The burning down of a factory owned by an Ahmedi family followed by the ransacking of an Ahmedi place of worship in Jhelum has once again showed how precarious the situation is for that community in Pakistan and how easily they can become victims of mob outrage and hatred, which has been cultivated slowly and steadily over the years. Against their will, they were cast out of the fold of Islam by the National Assembly (NA) in 1974. Then, in 1984, horrendous sanctions were placed on their freedom of religion and speech in the form of Ordinance XX of 1984, a law that mirrors, in its ruthlessness, the Nazi regime’s laws in Germany in the 1930s. Since the mid-1980s, the rest of us have been forced to abuse them and the founder of their sect in order to get a passport as Muslims in Pakistan. It seems there is an organised campaign to target the community’s economic well being by destroying their businesses, harassing their youth and ransacking their communal properties.
This did not happen overnight; it is a result of the state’s tolerance of hate speech against this particular community, and other sects and religions in general, which has become the norm since the late 1970s. The state has allowed hate mongers and bigots to flourish in small towns and qasbahs especially those in upper Punjab, lining the famous GT Road and on the Seraiki belt. These towns and qasbahs have now become hotbeds of extremism and religious and sectarian exclusivism.
Take, for example, Ishtiaq Ahmed, the so-called detective storywriter, who passed away a few days ago. Since the 1970s, Ishtiaq Ahmed has written over 800 novels in the Inspector Jamshaid, Inspector Kamran and Shoki Brothers series all of which contain messages — subliminal, implicit and explicit — against the Ahmedis, Shias, Christians and Jews. In his novels, these groups were portrayed as perpetually scheming against Islam (obviously Sunni Islam) and Pakistan. The irony that Pakistan’s founder was a Shia and its first foreign minister was an Ahmedi was completely lost on the late author. Or perhaps it was by design. In the two children’s magazines Ishtiaq Ahmed edited, numerous issues were dedicated to Ahrari leaders like Ataullah Shah Bokhari, Mazhar Ali Azhar and Shorish Kashmiri who were presented as the real heroes of Pakistan and Islam. These Ahrari leaders, for those who are not familiar with history, were the ones who had called Pakistan Kafiristan and Jinnah Kafir-e-Azam.

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