By
Sanchita Bhattacharya
August 24,
2020
On August
13, 2020, a 61-year-old Ahmadi man, Meraj Ahmed, was shot dead near his medical
store in the Dabgari Gardens area of Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
On July 29,
2020, Tahir Naseem, a US citizen and an Ahmadi, accused of blasphemy, was shot
dead inside a District Court in Peshawar, in the presence of security and the
presiding judge. Though he was killed as an Ahmadi, Saleem ud Din, spokesman of
the Jamaat Ahmadiyya Pakistan, later claimed, “He was born Ahmadi but left the
community many years ago. Therefore, to avoid any misinformation, I would like
to clarify that the deceased was not part of Jamaat Ahmadiyya.”
Jamaat
Ahmadiyya Pakistan is an organisation that, among other things, watches over
the religious, economic and political interests of Ahmadis in Pakistan.
On July 15,
2020, graves of members of the Ahmadi community were desecrated in Tirigiri
village of Gujranwala District in Punjab Province, as Quranic verses were
written on these graves. Pakistani law prohibits Ahmadis from calling
themselves or “posing as” Muslims.
On July 1,
2020, local clerics allegedly vandalised graves of members of the Ahmadi
community in the Nawa Kot area of Sheikhupura District in Punjab Province.
Saleem ud Din, spokesman of the Jamaat Ahmadiyya Pakistan, condemning the
attack, Tweeted
How long
the state apparatus will act as enabler in the hands of extremists? How long
our dead will be persecuted in their graves? How long the state & others
will turn a blind eye to this?
On February
29, 2020, three graves belonging to Ahmadis were allegedly desecrated by the
Police in the Khushab District of Punjab Province.
According
to partial data collated by South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), these were the
five reported incidents in 2020 in which the Ahmadi community was targeted
(data till August 23, 2020). Two of these incidents resulted in one fatality
each. Since March 6, 2000, when SATP started compiling data on conflicts in
Pakistan, at least 128 Ahmadis have been killed and 113 injured in 28 incidents
of killing.
The worst
ever attack targeting the Ahmadis took place on May 28, 2010. 94 people were
killed when two Ahmadi mosques were targeted in Lahore, the provincial capital
of Punjab, in attacks that included grenades, small arms fire and two suicide
bombers. 27 people were killed at the Baitul Nur Mosque in Lahore’s Model Town
area and 67 people died at the Darul Zikr Mosque in the suburb of Garhi Shahu.
The Punjabi Taliban, a local affiliate of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had
claimed responsibility.
Britain's
All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in its Report
titled, "Suffocating the Faithful: The Persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in
Pakistan and the Rise of International Extremism", published in July 2020,
stated that between 1984 and July 2020, at least 269 Ahmadi Muslims have been
killed on grounds of faith. The report also explains the abuse Ahmadis
experience in educational institutions,
Young Ahmadi Muslims face a constant risk of being denied access to
education and those who secure a place are routinely targeted and stigmatised
through physical and emotional abuse at the hands of teachers and fellow
pupils.
Indeed,
apart from death and desecration, the Ahmadi community faces constant
oppression and discrimination in eligibility to hold government positions, in
contesting elections, in their businesses, and in destruction of their homes
and places of worship. Ahmadi Muslims are prevented by law from publishing and
possessing their core religious texts, crucially including the Holy Quran. As
reported on January 10, 2020, the Punjab Assembly’s Special Committee decided
to ban the Ahmadi newspaper, Al-Fazl. This, in a state and a country where
dozens of terrorist organisations openly publish multiple magazines.
The
oppression and suppression faced by Ahmadis are at the behest of the Pakistani
establishment. Noor-ul-Haq Qadri, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Religious and
Inter-faith Harmony Affairs, declared in May 2020 that any form of
“soft-heartedness” toward the Ahmadis was both un-Islamic and un-patriotic,
Whoever shows sympathy or compassion towards [Ahmadis] is neither loyal to
Islam nor the state of Pakistan.
