Every couple of years, Brussels publishes a report on Pakistan’s GSP status, and every time you can almost predict which paragraph will get underlined first. The 2023–2025 review has arrived. It acknowledges that laws have moved forward, which is fair, and then it settles straight back into the old refrain: minority rights. Pakistan, the report repeats, must do more. The advice isn’t shocking. What’s a little harder to take seriously is who is delivering it.

Look at them. Countries that are still wrestling with their own minority rights record continue to lecture Pakistan on religious freedom. It’s not a cheap shot; it’s simply what the record shows. France decided years ago that a headscarf was a public-order problem: banned in schools in 2004, full-face veils in public in 2011, and just last year, in 2023, the abaya was shown the classroom door. Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands have since imposed similar restrictions on face coverings. If any of this were happening in Pakistan, Brussels would have resolutions drafted by lunchtime. When it happens in Paris, it’s called republican values. That’s not a principle. That’s a power move wearing the language of........

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