Mujeeb-ur-Rahman (right) speaks at Harvard University. Amjad Mahmood Khan is seated to the left. Credit: Cara Solomon, Harvard Law School

By Beena Sarwar
BOSTON, Oct 20 2014 (IPS)

Two years ago, gunmen shot dead Farooq Kahloun’s newly married son Saad Farooq, 26, in an attack that severely injured Kahloun, his younger son Ummad, and Saad’s father-in-law, Choudhry Nusrat.

Saad died on the spot. In Pakistan after travelling from his home in New York for the wedding, Nusrat died in hospital later. Four bullets remain in Kahloun’s chest and arm. A bullet lodged behind the right eye of Ummad, a student in the UK, was surgically removed months later.“In Karachi, people are being killed every day. Doctors, professors, not just Ahmadis but also Shias and others.” -- Farooq Kahloun

As an Ahmadi leader in his locality, Kahloun knew he was a target for hired assassins in the bustling but lawless metropolis of Karachi. General insecurity in Pakistan is multiplied manifold if you are, like Kahloun, an Ahmadi – a sect of Islam that many orthodox Muslims abhor as heretic.

“I never thought they would target my family,” says Kahloun, 57, a successful businessman who left everything behind, obtained political asylum and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

In 1974, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s parliament declared Ahmadis as non-Muslim (similarly pressured, the newly independent Bangladesh refused). A decade later, a military dictator made it a criminal offence for them to “pretend” to be Muslims.

These changes, say lawyers and human rights advocates, violate Pakistan’s own Constitutional provisions, specifically Articles 8-27 that are comparable to the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Saad Farooq

“These are shameful laws,” says Kahloun. “If we have no other Prophet or Quran, what can we do?”

‘Takfiri’ ideology (declaring someone a non-Muslim) led to Pakistan’s first Nobel Prize winner Dr. Abdus Salam (Physics, 1979), an Ahmadi, being hounded out of the country, and to the attack on Swat schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, now Pakistan’s second Nobel Laureate, also forced into exile.

Assailants behind such attacks are rarely caught, tried and punished, creating a culture of impunity that only encourages more attacks, say analysts.

Assailants whom Ahmadi survivors captured and handed over to the police in May 2010 following one of Pakistan’s deadliest terrorist attacks are yet to be punished. The attack targeted an Ahmadi mosque in Lahore, killing over 90 worshippers and injuring many more.

“We could not live in Pakistan anymore. No one would leave if he had a choice, but now, any Ahmadi will go out if given the opportunity,” Kahloun told IPS by telephone. “In Karachi, people are being killed every day. Doctors, professors, not just Ahmadis but also Shias and others.”

Takfiri militants also term Shias as ‘Kafir’ or infidel and have been targeting them in huge numbers.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that 687 people were killed in over 200 sectarian attacks in 2013, 22 per cent more than in 2012, while 1,319 people were injured, 46 per cent more in 2012.

“The number of Ahmadis and religious communities seeking asylum abroad is steadily increasing,” says Qasim Rashid, a Pakistani-born, Virginia-based Ahmadi lawyer and author of ‘The Wrong Kind of Muslim’ (2013) that documents the Ahmadi persecution in Pakistan.

“This goes to show the importance of maintaining freedom of religion and conscience worldwide. It is the failure to uphold these rights that empowers and emboldens groups like Taliban and ISIS,” Rashid told IPS.

Some Pakistani Ahmadis are protected by their prominence, like Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, 83, a senior Supreme Court advocate who lives in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad, and has no intention of leaving the country.

“The Thurgood Marshall of Pakistan”, he is currently in the U.S., invited by the newly organised 52-member Ahmadi Muslim Lawyers Association (AMLA) to address their inaugural conference in Silver Spring, Maryland, last month and “pass on the torch”.

“All participants came at their own expense because they have a deep love and admiration for Mr. Rahman’s extraordinary career and advocacy,” says AMLA President Amjad Mahmood Khan, a Pakistani-origin American born in California.

AMLA has organised talks by Rahman at various universities, starting with Khan’s alma mater Harvard Law School. He spoke at Princeton University Oct. 17, and will appear at Columbia University, Oct. 23; New York University Law School, Oct. 27; University of California, Irvine, Oct. 30; and Stanford University, Nov. 4.

A lively and humorous speaker despite his age, Rahman peppers his talks with references to U.S. case law and pioneers like Martin Luther King — “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere” — besides Pakistan’s Constitution and legal cases.

He began his Harvard talk with the Muslim greeting “As-Salam-Alaikum” (peace be with you) — “almost a reflex greeting for any Pakistani, whether Christian or Muslim or from any religion”.

