Epigraph: “Surely, Allah changes not the condition of a people until they change that which is in their hearts.” (Al Quran 13:12)

Then: A video clip from good old days of Imran Khan

Now: Video released May 1, 2013

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (Arabic: الجماعة الإسلامية الأحمدية ‎; transliterated: al-Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyyah al-Ahmadīyyah) (Urdu: احمدیہ مسلم جماعت‎) was founded in 1889 in India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (1835–1908).

The community is now led by the Khalifatul Masih (“successor of the Messiah”), currently Khalifatul Masih V, who is the spiritual leader of the community and the fifth successor to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who would soon be visiting USA.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, declared that he was the “Promised One” of all religions, fulfilling the eschatological prophecies found in world religions.^[1] He stated that his claims to being several prophets (religious personages) converging into one person were the symbolic, rather than literal, fulfillment of the messianic and eschatological prophecies found in the literature of the major religions.^[1] The motto of the Ahmadiyya Community is “Love for All, Hatred for None”.^[2]

Despite the 120 years of peaceful history of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a history of service to humanity, they have been persecuted in the name of ‘Law,’ in Pakistan for the last four decades.

The flip flop of Imran Khan, documented in two very short video clips, in the Muslim Times, is only one of the countless examples in this long series.

The Express Tribune reported on Friday, May 2, 2013:

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman, Imran Khan on Thursday issued a statement saying that the “PTI totally subscribes to the article in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on the Ahmadis. It is not part of the PTI agenda to seek amendment of the said article in the Constitution.”

The PTI Chairman was referring to article 260-3 of the Constitution that declares Ahmadis non-Muslims. Additionally, articles 298-B and 298-C prohibit Ahmadis from posing as Muslims, calling their faith Islam, proselytising, or “in any manner whatsoever” outraging the religious feelings of Muslims.

This clarification came in response to a video clip that surfaced on social media, showing a woman named Nadia Ramzan Chaudhry in a meeting with Mirza Masroor Ahmad, spiritual leader of the Ahmadi community, in UK. According to the video, Chaudhry especially asked for Ahmadi votes on behalf of the PTI.

Flip flop of Imran Khan is very much reflective of the malaise that is destroying the very soul of Pakistan.  Her present day failing struggle to free herself from the strangle hold and yoke of Mullaism, can be traced back to 1974, when Prime Minister Zulifqar Ali Bhutto, married his politics to religion, by getting the elected body, the National Assembly, to declare the Ahmadi Muslims, as non-Muslims, for the purposes of law.  Since then Pakistan has had complete inability to separate Mosque from State.  Now the Mosque or the Mullahs are dictating the violent politics of Pakistan.

The Mullahs have perhaps terrorized Imran Khan to reverse his stance on these basic human rights of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

The 180 million Pakistanis have lost their soul, as they have come to inherit, 1974 and then 1984 ordinances, promulgated by General Zia-ul-Haq.  Yes, they have killed their souls, they have committed spiritual suicide, by denying the Ahmadi Muslims their basic humanity and God given rights.  Except, of course those who have raised their voices against this persecution or at least have condemned this in their hearts.

No amount of political maneuvering or other measures can resuscitate the dying soul of Pakistan, except for searching and tracing it where they lost it.  The 180 million and their future generations will carry these scars and never understand the universality of human rights.

They have condemned themselves to this plight.

This is what the famous psychologist Carl Jung, defined as the memories from the past or the archetypes.

The concept of psychological archetypes was advanced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, in 1919. In Jung’s psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex ( e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype). Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution.^[8]

The American nation has come to believe, in human equality, because of two centuries of celebration of the Declaration of Independence.  They have shown this by electing a black person to the office of Presidency.  The three hundred million Americans have been uplifted by the shared experiences since 1776, this is their archetype.

The 180 million in Pakistan have become so used to discrimination against the Ahmadi Muslims, since 1974, that its absences seems unfamiliar and abnormal to them.  This shared experience is eating their souls, distorting their thinking, if not of all, certainly for many.  This is their archetype, this is their shared experience and psychology.

Unless they shake off these negative experiences of last four decades, in their zeal to condemn the Ahmadiyya Muslims, as they so routinely do, in their very applications for National Identity cards and Passports, history will condemn them to oblivion.

Visitors will come to their tombstones and mourn their death, their suicide to uphold their hatreds, their prejudices given to them by their political leaders for their petty political gains.

I hope they can do better than this by choosing love over hatred, understanding over prejudice, universality over parochialism.

Epilogue

When I put on my hat of a psychology student and pretend to be a psychologist, the above verse quoted as an epigraph, “Surely, Allah changes not the condition of a people until they change that which is in their hearts,” appears to me or that is how I read it in the eye of my mind, “Surely, Allah changes not the condition of a people until they change their archetypes.” (Al Quran 13:12)

Long live Pakistan, but, not in its present day submission to Mullaism, fundamentalism and short sightedness.