Jahane-Rumi: Half citizens? The Ahmadiyya community of Pakistan
Throughout 2012, members of the Ahmadiyya community of Pakistan from all walks of life were harassed, threatened, and at times killed, with impunity. These attacks were the latest in a wave of violence and maltreatment that stretches back to the early years of Pakistan. Successive regimes, both military and democratic, have actively or otherwise worsened the trend.[i]
The generation that grew up in General Zia-ul Haq’s Pakistan (1977-1988) saw a country that was being re-engineered as an “Islamic state”. Several criminal, social and economic laws were introduced in the name of Islam. The Federal Shariat Court was established with the power to strike down any existing law it deemed to be “repugnant to the Injunctions of Islam, as laid down in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet”.[ii] Extensive religious programming on state television regurgitated the state narrative.
Pakistan was an ideological state and it needed to assume a new identity independent of the hitherto pluralistic culture and history of South Asia. Further indoctrination was attempted through textbooks and prayer sermons.
Arguably the most categorical ‘fact’ propagated during the Zia era was that Ahmadis, or Qadianis, were pretending to be Muslims while actually they were not. Teachers told their students that this community had violated a central tenet of Islamic faith – that is, the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH) – and believed that the founder of their sect, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was also a ‘messenger of God’.
Categories: Ahmadis And Pakistan, Ahmadiyyat: True Islam, Anti Islam act by Muslims, Asia