In Pakistan, the greeting could send him to jail for three years, he reminded the audience. So could saying the ‘Kalima’, the first prayer of Islam, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet.”

“The first departure from the secular concept of Pakistan,” says Rahman, was Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly’s passage of the 1949 Objectives Resolution. Overriding the strong objections by some members, it declared Islam to be the state religion. “The clerics gained an inch”.

The Second Constitutional Amendment of 1974 that termed Ahmadis as non-Muslim is a “usurpation of constitutional authority, not a valid piece of law,” said Rahman. “The state cannot call into question anyone’s faith.”

In 1993, he argued a landmark case against restrictions on the Ahmadis’ right to freely practice their faith, consolidating eight appeals by Ahmadis, imprisoned for saying the ‘kalima’.

Zaheeruddin v. State is also known as the “trademark” or the “Coca Cola judgement” because the Supreme Court dismissed it on the grounds that Ahmadis by professing to be Muslims were violating the “trademarks” of Islam.

“As if religion is a merchandise, saleable commodity with financial interests attached,” scoffs Rahman, who carries with him two books that he adheres to: the Quran and Pakistan’s Constitution.

Lawyers in Pakistani courts cite hundreds of U.S. cases, but in the Zaheeruddin case, “American laws were wrongly cited and misapplied to give the colour of fairness to the case,” asserts Rahman.

Legal experts elsewhere have taken apart the Zaheeruddin judgement, like Martin Lau in a report for the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and Karen Parker, J.D. in a study for the Humanitarian Law Project of the International Educational Development, USA.

Rahman pins his hopes on “intelligence of a future day” along the lines of what the U.S. witnessed when a U.S. Supreme Court bench overturned a case that earlier restricted the right of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to propagate their faith.

“The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] was active in overturning the case,” says Rahman, noting that one of the judges who had been on the earlier bench admitted to having been wrong the first time.

Pakistan is the only country where it is a criminal offense for Ahmadis to profess and practice their faith as Muslims, but state-sanctioned discrimination and persecution of Ahmadis elsewhere are increasing.

“Pakistani laws are the most aggressive,” notes the advocate Qasim Rashid. “But other countries have started following Pakistan’s example. The onslaught is led not by locals but by Pakistani mullahs.”

Bangladesh has banned Ahmadi books on religion, Ahmadis are under attack in Malaysia, and Indonesia has started sealing Ahmadi mosques.

Khalida Jamilah, 21, lived in West Java in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population. She says Ahmadi families like hers were free to practice their faith as Muslims until 2005 when hard-line Muslims attacked an Ahmadi convention in West Java that her family was attending.

In 2008, they sought political asylum in the U.S., and moved to Los Angeles, where Jamilah’s father drives a cab.

“Here [in America] we can express our faith freely,” says Jamilah, now a journalism student at the University of California, Berkeley. “The U.S. government values freedom of religion and there is separation of church and state. I hope the Indonesian government does that too.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Twenty-five-year-old Syed Hasan, a doctor practicing in a private hospital in Lahore, plans to spend most of May 11, Pakistan’s long-awaited Election Day, in bed.

Members of the minority Ahmadi community in Pakistan say they have been disenfranchised by the country’s election laws. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

A member of the Ahmadiyya faith, Hasan has promised to boycott the impending elections on the grounds that his community of roughly four million has been disenfranchised.

Ever since the constitution branded them non-Muslims, Ahmadis — who believe that the 19^th century cleric Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the messiah promised by God – have been amongst the most persistently persecuted minorities in Pakistan.

This discrimination is felt deeply at the ballot box, where Ahmadis are compelled to register their votes under a separate category from other residents and thus accept the status of non-Muslim, in violation of their religious identity, Amjad M. Khan, president of the U.S.-based Ahmadiyya Muslim Lawyers Association, told IPS in an email.

According to Hasan, “If we want to vote as Pakistani Muslims, which we consider ourselves to be, we have to denounce the Ahmadi community and our spiritual leader, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a false prophet,” a move he is not prepared to make.

He told IPS his faith is more important to him than casting a vote.

Though the choice is a clear one for many Ahmadis, civil society leaders and even conscientious political parties worry about what the boycott means for democracy in this country of 170 million, where hopes for a “free and fair election” have been running high ahead of the May 11 polls.

For Adnan Rehmat, chief of the influential Islamabad-based media development organisation ‘Intermedia’, “If 200,000 adult Ahmadis cannot vote because the…laws disenfranchise them…it means the elections are technically neither free nor fair” and indicates that something is “seriously amiss” at the core of the state’s functioning.

“Ahmadis…are discriminated against at a level that’s unprecedented, even in our own chequered history,” Pakistani novelist and journalist Mohammad Hanif told IPS, adding that forcing Ahmadis to mislabel themselves at the ballot box is “much worse than disenfranchising people – it’s more like taking their humanity away”.

Decades of discrimination

From its inception in 1947 until Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq took over as military dictator in 1985, Pakistan has had a joint electorate system that allowed all citizens equal right to elect political candidates of their choice, irrespective of religious leanings.

In a bid to “Islamise” Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq ordered a separate system for what he called non-Muslims who could only vote for five percent of the parliament seats allocated to them.

The system has effectively robbed the community of political representation, preventing Ahmadis from rising to prominent posts within the government or even finding employment in state institutions like the police force.

In 2002, attempting to appease hard-line Islamists, former President Pervez Musharraf issued Executive Order No. 15, which mandated that Ahmadis be registered on a “supplementary voter roll”, a move Khan says is “anathema to Islamic justice”.

Since then, he said, successive governments have been wilfully blind to Pakistan’s “voter apartheid”, violating Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Pakistan has been a signatory since 2008.

Although some see this discrimination as a purely political issue, for Ahmadis it is a matter of life or death. Legal loopholes allow religious extremists to lash out at the minority community, while the country’s controversial anti-blasphemy laws pave the way for further intolerance.

Last month, the Jamaat-i-Ahmadiyya (Ahmadi Movement) issued its annual report for 2012, stating that 19 members of the community were killed last year; in total an estimated 226 Ahmadis have been killed in sectarian violence since 1984.

Almost three years ago, on May 28, 2010, 94 members of this community were massacred in their mosques during the Friday congregation in the eastern city of Lahore. Not a single perpetrator has yet been brought to justice.

This year, the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by former cricket star Imran Khan, has taken up the cudgels on behalf of the persecuted minority. PTI Spokesperson Zohair Ashir told IPS his party considered all Pakistani citizens equal under the law.

“It’s a shame that past governments did not rectify the many injustices and inequalities in the system,” he said, adding that, if it comes to power, PTI will “address all such issues in an expeditious manner”.

He stopped short of specifying what concrete steps would be taken to ensure Ahmadi participation in the political sphere, admitting, “It is hypothetical at this stage to determine what legislative measures need to be taken and when. Fixing the economy and energy crisis and fighting terrorism are areas of immediate and high priority for us.”

Few believe the upcoming election will bring any changes.

Speaking to IPS over the phone from Chenab Nagar, a city in the Punjab province where 95 percent of the 70,0000 residents are Ahmadis, a 37-year-old Ahmadi journalist named Aamir Mehmood said he “cannot think of any politician or party that has the courage to initiate a debate and scrap these discriminatory laws in our country which are used against the minorities”.

As Election Day draws near, groups and individuals acting to protect the “sanctity of Prophet Muhammad” have been vocal about their approval of discriminatory election laws and their disdain for the scheduled boycott.

“If they (Ahmadis) want to reverse this decision (the 2002 executive order), they must take the route of the courts and the parliament,” Qasim Farooqi, spokesperson of the proscribed sectarian outfit Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) told IPS.

“Boycotting is not the answer,” said Farooqi. “Voting is important, the Ahmadis must play their role — by not participating in the elections, they are only making the country weak,” he stressed.

The simmering tension bodes badly for Ahmadis, who sooner or later will be forced to bear the brunt of Islamists’ wrath. Last month, seven Ahmadis were booked on various charges including “defiling the Holy Quran” and “calling themselves Muslims”. They were also accused of printing and distributing “blasphemous” literature in the form of the community’s newspaper, ‘Al-Fazal’.

Community leaders said that the paper, one of the oldest in Pakistan, was only distributed within their community.

As millions around the world enter the third week of the Ramadan fast, the fraternity that typically unites Muslims during the holy month does not extend to Pakistan’s Ahmadi community, which is facing worse persecution than ever before.

One of the minarets of Baitul Hamd in Kharian, in the process of being demolished. Credit: Ahmadiyya Jammat

What little space there might once have been for this religious minority – who believe that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, is the promised messiah and reformer whose advent was foretold by the Holy Prophet Muhammad – is quickly disappearing altogether.

“What space for Ahmadis are you talking about? They don’t have any,” Faisal Neqvi, a Lahore-based lawyer, told IPS.

Declared non-Muslims in 1974, the legal and social exclusion of Ahmadis was further enshrined in a 1984 law that prohibits them from proclaiming themselves Muslims or making pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia.

While non-Muslim missionaries are permitted to proselytise as long as they do not preach against Islam, Ahamdis cannot even hold a public congregation or sing hymns in praise of the prophet.

Last month, hostility towards the community of four million bubbled over in Kharian, a city in the Punjab province, when a police contingent demolished six minarets of an Ahmadi mosque, Baitul Hamd, and effaced the calligraphy on its walls.

Raja Zahid, the police officer who supervised the demolition squad, told the Express Tribune, an English daily, that the act of destruction was carried out following a formal complaint from a religious organisation called Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Islam .

According to Zahid, there was a mutual understanding that the demolition would take place.

“We made sure that we were respectful, but the law 298-B clearly states that Qadianis (Ahmadis) cannot call their worship place a ‘mosque’, and if it cannot be called that, then it cannot resemble the mosque either,” said Zahid.

An incensed Ahmadiyya Jamaat spokesperson, Saleemuddin, told IPS, “There is no patented design for a mosque or a law that states that a minaret of a certain design can only be used by a mosque.”

In fact, Baitul Hamd was built in 1980, four years before the Ahmadis were barred from calling themselves Muslims.

Disputing the police statement, Saleemuddin told IPS, “They (the police) came without a court order in the thick of the night.”

Ahmadiyya community leaders have reported that their mosques and community lands are routinely confiscated by local governments and given to the majority Muslim community. There have been instances where authorities halted construction or renovation of these places of worship.

“It all originates from the laws introduced in the early 80s when it became a crime for an Ahmadi to use any symbol or words that might indicate he/she is a Muslim,” Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told IPS.

The law is taken to such an extreme that “once, a child who was just a few years old was sent to prison because he received an invitation card that used the word ‘Bismillah’ (meaning ‘in the name of God’)”, Yusuf added.

Religion, and with it religious intolerance, has crept into almost every state institution in Pakistan. But while many decry the persecution of Shia Muslims, Hindus and Christians, few speak out about the Ahmadiyya, who are hounded on a regular basis.

Fearing persecution, they have kept a low profile for years. “While people remain unaware of your identity, you are safe,” Hasan Ahmad, a medical student, told IPS. “But once people find out you’re an Ahmadi, the attitude changes completely and anything can happen to you.”

Since May 28, 2010, when 86 members of the community were massacred in their mosques during Friday prayers in the eastern city of Lahore, attacks on Ahmadis has increased manifold.

Hussain Naqi, a member of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told IPS that the level of discrimination is becoming even more severe.

“The civil service carries out a full investigation of a person’s religious credentials to sift out those belonging to the Ahmadi community and if an Ahmadi is erroneously inducted in the armed forces, he will never be allowed to rise to a high post,” he said.

Naqi also lamented the irony of the fact that, under the country’s blasphemy laws, “defilement of verses from the Quran is punishable, but not if they are defaced on an Ahmadi mosque by the police.”

He said the chief justice of Pakistan should take this matter into his own hands. “But I know he won’t,” he concluded despairingly.

The latest U.S. State Department International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, made public on Jul. 31, holds Pakistan’s law enforcement personnel responsible for the abuse of religious minorities, especially abuses carried out under the guise of the blasphemy laws.

The report noted the present government’s failure to take “adequate measures to prevent the abuse of discriminatory laws”, in particular the anti-Ahmadi laws.

“Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have alleged that the anti-Ahmadi sections of the penal code and other government policies fostered intolerance against this community and, together with the lack of police action, created a culture of impunity,” the report stated.

Since the promulgation of anti-Ahmadi laws in 1984, 218 Ahmadis have been killed on religious grounds. Since the beginning of this year, according to Ahmadiyya leaders, seven Ahmadis were murdered in targeted killings.

“There have never been any arrests made,” said Saleemuddin.

To make matters worse, the inquiry commission that was set up to investigate the May 2010 massacre has still not come out with its findings and to this day officials from the commission have failed to contact the Ahmadi community.

But what is even more distressing to the community and human rights defenders is the media’s lack of outrage.

“The media reports atrocities on a daily basis but nobody takes a longer term view as to why this is happening,” Neqvi told IPS.

“The narrative being peddled through mass media is that it is okay to hate some people, like the Ahmadis, but not others (Shias and other moderate Sunnis). That’s really what you call a mixed message.”

Himself a Shia, Neqvi believes the big question of the day is “whether there is any space left for anybody else besides Wahabis and Salafis (Sunnis) in Pakistan”.

Efforts to wipe out Ahmadis’ religious and cultural presence in the country have reached back through the annals of history and are even trying to scrub away memories of Dr. Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s first Nobel Laureate and a member of the Ahmadi community who was celebrated for his role in indentifying the properties of the Higgs boson particle.

It is doubtful that even increased media coverage will bring about any change. In a recent article in the Express Tribune, Neqvi wrote, “Despite the many atrocities in the name of religion that this country has suffered, I cannot remember even one instance where the public, parliament and the media stood united in condemnation for any (significant) length of time.”

(END)