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

Women gather outside the Sayeda Zeinab mosque in Cairo, revered by Shia and Sunni alike. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Apr 26 2013 (IPS)

The mob that surrounded the home of Mohamed Nour, an Egyptian Shia living in Cairo’s Bab El-Shaariya district, claimed it was on a mission to “inoculate” Egypt against Shia religious beliefs. Without intervention, Shia doctrine would spread across Egypt “like a cancer,” they had warned.

Born a Sunni Muslim, Nour converted to Shia Islam nearly two decades ago. He has faced constant threats and harassment since his Sunni neighbours learned of his conversion early last year.

“My neighbours no longer talk to me and they are trying to get me to move from here,” he says. “People throw rocks at my house, make threatening phone calls, and set my car on fire. I am worried about my family’s safety.”

The schism between Sunni and Shia Islam dates back to the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632, but hostility towards Egypt’s minority Shia community is firmly rooted in modern politics.

During his 29 years in power, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is said to have expressed a visceral hatred of Iran, crafting his foreign policy to contain the “Shia tide”, the belief that Iran was exporting Shia Islam to expand its political influence in the Arab world.

The bad blood between predominantly Sunni Egypt and Shia-dominated Iran goes back to the early days of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The two countries severed diplomatic ties after former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel and granted asylum to Iran’s exiled Shah Reza Pahlavi.

“Mubarak’s regime was deeply suspicious of its Shia minority,” says Ishaak Ibrahim, a religious rights researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). “It assumed that all Shia were loyal to Iran, and closely monitored their activities and prevented them from gathering. Many Shia were arrested on (spurious) charges.”

Activists say Mubarak’s downfall in 2011 opened a brief window for Egypt’s Shias, whose estimated numbers range from 800,000 to about two million. But the window soon slammed shut, and conditions have worsened since the Islamist government of President Mohamed Morsi came to power last year.

The state continues to apply discriminatory measures against Shias, while leaving the community exposed to the growing danger of Salafi extremism, says Ahmad Rasem El-Nafis, a prominent Shia scholar.

“It’s much worse now under Morsi because there is no security,” he tells IPS. “The Salafis are spreading lies about us and committing crimes against us with (impunity). I had an attempt on my life back in July 2011… and I am receiving threats almost daily.”

Salafis, a radical Sunni sect influenced by Saudi Wahhabism, were forced underground by Mubarak’s authoritarian rule. Since the revolution, they have organised politically and managed to capture more than a quarter of the vote in last year’s parliamentary elections, second only to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Shia Islam has a long pedigree in Egypt. Cairo was founded in 969 by the Shia Fatimid dynasty, which ruled Egypt for 200 years and shaped its identity. Even today, Egyptian Sunnis visit revered Shia shrines such as El-Hussein and Sayeda Zeinab, and unwittingly incorporate Shia practices into their traditions and funerary rites."It's much worse now under Morsi because there is no security”

“You cannot readily distinguish between Sunni and Shia by their behaviour,” El-Nafis asserts. “The differences between the two Islamic sects are manufactured and exaggerated for purely political reasons.”

To avoid persecution, many Shia practise their faith under the umbrella of Sufism, a mystical brand of Islam that shares Shia reverence for the Ahl Al-Beyt, the family of Prophet Muhammad.

“We (Shia) still can’t meet openly as a group,” says El-Nafis. “If I visit a Shia in his home the Salafis will say we’re making a husseineya (Shia house of worship), and if I go to a mosque with other Shia for sure we will be harassed.”

In December 2011, Egyptian security forces prevented hundreds of Shias from observing Ashura religious celebrations in Cairo’s El-Hussein Mosque, a Shia holy site. Police forcibly removed the Shia worshippers from the mosque after Salafi groups accused them of performing “barbaric” rituals.

But even alone, Shias face bigotry and a legal system that rights groups say violates the tenets of religious freedom.

Last July, a criminal court sentenced Mohamed Asfour, an Egyptian Shia convert, to one year in prison for “desecrating a place of worship” and “insulting the Prophet’s companions.” Prosecutors said Asfour was found placing a stone beneath his head while praying in a village mosque, a practice frowned upon by Sunni Muslims.

The arrest followed weeks of abuse after villagers learned of Asfour’s conversion to Shia Islam. His conversion provoked the animosity of his neighbours and in-laws, who reportedly pressured him to divorce his Sunni wife.

“Egypt is a Sunni country and we must protect society from Shia influence,” says Khaled Fahmi, a Cairo textile merchant who accuses Iran of “using paid agents” to proselytise. “Poor and illiterate Egyptians are easily deceived by their lies.”

Like many conservative Sunni Egyptians, Fahmi is outraged by the Egyptian government’s tepid overtures toward rapprochement with Iran.

President Morsi faced sharp criticism at home for attending a regional summit in Tehran last August. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad endured the humiliation of having shoes thrown at him when he visited Cairo in February.

Earlier this month, a group of mostly Salafi demonstrators surrounded the residence of Iran’s charge d’affaires in Cairo to protest a new tourism exchange protocol that saw the arrival of Iranian tourists in Egypt for the first time in over 30 years.

The backlash prompted the government to suspend further tourist visits. [END]

Churches in Diabaly, central Mali, were looted and destroyed during the Islamist occupation. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
MOPTI, Mali, Feb 11 2013 (IPS)

At the entrance to the Evangelical church in Mopti, central Mali, military soldiers stood on either side of the door as Pastor Luc Sagara greeted his parishioners for Sunday mass.

The presence of the soldiers were a stark reminder that less than three weeks ago the town was under threat by Islamist extremists committed to the imposition of Sharia law in this West African nation.

“We feel safe now. With the French intervention, we are hopeful that the Islamists will not attack us,” Sagara told IPS.

France launched a military intervention in Mali on Jan. 11 at the request of the country’s interim President Dioncounda Traoré after extremists advanced on the town of Konna, 60 kilometres northeast of Mopti. As the Islamists occupied town after town, intent on seizing the capital Bamako, Sharia law was imposed, and Christians and moderate Muslims were persecuted.

Since April 2012, northern Mali has been taunted by a coalition of armed groups composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine, an Islamist group among Mali’s Tuareg population that live across the country’s southeast.

The rebels reportedly destroyed religious shrines and church buildings, and imposed extreme Sharia law – engaging in public floggings, executions and amputations.

International rights group, Human Rights Watch, said that the rebels engaged in extensive looting, pillage, the recruitment of child soldiers and the rape of women and young girls. “Armed groups in northern Mali in recent weeks have terrorised civilians by committing abductions and looting hospitals,” Corinne Dufka, senior Africa researcher at HRW, said in April 2012.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the recent conflict has led to the internal displacement of 250,000 people. Mopti was one of the towns that people from the north sought refuge in.

Many of the minority Christians, who constitute five percent of the country’s 15.8 million people, either fled Mopti or were living here in fear of Islamic occupation

A local Imam from the town, Abdoulaye Maiga, told IPS that no one had been safe from the extremists, regardless of their religious affiliations.

“We are all victims of those terrorists. We are all Malians and we all fled together,” he said. Members of his family had taken flight from northern Mali’s largest town of Gao.

“When my family came here, they brought with them a Christian family, and we loaned them some of our (traditional) clothes so the terrorists would let them travel without problems.”

In Diabaly, a liberated central Malian town, Pastor Daniel Konaté prepared for his first Christian service since the Islamists were ousted. The graffiti on the church wall that read, “Allah is the only one”, and the bullets scattered on the floor served as a reminder of the Islamist occupation.

“They made my church a military base,” Konaté told IPS. During the occupation he and his family fled to a village 20 kilometers away, returning only after Malian and French forces successfully repelled Islamists here on Jan. 21.

But Konaté still wonders how the extremists had known that this plain unassuming building, which has no signs to indicate that it is a place of worship, was a church.

“We think some people might have told them that this is a church,” said Konaté as 30 parishioners gathered and the service began with the singing of “It is not God who betrays us. It is men that betray God.”

Ever since locals recognised two former high-ranking Malian military soldiers who used to be posted in Diabaly among the Islamist forces, community members believe the Islamist fighters had local support. Now, neighbours who once lived peacefully together are suspicious of one another.

During the town’s occupation Pascal Touré’s small four-bedroom house on the outskirts of Diabaly hid 27 Christian refugees terrified of being singled out for persecution by the occupying Islamists.

“It seems obvious that some locals reported where the Christians were. Among the locals, everybody knows each other,” he told IPS.

But Touré, a Christian who also teaches catechism, is adamant that seeking revenge is not a solution.

The refugees have left Touré’s house and returned to their own homes in Diabaly “but life in the town will not be the same for Christians.”

Though there are some here who hang on to the memories of a peaceful past, optimistically believing that life will return to what it had been before the conflict. Bakary Traoré, a Muslim and a retired teacher, is one of them.

“Christians were targeted. But all of Diabaly has been a victim. The Islamists did not have the time to impose Sharia, but if they did, everyone would have suffered. They did not succeed. And now we can all live in harmony like we were before. As one people.”