The Hindu: The desire of Islamist extremists to ‘purify’ Pakistan has resulted in a major catastrophe for the minorities. The country cannot emerge as a modern pluralist state until the reversal of this culture of intolerance

The murder in Gujranwala of an elderly woman, a seven-year-old girl and an infant in a mob attack on members of the Ahmadi community highlights the continuing deterioration of Pakistan’s treatment of its religious minorities. The mob was incited by an Ahmadi youth allegedly sharing blasphemous material on his Facebook page. But the cause of incitement is hardly relevant. Pakistan has been described by several human rights organisations as one of the nations with the least tolerance in religious matters.

The latest incident should be viewed as part of a tragic pattern that has evolved over decades. Ironically, the intolerance that is now widely associated with Pakistan had little to do with its founder’s vision of a country where “in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”

The Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim but their beliefs are deemed by the orthodox as falling outside the tenets of Islam. The community recognises Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian as messiah and an emissary from god, a concept that runs contrary to the Orthodox Muslim notion of Khatm-e-Nabuwwat or Finality of the Prophethood. Anti-Ahmadi agitations have often been used by religious-political groups, particularly in the Punjab, as an instrument of polarisation. Violent attacks on Ahmadis in 1953 resulted in Pakistan’s first instance of limited martial law being imposed in the city of Lahore.

Growing discrimination

In 1974, another wave of violence led to Pakistan’s Parliament amending the Constitution to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims for legal purposes. It was argued at the time that once the Ahmadis’ apostasy is legally recognised and they are classified legally as non-Muslims, their orthodox Muslim critics would be satisfied and anti-Ahmadi violence would decline. But that has not happened. Instead, attacks on Ahmadis have continued unabated and along with other minority religious communities, there is an effort to marginalise the community, convert them or push them out of Pakistan.

Currently, the Ahmadis are barred by law from calling themselves Muslim or using Islamic terminology like “masjid” to describe their places of worship. Violation of that law entails criminal proceedings and imprisonment. But the community is not afforded any legal protection even as a non-Muslim minority. Over a one-and-a-half year period in 2012-2013, there were 54 recorded mob attacks against Ahmadis.

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The latest incident stands out because of the frivolousness of its ostensible cause and the innocence and helplessness of its victims. A grandmother and her seven-year-old granddaughter or an infant could hardly pose a threat to Islam in Gujranwala, a large city with millions of inhabitants and hundreds of mosques and madrasas.

The desire of Islamist extremists to “purify” Pakistan has resulted in a major catastrophe for the country’s minorities. The violence of Partition denuded Pakistan of the majority of its Hindus and Sikhs, who would have otherwise constituted almost 20 per cent of the new country’s population based on the 1941 census.

Now that a sizeable swathe of Pakistan’s Muslim population has been turned into zealots, communities such as the Ahmadis, who were considered Muslim at independence, have joined the ranks of endangered minorities. Even the Shia, almost 20 per cent of the populace, are being attacked by extremists who do not acknowledge them as being a part of Muslim society. The attempts to describe Shias as non-Muslims are particularly ironic in view of the fact that Pakistan’s founder, Quaid-e-Azam (the great leader) Muhammad Ali Jinnah was himself a Shia Muslim.

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