EDITORIAL

Source: Daily Times; OCTOBER 21, 2018

Siraj-ul-Haq is a man who appears to be hitting back. For while addressing a youth convention in Peshawar recently, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief spoke of the need for an Islamic revolution to transform Pakistan into a truly ideological nation. And although he refrained from talking in terms of bully-boy tactics by stressing how the journey must start with the self — the message could not have been clearer. At least when seen through the eyes of the Ahmadiyya. After all, Haq was not best pleased with a group of LUMS students. Their crime being to visit Rabwah in central Punjab; the country’s only Ahmadi-majority city. The purpose of the trip was to demonstrate solidarity with this most beleaguered group as part of a university community project aimed at promoting peace, tolerance and acceptance of Pakistan’s religious minorities.

This was sufficient to prompt Haq to take rhetorical aim at the Ahmadis. He accused the latter of conspiring against the country by spreading their influence in education institutes. Not only does this rob the students from one of Pakistan’s most prestigious universities of any kind of agency — it conveniently casts the Ahmadiyya in the role of aggressor.

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