By Nazia Parveen

A sectarian dispute in Pakistan was played out in Glasgow when Bradford taxi driver Tanveer Ahmed stabbed shopkeeper Asad Shah to death in a religiously motivated murder.

Simmering hatred towards Britain’s Ahmadiyya Muslim community spilled over into violence the day before Good Friday this year when Shah was murdered in his shop by Ahmed, who remained defiant even as he was sentenced on Tuesday.

Ahmed, a Sunni Muslim, was offended by Shah’s religious proclamations on social media. On Wednesday morning, as Ahmed was being taken down to the cells after being jailed for a minimum of 27 years, there were chants from his supporters in the public gallery, and he shouted: “Muhammad is the prophet, he is the only one.”

Shah, whose final Facebook update, posted a few hours before his death, had offered Easter greetings “to my beloved Christian nation”, was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. This minority group faces persecution – most recently in Pakistan and Indonesia – and is treated with open hostility by many orthodox Muslims because it differs from their belief that Muhammad is the final prophet.

Some who identified themselves as friends or extended family of Shah’s 32-year-old murderer Ahmed, whom the Guardian spoke to in Bradford, refused to condemn the killing and claimed that he was driven to commit it by events unfolding thousands of miles away in his home country of Pakistan.

The father of three, who came to Britain on a marriage visa more than a decade ago, was a staunch supporter of Islamic fundamentalist Mumtaz Qadri.

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