Source: The Guardian
By Jon Boone
Nawaz Sharif orders university to name institution after the Nobel-winning physicist Abdus Salam, a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community
The Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, said he had approved naming the National Centre for Physics after Abdus Salam
Pakistan’s prime minister has risked enraging religious hardliners by ordering one of the country’s top universities to honour a Nobel prize-winning physicist from a minority sect whose members are banned from describing themselves as Muslims.
In an announcement that surprised many, Nawaz Sharif said he had given approval to rename the National Centre for Physics at the capital’s Quaid-e-Azam University as the “Professor Abdus Salam Centre for Physics”.
A fellowship programme to support five physicists a year to study abroad for their doctorates will also be named after Salam.
The recognition comes 20 years after the death of a scientist who won the Nobel prize in 1979 for his work in theoretical physics.
Despite the international esteem in which he was held – and his role in helping Pakistan develop nuclear weapons – governments in his homeland have not dared embrace a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
The sect, established in British India in 1889, is regarded as heretical by strict Muslims because Ahmadis believe the movement’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet. A central tenet of Islam is that Mohammad, the religion’s seventh-century founder, was the final prophet.
Because of the theological dispute, Ahmadis were declared to be non-Muslims in a 1974 constitutional amendment and further criminalised in 1984 when they were banned from “posing as Muslims”.
It means Ahmadis run the risk of imprisonment if they are caught calling their places of worship “mosques”, participating in the annual Eid animal sacrifice or even using common Islamic greetings.
Like those of many others buried in the town of Rabwah, a major centre for Ahmadis, Salam’s gravestone has been defaced so that the word Muslim is not visible.
In a recent reminder of the enduring passions surrounding the issue, the new chief of Pakistan’s army was falsely accused in the days before his appointment last month of having Ahmadi relatives.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist who has campaigned for 20 years for the facility at Quaid-e-Azam to be renamed after Salam, said Sharif’s action was a “tremendous development” that came after the prime minister saw him talking about the issue on a television show. Later, Sharif’s office urged Hoodbhoy to make a formal request to the government for Salam to be honoured.
Dr. Abdus Salam, Nobel Laureate in physics, 1979
Categories: Ahmadis And Pakistan, Asia, Dr. Abdus Salam, Minorities, Muslims, Nobel Prize, Pakistan, The Muslim Times
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif must be commended for naming the physics centre after Dr Abdus Salam. It was long overdue. Dr Salam passed away in 1996, it took 20 years to recognize his services to Pakistan and Third World countries. When an airport is built in Jhang, it should be named after him as well. I am delighted to know his portrait is now hanging in a high school in Islamabad, as one of the pioneers of Pakistan, labeled First Pakistani Muslim.
Congratulations to PM Nawaz Sharif for a bold and just move long past due by former Pakistani Governments that have come and gone. May God help him successfully implement the plan and give due recognition to Dr. Abdus Salam.
My husband and I too would applaud PM Nawaz Sharif for this honourable act, although we are not fans of the PM in other respects. But he has gone against much opposition from the religious fanatics and bigots for recognising Dr Abdus Salam’s contribution to and achievement in the sciences. Pakistan should be proud of him and he deserves to be remembered and honoured.
Pakistan PM took long at last gathered courage to acknowledge world’s renowned scientist. However it is to be seen how it casts him politically……I hope best for him at home