Former Pakistan Federal Minister says persecution of Ahmadis ‘un-Islamic’

16th August 2010 PRESS RELEASE

Former Pakistan Federal Minister says persecution of Ahmadis ‘un-Islamic’

Also spoke about the ongoing cruelty inflicted upon Ahmadis in Pakistan

In a recent episode of the MTA International Islamic talk show ‘Rah-e-Huda’, the former Minister for Communications in Pakistan, Sherry Rehman, spoke about the ongoing persecution and cruelty inflicted upon Ahmadis in Pakistan. During the broadcast she said:

“If we look at the Ahadith (sayings) of the Holy Prophetpbuh, it is clear that whatever is happening to Ahmadis is completely un-Islamic”

Expressing her disappointment and concern, Sherry Rehman said that because of the long history of persecution borne by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat in Pakistan there seemed little prospect that its security could be guaranteed by the State in the future. She also said that Article 20 of the Pakistani Constitution granted minorities very comprehensive rights and that because the Government had declared Ahmadis to be a minority they should at least be afforded those rights and protections.

She further commented:

“Once again I will say that these blasphemy laws of ours people justify in the pure name of the Holy Prophetpbuh to inflict persecution upon people and this is completely against the spirit of Islam”

Sherry Rehman went on to say that that the media in Pakistan requires proper regulation. She said that if the media considered itself to be a mature part of civilised society then it should adopt a moral code. In light of this she suggested that a Press Complaints Commission, based on the UK model, ought to be adopted in Pakistan. Moreover, she said, that both the government and media should have faith in such a commission.

It should be noted that although the Government of Pakistan has declared the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat to be a non-Muslim minority sect in Pakistan, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat has never accepted this status. Ahmadi Muslims believe that their founder, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian is the Promised Messiah and Promised Reformer, whose advent was foretold by the Holy Prophet Muhammadpbuh. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat follows the principle of “Love for All, Hatred for None” and believes that every individual has the right to practise his faith or religion with freedom and without any form of compulsion.

Also Available in Urdu: Press Release in Urdu

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White is black

Pakistan Opinion

White is black

By Amina Jilani
June 05, 2010

The writer is a freelance columnist (amina.jilani@tribune.com.pk)

Has the time finally come for this nation to seriously consider removing the white strip from its national flag? Does anyone know or care what this strip symbolises? It has become obvious that few do, including the various leaderships who have topped us. The white strip, officially “one-fourth of the size of the flag nearest the mast” was added at the behest of the founder of this country to firmly denote the commitment of the nation-state to extending to its minority communities equal rights of citizenship — equal to all intents and purposes. And, remember, white is a call for peace.

Well, the equality was denuded within six months of the Founder’s death when on March 7, 1949, the Objectives Resolution was moved by none other than his loyal successor and chosen prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, and passed by the majority in the constituent assembly. Thus was the white strip rendered a joke, thus were intolerance and bigotry institutionalised with intent. Repercussions were not long coming. March 1953 saw the anti-Ahmadi disturbances in Punjab, which led to martial law. From then on, for the citizens of Pakistan equality became a distant dream.

That gentleman of secular tendencies, pseudo-socialist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, furthered the cause of religiosity and all the rot that goes with it, with his 1973 constitution which apart from being chock-a-block with cynical provisions dictated by the majority religion, had as its preamble the Objectives Resolution, cementing the fact that the white strip was negated. He went a step further in 1974 when at the insistence of the pious Islamist party people he brought in his second amendment and in one fell swoop committed the first act of collective excommunication in the Muslim world — making a minority of those who since the birth of the country had been a part of the majority. The white strip since then is a shame we must all bear.

The massacres in Lahore on May 28 did not come out of the blue – the federal and provincial governments had fair warning. On February 7 the Washington Post carried a report by Pamela Constable relating how “a handful of radical clerics have been whipping up hostility” in Lahore towards the Ahmadis and other minority sects. And then there was the banner hung on The Mall that declared Jews, Christians and Ahmadis to be “enemies of Islam” and a signboard sponsored by the Punjab Government Auqaf Department pronouncing friends of Ahmadis to be enemies of Islam.

Over the past three decades the symbolism of the white strip on the country’s flag has been sullied beyond repair. We are hypocritical to the core. Spates of violence along religious and sectarian lines are the order of the day, yet few object — most ignore what is under their noses, they ignore the murder of citizens of Pakistan by their fellow citizens and jump up and down in what they take to be righteous indignation about wrongs done in foreign lands. The official reaction to May 28 was muted and meaningless, shaming — as were protests by the public in general. Gaza overtook Lahore in a canter, with ease.

There is really no need to schlep off to foreign waters to protest against murder and mayhem — there is more than enough of it here right at home, in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Putting our own house in order, ridding our own eyes of multiples motes is a must before we can with any justification adopt outside causes, mostly prompted by an unreasonable and unrealistic hatred for the sole superpower. It’s high time to get real.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 5th, 2010.

URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/18820/white-is-black/

Legitimate discrimination

---Express Tribune, Pakistan

Pakistan

Legitimate discrimination

By Basil Nabi Malik
May 09, 2010

The writer is a lawyer with Malik, Chaudhry, Ahmed and Siddiqi in Karachi (basil.nabi@tribune.com.pk)

In my preceding article, I talked about the precariousness of defining the terms ‘Muslim’ and ‘non-Muslim’ in the Constitution of Pakistan. This article, in continuation, attempts to follow the unfortunate consequences of doing exactly that.

In addition to Article 260 discussed in the previous article, the constitution also contains Article 20 which guarantees every citizen the “right to profess, practice, and propagate his religion”, whereas it’s sub-article (b) allows every religious denomination and every sect “the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions”. Both are subject to “law, public order and morality”. Looking at the same, one would think that any discrimination on the basis of one’s religion would be a violation of said article.

In addition to this, Articles 4 and 25 of the constitution, which require citizens to be treated in accordance with the law and mandate that everyone be equal before the law, amongst others, also ensure that discrimination on the basis of religion is not allowed. If any discriminatory law is made targeting a group, the said law is liable to be struck down, subject to a “reasonable classification” founded on a reasonable distinction and on a reasonable basis.

And this may very well be the reason that provisions are usually content neutral, meaning that certain actions are made punishable for all and sundry who undertake them, rather than certain groups.

However, the inclusion of Article 260 in the constitution seems to have complicated the situation at hand and made lawful certain provisions which would otherwise be termed discriminatory and illegal.

A case in point would be Section 298-B and Section 298-C of the Pakistan Penal Code which relates to Qadianis. According to them, “any person of the Qadiani group or the Lahori Group” cannot refer his or her place of worship as ‘masjid’, cannot call the call to prayer ‘azaan’ or recite it in any way similar to that of Muslims. It is interesting that as per this law, if someone from another group undertook these actions, presumably this section would have no issues with that. As per Section 298-C, with respect to the two groups mentioned above, it would be a crime to ‘pose’ as a Muslim, refer to your faith as Islam, or do anything which “either spoken or written, or by visible representations or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims”.

On the face of it, these two sections of the Pakistan Penal Code seem to be plainly discriminatory. However, it seems that the Supreme Court, in 1993 SCMR 1718, due to Article 260, had no option but to come to a different conclusion. In a majority decision, the Supreme Court in this landmark case held that these sections were legal and in line with the Constitution. Article 260(3) was used as the foundation upon which the said provisions were held to be intra vires of the Constitution, wherein the specifying of certain groups was declared a reasonable classification in terms of the said Article. Amongst other things, it was stated by the Supreme Court that such provisions were “in advancement of the Constitutional mandate and not in derogation of it”.

Hence, in a nutshell, whereas the inclusion of Article 260 in the Constitution of Pakistan was dubious for the many reasons already enunciated, its implications are nonetheless probing in as much as it allows for the propagation of discrimination on the basis of one’s beliefs on the touchstone of the constitution.

In light of this, perhaps the political forces should take some time out of their busy schedules to review the said legal provisions which directly impact the lives of certain segments of Pakistani society, rather than dillydallying on other issues.

URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/11928/legitimate-discrimination/

Restoring the Civil Rights of Ahmadis

- Chowk.com
June 16, 2008
By a Pakistani

(The writer is a lawyer and a participant in the lawyer’s movement. He has asked to keep his identity secret for the fear of persecution.)

The events in Punjab Medical College in Faisalabad recently have brought to the forefront once again a very important and yet neglected issue which continues to blacken our collective conscience as a nation. The expulsion of 23 students for allegedly preaching their faith underscored the sickness that has crept into the majority in this country bringing bad name to the country and the faith of Islam as well. There is need for serious inquiry as to whether this pathetic state of affairs will be allowed to continue and will the Ahmadis continue to be the victims of Pakistan’s version of Jim Crow Laws aided and abetted by a PCO-ed judiciary passing numerous “Dredd Scott” like decisions.

