[LINK] Two links on Pakistani persection of Ahmadis
The Ahmadis are adherents of the Ahmadiyya, an Islamic sect founded in British India in the late 19th century and currently numbering in the millions. For a variety of theological reasons, not least of which is controversy over the exact status of the movement's founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, despite Ahmadis' self-identification as Muslim they are often not viewed as Muslims by their nominal co-religionists. (It mightn't be inaccurate to compare the Ahmadis' position relative to mainstream Islam to that of Mormons relative to mainstream Christianity.)
Of late, anti-Ahmadi sentiments have hardened into outright persecution in Pakistan, with growing levels of state-sanctioned violence against Ahmadi communities and even their physical institutions. In the Punjabi city of Kharian, an Ahmadi mosque was vandalized by the police. Zofeen Ebrahim's Inter Press Service article "Ahmadis Lose Hope This Ramadan" takes a look at the plight of these people.
As millions around the world enter the third week of the Ramadan fast, the fraternity that typically unites Muslims during the holy month does not extend to Pakistan’s Ahmadi community, which is facing worse persecution than ever before.
[. . .]
“What space for Ahmadis are you talking about? They don’t have any,” Faisal Neqvi, a Lahore-based lawyer, told IPS.
Declared non-Muslims in 1974, the legal and social exclusion of Ahmadis was further enshrined in a 1984 law that prohibits them from proclaiming themselves Muslims or making pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia.
While non-Muslim missionaries are permitted to proselytise as long as they do not preach against Islam, Ahamdis cannot even hold a public congregation or sing hymns in praise of the prophet.
Last month, hostility towards the community of four million bubbled over in Kharian, a city in the Punjab province, when a police contingent demolished six minarets of an Ahmadi mosque, Baitul Hamd, and effaced the calligraphy on its walls.
Raja Zahid, the police officer who supervised the demolition squad, told the Express Tribune, an English daily, that the act of destruction was carried out following a formal complaint from a religious organisation called Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Islam .
According to Zahid, there was a mutual understanding that the demolition would take place.
“We made sure that we were respectful, but the law 298-B clearly states that Qadianis (Ahmadis) cannot call their worship place a ‘mosque’, and if it cannot be called that, then it cannot resemble the mosque either,” said Zahid.
An incensed Ahmadiyya Jamaat spokesperson, Saleemuddin, told IPS, “There is no patented design for a mosque or a law that states that a minaret of a certain design can only be used by a mosque.”
Meanwhile, a Reuters article by Myra MacDonald, "When minarets fall in Pakistani town, UK diaspora feels shock
", highlights the transfer of violent anti-Ahmadi sentiments from Pakistan to the Pakistani diaspora in the United Kingdom. Shouldn't calls for the murder of religious minorities lead to criminal prosecutions?
Perhaps the text messages foreshadowed what was about to happen in Pakistan. One in June telling him his services as a London taxi driver would not be needed. A second in July: "u r qadiani and qadianis are not muslims. They r kaafirs".
And then a phone call from an anguished relative back home. Police had come to their mosque, the pride of the local Ahmadi community, in the town of Kharian in Pakistan's Punjab province and torn down its minarets.
"It was a very beautiful mosque," recalled Munawar Ahmed Khurshid, the imam who laid the first stone when the mosque was built, and who like many Ahmadis has since moved to Britain after Pakistan's laws turned increasingly hostile to the sect - often known by the derogatory term Qadiani in Pakistan and dismissed as kafir, or infidels.
[. . . S]uch is the intimacy between Pakistan and its 1.2 million-strong diaspora in Britain that not only did the Ahmadi community in London learn the details from their families before it was reported in the media, they have seen the echoes of the same persecution here.
Or more strangely, a foreshadowing.
Hence the texts to the taxi driver - whose name has been withheld for security reasons - who broke off from a conversation about events in Pakistan to bring out his phone to show the messages he received in London.
[. . .]
In Pakistan, the Ahmadis have become particularly vulnerable since 1984. In May 2010, at least 86 people were killed in militant attacks on two Ahmadi mosques in Punjab's capital Lahore. Every month or so in Pakistan, Ahmadis are killed in ones or twos - sometimes stabbed, sometimes shot.
In Britain, which the spiritual leader of the sect has made his home, there have been, as yet, no deaths.
