The Nation: Let me start with a profound apology for covering, what many might deem an “unimportant” issue this week. With all my sympathies with the innocent children and civilians being killed on the pretext of targeting terrorists, I for one, could not help thinking about a ‘minor’ incident that happened in Gujranwala. Guilty as charged.
As per the details reported by this newspaper on July 28, a 55 year old woman called Bashiran, a minor girl called Kianat, and a seven year old girl called Hira as well as an unborn child, died due to suffocation when an angry mob attacked and burnt five houses belonging to members of the Ahmadiya community over alleged blasphemy. Protecting Islam from potential profanity and blasphemy is, as you know, the first and foremost duty of the believers. By killing those four ‘kaafirs,’ the members of the Ummah successfully saved Islam, (just as the same people viciously deride their Ummah being killed in Palestine by Yahoodi missiles).
In May 2010, ninety four people were killed in Lahore and more than 120 injured according to official reports when two Ahmadi mosques… oh sorry… Ahmadi “worship places,” were attacked and a hostage situation lasted for several hours. What transpired between hostages, their assailants and the law enforcing agencies, is not known. All we know is that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Punjabi Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, even though on July 10 of the same year, Al-Jazeera reported that the Punjab Police had arrested the alleged suspects of the Lahore Massacre who belonged to Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami, a banned outfit.
Ever since it came into being in the last quarter of the 19th century, the Ahmadiyas invited a tense relationship with the rest of the Muslims in undivided India. Nevertheless, they were still considered a sect of Islam. In the general elections of 1946, the Ahmadiya community voted as Muslims and contributed to the creation of Pakistan.
After Pakistan came into being, the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (he would have liked to be addressed as Mr. Jinnah, that’s how I’d prefer to call him), appointed Sir Chaudhry Zafarullah Khan as the first Foreign Minister of the newly born country. Besides being a prominent Ahmadi scholar, Sir Khan was a statesman, a diplomat and an international jurist par excellence. Ironically, there is almost a consensus amongst the historians that Sir Khan was the drafter of the Lahore Resolution in 1940, which later came to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, as it is thought to be the basis of the demand for Pakistan – the country where Ahmadis are being persecuted and killed for their faith.
Not that there was no anxiety amongst the ‘pious’ of the time on this appointment, but it certainly did not occur to anyone at the time to kill Sir Zafarullah Khan or burn his house. After Mr. Jinnah left the mortal world, right wing elements led by the Ahrar and Jama’at-e-Islami (both against the creation of Pakistan and Mr. Jinnah, lest we forget) whipped up people’s religious emotions against Ahmadis.
Having triumphed in 1949 after getting the Objectives Resolution passed, Jama’at-e-Islami and Ahrar had managed to penetrate quite deep into the ruling Muslim League by 1951-52. This was the time when League leaders including then Chief Minister of Punjab, Mumtaz Daultana were completely under the trance of anti-Ahmadiya rhetoric. Daultana, rather, had become the mouthpiece for anti-Ahmadiya sentiment in Punjab. By 1953, anti-Ahmadiya riots had erupted killing scores of Ahmadis alongside destruction of their properties.
The riots were accompanied by inflammatory articles in newspapers as well as street protests and political rallies against Ahmadis. There were severe agitations against the Ahmadis, which led to 200 officially reported Ahmadi deaths followed by the promulgation of the country’s first martial law by then Governor General Ghulam Muhammad. The Martial Law government sentenced Maulana Abul’Ala Maudoodi and Maulana Abdul Sattar Niazi to death in 1953, but the death sentence was changed into life sentence in three days due to ‘political reasons’.

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