, trading updates on grassroots peace committees, reviewing the fine print of a pending bill in the Sindh Assembly, and pausing more than once to applaud the man seated at the head of the table.

Honouring Kashif Mirza

Senior leadership and members of the roundtable gathered to offer their heartfelt congratulations to Muhammad Kashif Mirza, Director of IRF Roundtable Pakistan, who was recently honoured in Washington, D.C. with the prestigious America 250 IRF Award of Courage. The award recognises Mirza’s more than fifteen years of advocacy for interfaith harmony, minority rights and freedom of conscience — work that has, over the past decade and a half, threaded together Karachi’s diverse faith communities into a single, functioning table of dialogue.

Fifteen years of quiet, persistent advocacy for interfaith harmony — recognised, at last, on an international stage. On Muhammad Kashif Mirza’s America 250 IRF Award of Courage

For a roundtable built on the premise that Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other communities share responsibility for one another’s protection, the award was treated less as an individual honour and more as validation of the model itself — that sustained, patient coalition-building produces results that statements and slogans cannot.

A Province-Wide Expansion

Beyond the congratulations, the session had real planning work to do. Members mapped out strategic plans to expand the roundtable’s grassroots operations, with the explicit aim of setting up active IRF chapters across various districts of Sindh. The intent is straightforward: strengthen local peace committees and promote communal harmony at a level closer to where tensions and disputes actually surface, rather than concentrating advocacy solely in Karachi.

Backing the Christian Family Laws Bill 2026

The session’s most consequential discussion centred on the Christian Family Laws Bill 2026 — widely referred to as the Christian Marriage Act — currently before the Sindh Assembly. The bill was introduced by Anthony Naveed, Deputy Speaker of the Sindh Assembly, and attendees gave it a detailed, clause-by-clause review before arriving at a unified position.

The roundtable’s members collectively issued a strong recommendation urging provincial lawmakers to pass the bill swiftly, framing it not as a sectarian request but as an overdue correction to colonial-era statutes still governing marriage within the Christian community.

That final point — a consistent, province-matching-federal standard for the minimum marriage age — emerged as the session’s clearest and most urgent ask, one the roundtable intends to keep pressing as the bill moves through the Assembly.