On October 14, 62-year-old Mr Latif Alam Butt, an Ahmadi retired Pakistan Air Force (PAF) serviceman was gunned down at Kamra Air base, Attock District. He was shot due to his religious beliefs. My father was also an Ahmadi and a retired PAF serviceman, who also happened to die at the age of 62. But my father was not killed, only marginalised, for his religious beliefs. But he and Mr Butt share more than meets the eye.

In 1965, when Mr Butt was only 13-years-old, my parents, newly married at the time, were making plans to start their married life at my father’s post in Risalpur, Pakistan. While my mother anxiously awaited her husband, Pakistani and Indian forces came face to face at the border. Without thinking twice about his young wife and their plans, my father headed to Sargodha where the PAF played a vital role in defending Pakistan from Indian forces. To honour PAF’s spectacular performance at Sargodha base, September 7^th was declared as PAF Day.

Nine years later, in the summer of 1974, when Mr Butt was 22-years-old and was about to join the PAF, my father was transferred to Peshawar. While he was trying to settle down his young family in Peshawar, nationwide riots erupted against Pakistan’s Ahmadi community. My father put his children in a relatively safer place and patiently waited for the government’s verdict on the “Ahmadi issue”. He was certain that this turbulence would be short lived just like 1953’s riots. He unwearyingly took all the sarcastic comments from some of his colleagues in the hope of getting justice from the government. In his eyes, the Pakistan he proudly served was far above the religious intolerance the Mullahs were spewing.

More: