A Forgotten Minority

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Adil Ali


On August 11, 1947, addressing the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan following his election as the first President, Muhammad Ali Jinnah proclaimed: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, would be rolling over in his grave if he saw the current state of minorities in Pakistan. 

Parts of Jinnah’s speech have been downplayed, altered or omitted altogether by the Government of Pakistan to appease religious groups within the country, such acts are demonstrative of the power wielded by clerics in Pakistan. Their influence has grown exponentially in the past few decades and the brunt of this power shift has been mainly felt by the fledgling minorities of the country. 

Ahmadis, a religious minority, have been on the receiving end of systematic and particularly severe persecution from their fellow countrymen as well as the Pakistani State. Soon after the partition of India, clerics belonging to the Sunni majority began engaging in anti-Ahmadi agitation. On May 1, 1949, Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam, a Muslim separatist movement, made its first public demand that Ahmadis be declared a non-Muslim minority. It used outlandish conspiracy theories accusing the Ahmadis of conspiring with India against Pakistan’s Sunni population. This was after all, and still is, the oldest trick in the book to malign an individual or an entity in Pakistan. 

Even though the attacks against the Ahmadis continued for the next two decades, it wasn’t until 1974 that the Government of Pakistan decided to engage in state-sponsored religious discrimination against the community. In 1974, the Sunni clerics saw a new spate of violence against the Ahmadis as an opportunity to pressure the then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims. As a result, the Pakistani parliament introduced Articles 260(3)(a) and (b), which defined the meaning of the term “Muslim” in the Pakistani context and listed religious groups that were declared non-Muslims. Put into effect on September 6, 1974, the amendment deprived Ahmadis of their identity as Muslims and consequently curtails their religious freedoms. 

For fear of being charged, Ahmadis could no longer profess their faith, either verbally or in writing. Law enforcement agencies destroyed Ahmadi translations of the Quran and banned Ahmadi publications. Furthermore, Ordinance XX prohibited Ahmadis from declaring their faith publicly, propagating their faith, building mosques, or making the call for Muslim prayers. This amounts to a de facto criminalization of any public act of worship for Ahmadis. Over the last three decades, the clerics’ propaganda has influenced the masses and that has led to widespread hatred against the Ahmadis. The hatred has been woven so deep into the fabric of Pakistani society that the country refuses to acknowledge the only Nobel laureate it has ever produced— Dr. Abdus Salam Khan won the Nobel Prize for physics but because he belonged to the Ahmadiyya Community, there is no monument to celebrate him and no universities named after him. The hatred was such that the word "Muslim" on his gravestone was also erased. 

There has been no let-up in violence against the community in recent times. On May 28, 2010, two teams of attackers stormed Ahmadiyya mosques in Lahore during the Friday prayers and slaughtered 94 members of the community. The violence, as gruesome as it was, wasn’t the most disturbing aspect. It was the reaction of the Pakistani society that was most abhorrent. The Pakistani media, which is normally quite vociferous, remained uncharacteristically restrained. The media did not even consider the victims worthy enough to be characterized as “martyrs”, a title usually conferred upon any victims of terrorist attacks. Even the elected representatives in the parliament chose to remain mute on the issue rather than voicing their support for the Ahmadiyya community. It wasn’t until three brave female MPs crossed party lines to propose a resolution condemning the attacks that the parliament even acknowledged the violence against the persecuted community. When Pakistan's main opposition leader and former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, used the phrase "our brothers" for the murdered Ahmadis, leaders from 11 religious political parties came together to condemn him and threatened to issue a fatwa declaring him a heretic. This is a stark demonstration of how the clerics have maintained a tight grip on the politicians in Pakistan and how their influence extends into the public sphere. 

Apart from being victimized by extremist militant groups, the Ahmadis have often found themselves to be targets of blasphemy allegations and open discrimination in their daily lives. In October this year, 10 students, including seven girls, and a female teacher were expelled from Chenab Public School and Muslim Public School, in the Punjab province, for being Ahmadis. According to Saleemuddin, the spokesperson of the Ahmadiyya community, the expulsion came in the aftermath of a public meeting held in the city where religious preachers openly indulged in hate speeches against the community. Muslim Public School Principal, Yasir Abbas admitted to caving under pressure from the clerics who demanded the expulsion of Ahmadi students from his school. Khalil Ahmed, whose three daughters were expelled, told The Express Tribune: “It is extremely unfortunate that my daughters are being deprived of the most basic and fundamental human right such as education all because of religious intolerance.” “I have no alternative to ensure that their education continues,” he added.

As a Pakistani myself, it wasn’t until I read an article about Ahmadi persecution that I realized that over the years I have personally witnessed and to a certain extent, contributed towards this blatant oppression. While applying for a passport or national ID card, I never cared to read the oath that I was signing. An oath that no Muslim anywhere in the world is asked to sign goes like this: “I consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad an impostor prophet. And also consider his followers, whether belonging to the Lahori or Qadiani group, to be non-Muslims.”

 This reference to the Ahmadiyya community is a requirement for all Muslims to sign when applying for a new passport in Pakistan, which by the way is the only country to have officially declared the Ahmadis to be non-Muslims.

As I delve into the path that my country has taken throughout history, it leaves me with a sense of sadness knowing that Pakistan, at the time of its independence, guaranteed more rights and freedoms to its minorities than even the United States of America. While the US transformed itself from being a segregated society to a nation that championed equality and fairness throughout the rest of the world, Pakistan has chosen to distance itself from the vision of its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and as a result, become a hotbed for discrimination and religious bigotry that has been suffocating its citizens for years. Belonging to the majority Sunni sect, I can choose to ignore the persecution of Ahmadis in my country and go on living my life espousing sheer indifference, but my conscience tells me otherwise. I believe that Martin Niemöller’s famous quote “Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me” perfectly sums up my feelings towards this issue and injects some much needed urgency to the state of minorities in Pakistan and Ahmadis in particular, which has now reached a crisis point.