Unsurprisingly,
the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), constituted in May 2020 has no
member from the Ahmadi community. Initially, it was suggested that Ahmadis
should get a representation in the Commission, but, as reported on May 18,
2020, Prime Minister Imran Khan rejected that idea after it sparked severe
criticism from orthodox Sunnis who consider the Ahmadi belief an insult to
Islam.
Moreover,
under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), fundamental religious rights are denied to
Ahmadis in Pakistan. Ordinance XX prohibits Ahmadis from self-declaration as a
Muslim, to make Azaan (prayer call), from paying zakat (alms), from observing
fast during Ramzaan, and from making pilgrimage to Mecca. PPC 298 C, thus
states,
Person of Quadiani group, etc., calling himself a Muslim or preaching or
propagating his faith: -
Any person
of the Quadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves 'Ahmadis' or by
any other name), who directly or indirectly, poses himself as a Muslim, or
calls, or refers to, his faith as Islam, or preaches or propagates his faith,
or invites others to accept his faith, by words, either spoken or written, or
by visible representations, or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious
feelings of Muslims shall be punished with imprisonment of either description
for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine.
The Ahmadi
community, accepted as a minority sect of Islam at the time of the country’s
independence in 1947, became the first minority group to be targeted for
sectarian violence when anti-Ahmadi riots broke out in 1953 in Lahore, leading
to the first imposition of Martial Law in the country’s history, limited to
Lahore. 2,000 Ahmadis were killed in violent protests.
Later, in
1974, under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Administration, the Parliament brought the
Second Amendment to the 1973 Constitution, and declared the Ahmadis
non-Muslims. Unlike all other Muslims in the country, Ahmadis were prohibited
from calling their place of worship a mosque and saying the common Islamic
greeting of Assalam o Alaikum (Peace be upon you ) or reading the Kalima (the
testimony of faith).
Further, in
1985, the then President Zia ul Haq pushed through the Eighth Amendment to the
1973 Constitution in Parliament, which was accompanied by a series of laws
effectively creating a separate electorate system for non-Muslims, including
Ahmadi Muslims. Moreover, according to the Amendment, they cannot hold
government office without publicly denouncing Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder
of the Ahmadi community.
The status
of the Ahmadis has become precarious. Several reports have highlighted the
pathetic conditions of the sect, including the International Human Rights
Committee report, Ahmadis in Pakistan Face an Existential Threat, published in
2017, which demonstrates that Ahmadis in Pakistan are violently targeted,
intimidated, harassed and persecuted at all levels of society. It also
testifies to the grave injustices that are meted out to minority religious
groups such as Ahmadi Muslims. Likewise, South Asia Democratic Forum’s report,
Persecution against the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan: A
multi-dimensional perspective, published on May 10, 2019, underlined the
multifaceted and multidimensional persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan in all
spheres of public and private life.
More
recently, the US States Commission on International Religious Freedom in its
Annual Report 2020, released in April 2020, explaining the situation of Ahmadi
community of Pakistan, noted,
Ahmadi
Muslims, with their faith essentially criminalized, continued to face severe
persecution from authorities as well as societal harassment due to their
beliefs, with both the authorities and mobs targeting their houses of worship.
In February
2020, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, declaring that minorities are equal
citizens of his country, had issued a warning that anyone targeting the
non-Muslim population of Pakistan would be strictly dealt with. Regrettably,
Khan has failed to back words with convincing action, as evident in the failure
to include an Ahmadi representative in the NCM, and also to ensure effective
legal action in any of the continuous stream of cases of atrocity and
discrimination targeting Ahmadis. Ahmadis, like other religious minorities in
Pakistan, continue to face violence and discrimination, targeted by acts of
vandalism and violence, forced to declare themselves as “non-Muslims” and
prohibited by law from professing or practicing their faith.
----
Sanchita
Bhattacharya is a Rresearch Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management
Original
Headline: Perils of the Ahmadi Community
Source:
South Asia Intelligence Review
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