Karachi, Pakistan. 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 little space there might once have been for this religious minority — who believe that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, is the promised messiah and reformer whose advent was foretold by the Holy Prophet Muhammad — is quickly disappearing altogether.
“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 proselytize 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 toward 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 organization 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.”
In fact, Baitul Hamd was built in 1980, four years before the Ahmadis were barred from calling themselves Muslims.
Disputing the police statement, Saleemuddin said: “They [the police] came without a court order in the thick of the night.”
Ahmadiyya community leaders have reported that their mosques and community lands are routinely confiscated by local governments and given to the majority Muslim community. There have been instances where authorities halted construction or renovation of these places of worship.
“It all originates from the laws introduced in the early 80s when it became a crime for an Ahmadi to use any symbol or words that might indicate he/she is a Muslim,” said Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
The law is taken to such an extreme that “once, a child who was just a few years old was sent to prison because he received an invitation card that used the word ‘Bismillah’ [meaning ‘in the name of God’]”, Yusuf added.
One of the minarets of Baitul Hamd iMosque n Kharian, in the process of being demolished. (Photo courtesy of IPS/Ahmadiyya Jammat)
I am an ahmadi. this is not a new thing for us in Pakistan.people know our feelings. Worship places like Temples, churches, synagogs, gurdwaras and Mosques are Allah Almihgtys houses. If theses are harmed, He will revenge Himself. I can only utter Inna lillahi wa inna alehi rajeun.
Sadly Pakistanis only hurry in destructive aspects. This has become their character as a nation.
Now they have so much adopted to it that if they do not find a real enemy they kill or destroy their own people. If they do not find anyone else they may destroy themselves.