JRC (ECHO, EC), CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A man has been shot dead in a supposed hate crime. Maqsood Ahmad, 45, who belongs to the Ahmadiyya Muslims Community, was killed by unknown assailants in Shahkot, a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province on 3rd September. Mr Ahmad was reportedly a British national and retired Pakistan Army Official.
His death is the latest in a surge of killings of people from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan, which is recognised as a minority in the country. Earlier this year, another man, Abdul Qadir was shot and killed at the entrance to his homeopathic clinic in Bazikhel, Peshawar.
Mr Maqsood Ahmad, who leaves behind a widow and 4 children, had been visiting the country for the first time after settling in England 10 years ago. The Pakistan spokesman for the community, Saleem-ud-Din tweeted about the incident, urging the Pakistani Government to bring the perpetrators to justice and prevent further attacks on members of the community.
“We hope that the [Government] will ensure that in future it will put an end to the violence perpetrated against members of the Ahmadiyya Community”, he said.
Pakistani government officials and parliamentary members were mostly silent on the incident. However, Tahir Ashrafi, the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister tweeted a condemnation, although he used the derogatory term, ‘Qadiani’ to describe the victim’s identity.
“A Qadiani, Maqsood has been killed by unknown persons in Nankana Shahkot. Such a crime and act is unacceptable and reprehensible. Local police and administration have been instructed to arrest the culprits and insha-Allah no negligence will be allowed in this regard”, he wrote.
An FIR has reportedly been made, although the police have not arrested any suspects.
Persecution of Ahmadis In Pakistan
The history of the plight of Ahmadis in Pakistan is almost as long as the founding of the country. The minority community identify themselves as Muslims, but they are considered heretics by other Muslim sects, actively marginalised due to a disagreement on the identity and arrival of a promised messiah. Ahmadi Muslims believe that the community’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is the Promised Messiah whose arrival was prophesied in the Holy Qur’an, the holy book of Muslims, which other Muslim sects argue brings an issue on the finality of the Holy Prophet of Islam.
Whilst hostility may have been relatively less intense at the founding of Pakistan, with its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah appointing Sir Zafarullah Khan, an Ahmadi, as the country’s first foreign secretary, it worsened in the years after Jinnah’s death.
Then, after 20 years of intense Ahmadi persecution, instead of acting to protect the minority, the Pakistani government ingrained it into law, issuing a series of constitutional amendments that defined the term ‘Muslim’, and listing groups that were to be deemed ‘non-Muslim’. Under Second Constitutional Amendment, which went into effect in September 1974 under then-Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, it was made illegal for Ahmadi Muslims to identify as Muslims.
When Zia ul Haq took office as Prime Minister in 1977, his tenure only exacerbated the already extreme marginalisation of Ahmadis. In 1984, under his dictatorship, he passed Ordinance XX, which criminalised Ahmadis for ostensibly identifying as Muslims, including by preaching faith or calling their place of worship a ‘mosque’.
The use of religion has long been used by politicians to gather support, and active opposition to the Ahmadiyya Community is routinely used in election campaigns, and to ‘prove’ one’s devotion to the cause of Pakistan. In 2017, Muhammad Safdar, the son-in-law of the now ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and leader of the PLM-N party, spoke against the persecuted minority at the National Assembly, calling them a “threat” to the country’s “ideology”. In 2018, the current Prime Minister Imran Khan promised in a campaign rally that he would appoint Atif Mian, an America-based Pakistani Economist as his government’s finance minister, but later retracted his comments amid extreme backlash from right-wing clerics.
Members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community are denied the right to vote in political elections of any kind nor apply for passports unless they declare themselves non-Muslim. Literature of the community is banned, and they are prohibited from distributing the Holy Qur’an, the holy book of Muslims.
In 2016, Abdul Shakoor, an elderly Ahmadi man, was sentenced to five years under blasphemy laws and three years under the Anti-Terrorism Act for allegedly selling copies of the holy book. He was released on 18th March after Johnnie Moore, commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), called for his immediate release earlier that year.
The recent surge in violent attacks against Ahmadis is explained by the rise in prominence of the Tehreek e Labaik Party (TLP) in Pakistan, which uses blasphemy laws – strict laws mandating death sentences to those who allegedly insult the honour of the Holy Prophet, which originate from British colonial rule in India. Amnesty International notes this marked rise.
“Religious freedom has been imperilled in Pakistan for years, but the rise of the TLP sends a clear signal to minority communities that they remain vulnerable to discrimination, harassment or even violence,” says Dinushika Dissanayake, deputy South Asia director at Amnesty International.
Last year, the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community launched a report highlighting the expansion of anti-Ahmadi Muslim hatred and calling for action to be taken to curtail its percolation into the UK.
In July this year, Al Jazeera recorded at least 13 deaths of Ahmadis since 2017, with more than 40 others wounded. With Maqsood Ahmad’s death, Pakistan sees another person added to this figure, and prospects for justice to be served in this case remain unlikely when under a judicial system engineered against people like him.
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