By Kashif N. Chaudhry; Physician, writer and human rights activist

Huff Post: Religious clerics in Pakistan celebrate September 7th as a day of victory for Islam and Pakistan. Officially dubbed the “Khatme Nubuwwat Day” or “Finality of Prophethood Day,” many mosques come alive with celebrations this day, sweets are distributed andintense speeches are made in large religious gatherings.

Forty years ago this day, Pakistan passed the second amendment to its Constitution, forcibly declaring the Ahmadis non-Muslim. With the stroke of a pen, the Ahmadis had been snatched of their basic right to self-identity at the insistence of the very clerics who had opposed Muhammad Ali Jinnah in his rightful struggle for Pakistan. It was this day that Pakistan started drifting away from the vision of its valiant founder. When Jinnah was pressed by extremist clerics to declare Ahmadis non-Muslim, he had replied, “What right have I to declare a person non-Muslim, when he claims to be a Muslim.”

So, what had Ahmadis done to deserve this State-sanctioned discrimination now?

It is no secret that Ahmadis played a very prominent role in the creation of Pakistan and its subsequent growth. The community supported Jinnah in his fight for the rights of the minority Muslims in United India. It was an Ahmadi Imam whoconvinced Jinnah to return to India, after Jinnah bid farewell to Indian politics and moved to London. It was an Ahmadi, Sir Zafarullah Khan, who drafted the famous Pakistan Resolution that became the documentary basis for the demand for Pakistan. Jinnah appointed him the country’s first foreign minister. Sir Zafarullah Khan fought the Kashmir issue at the United Nations and pioneered the legal battle for a free Palestine. His efforts directly led to the independence of many Arab and North African States.

However, his career was cut short when he was forced to resign by the anti-Ahmadi Movement spearheaded by Abul Ala Maududi. The country’s only Nobel Laureate, Dr Abdus Salam, also belonged to the Ahmadiyya Community. When he planned to give a lecture on his Nobel-prize winning theory at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Islami Jamiat Talaba activists threatened to break his legs. His trip had to be cancelled.

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