Persecution of Ahmadiyyas bears tacit approval of Pakistani leadership

Killed and persecuted for following the Ahmadiyya ideology, this Muslim community fears extinction only in Pakistan.

Ironically, Pakistan’s foundation and early prosperity post-1947 are largely attributed to Ahmadiyya minds.

As Pakistan goes back in time inching towards extremism, human rights violations against minorities have become a norm. While international pressures can momentarily pause the atrocities on other religious communities, the Ahmadiyya violations mostly continue unabated because their own Muslim brothers do not recognize their beliefs.

In fact, Ahmadiyya are called heretics and apostates. Blasphemy laws too have been tweaked in such a way to accommodate their ideology as anti-Mohammedan, which means an automatic death sentence to the practitioner.

The hate campaign against the community has consumed such a prodigious number of people that it is shocking to believe a bunch of Ulemas incarcerated by their obsession with power can turn a Muslim against another.

Notably, Pakistan is the only country in the world that has officially outcasted this sect as non-Muslims. What is more shameful is that the assailants of Ahmadi Muslims are lauded by society; even the most educated, sophisticated gentry of Pakistani Muslims believe that Ahmadis are getting the treatment they deserve.

The rise in attacks on their community members and mosques, called ‘Ahmadi worship houses’, are proof that sectarian death squads appointed by Barelvi Islamic strategists through their political party Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) have a free hand over them.

Such grotesque massacres are followed by social media condemnation by political leaders with promises of “punishing the culprit”, but the police and justice serving agencies are too scared to intervene in religio-politics matters, or firmly believe in the ill-treatment of Ahmadiyyas.

Rather than fixing the system and implementing progressive ways to curb the discrimination against Ahmadiyyas, Pakistan fuels the flames of sectarianism. With the recent amendment of the infamous Blasphemy Law which increases the imprisonment period for the incriminated to at least 10 years along with a chance of receiving the death penalty, the intentions of the State are clear. Pakistan is performing a pre-meditated genocide of Ahmadiyya Muslims.

In the past, such false cases of alleged blasphemy would reach the court, but the corrupt justice system would find a way around it. On 29 July 2020, an Ahmadi under trial for blasphemy accusations, Tahir Ahmad Naseem, was fortunate enough to receive a chance for a court hearing two years after his arrest in 2018, before communal violence could have killed him on the streets. But a teenager “somehow” managed to bring a weapon inside the courtroom in Peshawar and with the help of a junior lawyer and a cleric, shot Naseem 6 times in the middle of the proceedings.

A US National, Naseem was lured from Illinois to Pakistan.

While the case should have been dismissed on grounds of an indictment of conspiracy against the American man, he was not only detained in a foreign country but also murdered before the upholders of the law.

This state of affairs is the reality of Pakistan. Enveloped in hate against Ahmadiyyas, they will sail across the seven seas to kill a harmless individual who has no bearing on their society.

Though extremism formally began at the behest of Zia-ul-Haq and that era is remembered as the peak of brutalities against minorities, it remains a biased judgment. Zia’s rule (1987-88) witnessed only 31 blasphemy cases. The 7 years of Musharraf’s rule (2000-2007) saw 503 cases, while the recent PTI government’s 3.5-year-long tenure reported 499 cases.

Ahmadiyya community, constitutionally declared a non-Muslim minority, just like other religious minorities of Pakistan is in its final phase of extinction.