The persecution of Ahmadis even under the present mangled constitution is patently unconstitutional. A fair court of law would have noticed and pounced on the Ahmadi-specific legislation that has crept into our statute books for every single one of these laws violate a couple dozen fundamental rights accorded to the citizens of Pakistan not the least Article 20 which gives every citizen the right to practice and propagate his or her religion without any caveats. The rot however began with Bhutto’s 2nd Amendment which declared Ahmadis Non-Muslim. His law minister, Mr. Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, proved himself to be a poor constitutional lawyer when he declared that the National Assembly was sovereign and could take such a step. The correct legal position was that of Sir Zafrullah Khan, erstwhile Pakistani foreign minister and one of the authors of the Lahore Resolution, who argued that it was beyond the scope of the National Assembly to determine the faith of an individual especially under the Constitution of 1973. Even the Islamic provisions of the constitution of 1973 were to be interpreted according to each sect’s understanding and Ahmadis being an established Muslim sect in 1973 were entitled to their own interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah.

Ahmadis were also very much Muslim when the Government of Pakistan laid claim to Qadian as a Muslim holy place in 1947 as a counterweight to Sikh claims to their holy sites in Pakistan. No less a person than Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, had declared unequivocally on the Ahmadi issue that anyone who calls himself a Muslim is a Muslim and that anyone who says otherwise is conspiring against the Muslim cause. It is little known that Jinnah was finally persuaded to return to India and lead the Muslim League by Mr. Ibrahim Dard, the Imam of the London Ahmaddiya Mosque in the 1930s. The future founder of Pakistan had gone to and prayed behind the Ahmaddiya mosque unaware that the country he was about to create in two decades would one day make such an act punishable under law. If he was to time travel into the future, he would probably abandon the whole Pakistan project altogether.

Every single act of persecution against Ahmadis is quite unjustifiably laid at the door of the idea of Pakistan. Unjustifiably because those at the fore front of the “Persecute Ahmadis movement” are the same people who bitterly opposed Pakistan and considered Jinnah as big a Kafir as they consider the Ahmadis. The first occurrence of the anti-Ahmaddiya feeling on record is a report by a Muslim League activist who found that in the tribal areas, Fakir of Ipi and other pro-Congress Mullah elements had begun to describe the Muslim League as a bastion of “Qadiyanism”. The same feeling has persisted. Majlis-e-Ahrar that led the anti-Ahmaddiya movement in 1953-1954 was the biggest Congress ally before partition. Jamaat-e-Islami chief Maududi had dismissed Jinnah and others as too secular and westernized to properly lead the Muslims. The biggest persecutors of Ahmadis i.e. Darul-Uloom-Deoband and their cronies owe their very political existence to Mahatma Gandhi who introduced these Mullahs in the Khilafat movement — out of which arose the Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind — the forerunner of all fundamentalist and militant movements in South Asia and beyond.

The idea that a majority can dictate to a minority what it is or isn’t allowed to call itself is the very anti-thesis of the principle Pakistan was created on. Pakistan was created on the idea that a permanent majority cannot by sheer numeric strength dominate and dictate to a permanent minority. The anti-Ahmaddiya legislation flies in face of the whole Pakistan idea, leading to at least one perceptive commentator calling the second amendment to the constitution in 1974 nothing less than the death of Pakistan. That a PPP government was in charge and Pakistan’s brightest Prime Minister was in power makes that event even more ironic. Bhutto perhaps had no other option. Had he resisted it, the establishment would have used the issue to dismiss Bhutto the same way they dismissed Khawaja Nazimuddin and the Muslim League government in 1953. Of course Bhutto fell three years later and atleast the rotund and very religious Nazimuddin does not carry the blot of being the Prime Minister who persecuted a group of people based on their faith. Great responsibility lies on the shoulders of the Pakistan People’s Party to undo its heinous mistake and clear up the good name of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once and for all. It has an excellent opportunity to undo a historic wrong.

Remember the issue is not, and it has never been, whether anyone agrees with Ahmadis or considers them Muslim. It is one’s right to hold an opinion but that opinion cannot be imposed no matter what force of majority is behind it. The issue is — as it has always been — what Ahmadis consider themselves. No construction of Article 20 of the constitution can deny them the right to call themselves Muslims and by settled law fundamental rights are the over-riding feature of any written constitution. Therefore the second amendment itself is unconstitutional and illegal, not to mention the antithesis of Pakistan and its idealism. It is also an issue that cuts deep into our aspiration to be a civilized and tolerant society based on rule of law. The actions of those who had always opposed Pakistan and its founder are beginning to taint the very ideal to utter joy of our enemies home and abroad. It is time for Pakistanis to stand up and be counted.

URL : www.chowk.com/articles/14234