Khaled Ahmed - Follies Of Faith: Imran Khan’s cave-in on Ahmadi issue underlines a continuing injustice
In 2011, pamphlets were distributed in
Faisalabad, Punjab, calling on Muslims to kill Ahmadis, displaying names and
addresses of 50 prominent Ahmadis who were to be eliminated. The pamphlets were
signed by the student wing of the Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Federation, boldly listing
their website and phone numbers. No one stopped the hate campaign: Finally, six
Ahmadis were shot dead. This was nothing unusual. On average, 25 of them are
killed by fanatics every year who think Pakistan has to be purged of Ahmadis.
Last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan got into trouble with the religion he so openly espouses as the country’s leader. He set up an Economic Advisory Council (EAC) to resolve Pakistan’s economic crisis and appointed Atif R Mian of Princeton University Department of Economics, and Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy as a member. He had earlier announced in a public gathering of his party that he would bring in this brilliant America-based economist.
The reaction was
immediate in Pakistan’s vast religious underground that coalesces easily with
the trained jihadists who come in handy when you have to get rid of someone.
Helplessly, PM Khan asked Dr Mian to leave the EAC, which he did, followed by
two “protesters” who thought this act was primitive and unfair. The “liberal”
lobby, much maligned and harassed in both India and Pakistan, castigated Khan
for his retreat — in English — while the Urdu media thought it was normal to
get rid of an Ahmadi.
Ahmadis were declared
non-Muslims in the Second Amendment of the Constitution by a “liberal”
left-wing leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,
commanding a majority in Parliament in 1974. The Penal Code later laid down
that the Ahmadis couldn’t call themselves Muslim, or call a mosque a mosque, or
be found observing common Islamic rituals in public. But the religious man on
the street thought the Ahmadis were apostates, having abandoned Islam, and
should be put to death. The hatred simmers near the surface and no Ahmadi is
safe walking the streets of Pakistan.
An incident in 2016
highlighted Pakistan’s stunted ideology. An Ahmadi place of worship (don’t say
mosque, please) was attacked in the sacred month of Rabiul Awwal, the month
Holy Prophet Muhammad was born. The fact that then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
renamed the Institute of Physics at Islamabad University after Abdus Salam, the
Ahmadi Nobel Laureate, had nothing to do with the holy month. The gesture was
nevertheless an act of humanity and righting of a wrong that was done to Dr
Salam because he was born a Muslim and was forced out of Islam. The Ahmadi
Amendment is the biggest hurdle in the observance of human rights in Pakistan. In 2016, in Chakwal
city in Punjab, a thousand-strong mob of Muslims attacked a place of worship - which can’t be called a “mosque” - of the Ahmadis for reasons the Punjab
government was not willing to make public… read more:
