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June 25, 2006

Pakistan: Muslims Attack Ahmadis, Burn Houses, Shops - Two Injured

We reported on Friday June 23 that in Bangladesh, Islamist extremists were attacking an Ahmadi or Ahmadiyya community in Uttar Thana, Dhaka as part of a three year long campaign to have the Muslim sect declared to be non-Muslims by the Bangladesh government. The main tormenters belong to the Hifazate Khatme Nabuwat Andolon Bangladesh (KNAB or KNMB), who are connected with the Islami Oikya Jote, one of the four parties in the coalition government. They have been threatening to blockade Dhaka's Zai International Airport in demonstrations set to continue through this week.

The leader of the group, or its "amir" is Noor Hossain Nurani, who has said that they will from now onwards be using violence to achieve their aims. According to the Hindustan Times 15 people, some of them Ahmadis were injured in skirmishes. We have reported extensively on the activities of the anti-Ahmadi factions in Bangladesh, and also Indonesia, but have only briefly touched on their persecution in Pakistan.

Today, a small mention is made in an editorial of the Pakistan Daily Times that on Saturday, in a small village near the industrial center of Sialkot in the Punjab, close to the border with India, Muslims went on the rampage, attacking local members of the Ahmadi community.

The incident happened in Jhando Sahi village in Daska on Saturday morning. Two people were injured in the assaults. The violence flared up, as seems so common nowadays in Pakistan, after there were rumours that the Koran had been desecrated.

As a result, the police were called, and the Ahmadis who were accused of Koran desecration were placed in jail. However, this did not quell the anger of the mob, who went through the village, setting fire to shops and houses, and also vehicles. This caused the entire Ahmadi community of 60 to 70 villagers, to flee from the village.

The Daily Times states in the editorial: "The chief minister must move quickly to stop the mischief before it becomes international news and hurts Pakistan again." Perhaps this is why the incident was not reported on its main news pages.

Well, it is not journalistically good enough to hide the story and pretend that this persecution is an isolated incident. We mentioned on June 17 the sad case of a young Ahmadi woman, whose body was disinterred from her grave in a Muslim cemetery.

On March 8, in Kasur, an industrial textile center in Punjab province, 17-year old Nadia Hanif died of an illness. In her short life, she had been running a village school, where she had taught children the Koran.

She was buried in the local Muslim cemetery. Several Muslims had attended her funeral, but the local imam would not perform the Muslim funeral rites (Namaz-e-Janaza) over her grave.

Soon after the funeral, extremists began to protest that she had been buried in a "Muslim-only" graveyard. A local Muslim cleric sought guidance from a senior cleric, Saadat Ali Qadri, who runs a madrassa, or seminary. Qadri ordered a fatwa, shich said that Ahmadis cannot be buried in Muslim graveyards, and that it was religiously permissable to dig her up. So on March 18, ten days after she was buried, Nadia's corpse was disinterred, and her body was reburied, with a police captain supervising the second burial.

The Islamists who had been organizing the protests in Kasur belonged to the Majlis-e-Tahafuz-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwat, an extreme Sunni Islamic group. This group, which is connected to the Jamaat-e-Islami party led by according to an Islamist website, the Khatam-e-Nabuwat specialise in persecuting the Ahmadis, or Qadiani, as they are also known. They are praised for their actions against the heretics, who are erroneously associated with Jews. The website states: "Qadiani Mission in Israel extended full support to Zionism as it was an article of their faith to support the policy of the Government under whose rule they lived whether it be Jewish, Sikh or a racist one."

The disinterrment of Ahmadis from their graves, as happened to Nadia Hanif, is not uncommon. According to an article in the Daily Times from April 19 2006, at least 28 Ahmadi bodies have been removed from graveyards since 1998. Often, state sources, the Ahmadi community, and not even the relatives of the deceased, are made aware of the exhumations and reburials elsewhere.

In July 2003, Mukarram Feroze Din, an Ahmadi was buried in a local Muslim graveyard in Hafizabad district in Punjab province. A few months after this, Muslim extremists began to protest. In July 2004, Mr Din's body was dug up, and buried elsewhere. This was done without the Ahmadi community knowing, or even his relaives being aware of what had happened.

In addition to these 28 exhumations, which included eight women's bodies, at least 36 deceased Ahmadis have been refused permission to be buried in Muslim graveyards.

In Sargodha district in Punjab province in October 1994, the local Muslim community destroyed Ahmadi graves in Kot Momin. Mr. Qadeer Jat, an Ahmadi, had been buried in a Muslim cemetery. His body was disinterred and then four other graves belonging to Ahmadis were flattened.

An article from The Persecution, an Ahmadi site says:

In April 1993, a four days old infant of Ahmadi parentage died at D.G. Khan. The mullas demanded his exhumation and threatened that if it were not done, they would desecrate 18 other Ahmadi graves there. The authorities complied as demanded. In January 1986, an Ahmadi tribal chief, Sardar Amir Muhammad Qaisrani, died and was buried at Shergarh, District Muzaffarbad. Mullas manipulated to transform this routine event into a major political issue. The Ahmadis were also determined to resist the clerics' shameful agitation. Eventually the authorities assembled a force of approximately 3000 police and paramilitary, and undertook the exhumation operation, again yielding to the fanaticism of the fundamentalists. In October 1995, Ms. Sardaran Bibi, Ahmadi, of Chak 356/GB, district Toba, died and was buried in the common graveyard where already 40 Ahmadis had been buried. Still the extremists, although only a few in number, had their way and compelled the authorities to dig up the dead and bury her elsewhere.

Before the rule of the Islamist dictator General Zia ul-Haq, it had been common practice for Muslims and Ahmadis to buried in the same graveyards. But this stopped in 1984, half way through Haq's military dictatorship. The dictator had, since his coup of 1979, when he hanged Ali Bhutto, the previous Prime Minister, tried to appease the Muslim community with laws which were extreme and Islamist in nature. These included the controversial "Hudood Ordinances", and also Pakistan's infamous blasphemy laws. The Hudood Ordinances, introduced in 1979, make no distinction between rape and adultery. We describe them in detail here.

The blasphemy laws were introduced to the Penal Code in 1986, two years before the dictator's fatal plane crash. As well as including Article 295-C which invokes the death penalty for insulting the paedophile "prophet", these also allow life imprisonment for desecrating the Koran, under Article 295-B.

But what is disturbing is that a whole section of the blasphemy laws, Article 298-B, is dedicated to attacking members of the Ahmadis, also called the Qadiani or Lahore group.

Misuse of epithet, descriptions and titles, etc. Reserved for certain holy personages or places.
1 Any person of the Qadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves Ahmadis or by any other name) who by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation:

a) refers to or addresses, any person, other than a Caliph or companion of the Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), as "Ameerul Momneen", "Khalifat-ul-Momneen", "Khalifat-ul-Muslimeen", "Sahaabi" or "Razi Allah Anho";
b) Refers to or addresses, any person, other than a wife of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), as Ummul-Mumineen;
c) refers to, or addresses, any person, other than a member of the family (Ahle-Bait) of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), as Ahle-Bait; or
d) refers to, or names, or calls, his place of worship as Masjid;
shall be punished with imprisonment or either description for a term which may extend to three years, and shall also be liable to fine.

2 Any person of the Qadiani group or Lahore group, (who call themselves Ahmadis or by any other names), who by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, refers to the mode or from of call to prayers followed by his faith as "Azan" or redites Azan as used by the Muslims, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine.

While the Blasphemy laws remain in place, lynch mob killings of "blasphemers" will continue. There have been three cases of lynchings in the Punjab alone this past week.

And while Ahmadis are not allowed to be treated as "normal" Muslims, and are literally "outlawed" under Zia ul-Haq's blasphemy laws, incidents such as those which happened yesterday in Jhando Sahi village in the Punjab will become more frequent.

The leader of the MMA, the Islamist opposition alliance, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, is fiercely opposed to any repeal of the blasphemy laws. The aim of the MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal) is to introduce sharia law throughout Pakistan. In January last year, the MMA criticised the US envoy to Pakistan, Ryan C. Croker, for his "stifling" of the Majlis-e-Tahafuz-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwat the movement which spearheads most of the attacks against Ahmadis.

The Ahmadiyya are persecuted throughout the Muslim world, in particular by Sunni Muslims. In Saudi Arabia, they are barred from going on the Haj. The reason that they are perceived as "heretics" stems from their following the teachings of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani (1835-1908). The Ahmadiyya follow a policy of respect for human life, but because they revere Ghulam Ahmed as a "prophet", they come into conflict with other Muslims, who say the 7th century paedophile is the last prophet.

And how can this non-violent sect of Islam live without the threat of attacks by Islamist bigots in Pakistan, when Section 298-C of the penal code states that no Ahmadi or Ahmadiyya can call him or herself a Muslim? This article also prevents them from preaching or propagating their faith. To do so can lead to a fine and a prison term of three years.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 25, 2006 10:06 PM

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