ET: The recent act of violence against Ahmadis in Gujranwala is part of a series of such events, which have been taking place in Pakistan for many decades now. While all religious minorities in Pakistan have been under attack, Ahmadis are the worst affected. I will argue that this is because the very entity of followers of this community has been criminalised in Pakistan.
It has been exactly 40 years since Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims by the National Assembly of Pakistan. The proceedings of the debate, which took place in the August-September of 1974, have now been officially declassified and can be accessed online (although the staff of the National Assembly continues to maintain that this record was destroyed by fire during the 1990s). These proceedings comprise 21 volumes with over 3,000 pages. I am leaving out the details of the extensive debate, which took place in the assembly and jump to the concluding speech made by the attorney general on September 6-7. Yahya Bakhtiyar, the then attorney general, did not just give theological reasons for declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims; he also furnished arguments, which, in a nuanced way, were suggestive of the inherent disloyalty of Ahmadis towards the state.
He said: “Then, Sir, when we are happy, they are not happy; when we are unhappy, they are happy. This is what the evidence has shown. We created a separate state, with the help of God, because we thought and felt like one man that we shall remain together because we think and feel in the same manner; there is a subjective psychological feeling of belonging to one another, whether we are Baloch or Pathans or Sindhis or Punjabis, and for this reason, we feel and think very differently from them.”
Categories: Ahmadis And Pakistan, Ahmadiyyat: True Islam, Answers to Anti-Islam, Asia
So Yahya Bakhtiar said: “there is a subjective psychological feeling of belonging to one another, whether we are Baloch or Pathans or Sindhis or Punjabis,…”
Mr Bakhtiar somehow forgot to add Bengalis to this list! Was there a feeling of “belonging to one another” between these four groups and Bengalis in East Pakistan from March to December 1971?
And did Mr Bakhtiar perceive a feeling of “belonging to one another” between Z.A. Bhutto’s and Zia-ul-Haq’s supporters in the supreme court in Islamabad when he was representing Bhutto’s appeal against the sentence of death?
No, Mr Bakhtiar, it was you and people like you who betrayed the Quaid-i Azam and his Muslim League which you so fervently supported in 1947.