Yet the threat is there in the text messages. It is there in the boycott of a butcher because people are told his meat is not halal even though it comes from the same slaughterhouse as that sold by non-Ahmadi butchers. It is there in leaflets distributed quietly in London declaring that Ahmadis are "wajib ul qatl" - worthy of death.
Of late, anti-Ahmadi sentiments have hardened into outright persecution in Pakistan, with growing levels of state-sanctioned violence against Ahmadi communities and even their physical institutions. In the Punjabi city of Kharian, an Ahmadi mosque was vandalized by the police. Zofeen Ebrahim's Inter Press Service article "Ahmadis Lose Hope This Ramadan" takes a look at the plight of these people.
As millions around the world enter the third week of the Ramadan fast, the fraternity that typically unites Muslims during the holy month does not extend to Pakistan’s Ahmadi community, which is facing worse persecution than ever before.
[. . .]
“What space for Ahmadis are you talking about? They don’t have any,” Faisal Neqvi, a Lahore-based lawyer, told IPS.
Declared non-Muslims in 1974, the legal and social exclusion of Ahmadis was further enshrined in a 1984 law that prohibits them from proclaiming themselves Muslims or making pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia.
While non-Muslim missionaries are permitted to proselytise as long as they do not preach against Islam, Ahamdis cannot even hold a public congregation or sing hymns in praise of the prophet.
Last month, hostility towards the community of four million bubbled over in Kharian, a city in the Punjab province, when a police contingent demolished six minarets of an Ahmadi mosque, Baitul Hamd, and effaced the calligraphy on its walls.
Raja Zahid, the police officer who supervised the demolition squad, told the Express Tribune, an English daily, that the act of destruction was carried out following a formal complaint from a religious organisation called Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Islam .
According to Zahid, there was a mutual understanding that the demolition would take place.
“We made sure that we were respectful, but the law 298-B clearly states that Qadianis (Ahmadis) cannot call their worship place a ‘mosque’, and if it cannot be called that, then it cannot resemble the mosque either,” said Zahid.
An incensed Ahmadiyya Jamaat spokesperson, Saleemuddin, told IPS, “There is no patented design for a mosque or a law that states that a minaret of a certain design can only be used by a mosque.”
Meanwhile, a Reuters article by Myra MacDonald, "When minarets fall in Pakistani town, UK diaspora feels shock
", highlights the transfer of violent anti-Ahmadi sentiments from Pakistan to the Pakistani diaspora in the United Kingdom. Shouldn't calls for the murder of religious minorities lead to criminal prosecutions?
Perhaps the text messages foreshadowed what was about to happen in Pakistan. One in June telling him his services as a London taxi driver would not be needed. A second in July: "u r qadiani and qadianis are not muslims. They r kaafirs".
And then a phone call from an anguished relative back home. Police had come to their mosque, the pride of the local Ahmadi community, in the town of Kharian in Pakistan's Punjab province and torn down its minarets.
"It was a very beautiful mosque," recalled Munawar Ahmed Khurshid, the imam who laid the first stone when the mosque was built, and who like many Ahmadis has since moved to Britain after Pakistan's laws turned increasingly hostile to the sect - often known by the derogatory term Qadiani in Pakistan and dismissed as kafir, or infidels.
[. . . S]uch is the intimacy between Pakistan and its 1.2 million-strong diaspora in Britain that not only did the Ahmadi community in London learn the details from their families before it was reported in the media, they have seen the echoes of the same persecution here.
Or more strangely, a foreshadowing.
Hence the texts to the taxi driver - whose name has been withheld for security reasons - who broke off from a conversation about events in Pakistan to bring out his phone to show the messages he received in London.
[. . .]
In Pakistan, the Ahmadis have become particularly vulnerable since 1984. In May 2010, at least 86 people were killed in militant attacks on two Ahmadi mosques in Punjab's capital Lahore. Every month or so in Pakistan, Ahmadis are killed in ones or twos - sometimes stabbed, sometimes shot.
In Britain, which the spiritual leader of the sect has made his home, there have been, as yet, no deaths.
Yet the threat is there in the text messages. It is there in the boycott of a butcher because people are told his meat is not halal even though it comes from the same slaughterhouse as that sold by non-Ahmadi butchers. It is there in leaflets distributed quietly in London declaring that Ahmadis are "wajib ul qatl" - worthy of death.