Massacre at Ahmadiyya Muslim Mosque; Random act of violence or State Sanctioned Terrorism

OPINIONS, RELIGIONS

Massacre at Ahmadiyya Muslim Mosque; Random act of violence or State Sanctioned Terrorism

By iNewp Citizen Journalist
Published: June 7, 2010

The Holy Quran says; “If God did not repel some people by means of others, there would surely have been destroyed cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft commemorated” (22:41). In a true Islamic state, the minorities enjoy freedom to practice and preach their religion without fearing for their lives. It is the state’s responsibility to not only protect the lives and mosques of its Muslim constituents but also protect the places of worship of other faiths.

This is not the case in Pakistan, which claims to be an Islamic state and was founded 63 years ago on the basic principles of equality and freedom for all. Instead, it is a country whose name and the word “terrorism” are today often mentioned in the same sentence. Today, Pakistan has laws written in its books which prohibit a large group of Muslims from practicing their faith and they are made to endure a life full of fear and hardships due to their belief on the Messiah of the later days as prophesied by Islam’s prophet, Mohammad (May peace be with him).

In 1974, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then President of Pakistan, proclaimed Ahmadis “non Muslims” but allowed them to practice their religion. To further satisfy the unabated appetite of fanatics in the country, in 1984, the government of General Zia ul Haq further tightened the law and with one ordinance snatched the basic human rights from Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Furthermore, they tried to break the spirits of Ahmadi Muslims by taking away their identity and barred them from using the word “Muslim” for themselves.

Ahmadis today are prohibited from calling their religion Islam, their places of worship mosques, making the call for prayer “Adhaan” or even making the most basic proclamation of faith which states that “God is One and Mohammad is His messenger”. In an arrogant gesture, the government tried to erase all Muslim words and phrases from Ahmadi lexicon which were built into the soul and daily life of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

General Zia ul Haq (left), a public flogging during his reign (right), Ahmadis were persecuted even more during Haq’s rule.

While I have been greeted many times in America by non-Muslims with the words “Assalamo Alaikum” (may peace be with you), as an Ahmadi Muslim one can be thrown in jail for using the same greeting in Pakistan.

There are hundreds of Ahmadi Muslims languishing in jails for the crime of sending peace to their fellow Muslims. On a daily basis Ahmadi Muslims face discrimination in jobs, schools and military for the crime of believing in the Messiah.

This state sanctioned persecution has encouraged the fanatic elements in the Pakistani society to make the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community a constant target of threats and attacks. Target killing of community leaders and attacks on Ahmadiyya mosques have become a norm and rarely attracts attention or condemnation from the government. These fanatic elements encourage and incite masses to kill Ahmadis, in plain sight on state sanctioned events and in media. Driving through the main roads of Lahore, a culturally bustling city, one can see banners and graffiti on the walls with incendiary slogans against Ahmadis.

The brutal attacks and massacre in two Ahmadiyya mosques on May 28th are a culmination of years of government policies and an insincere, half hearted effort to control the extremist elements in Pakistan. This heinous attack by Pakistani Taliban has resulted in the death of 95 Ahmadis, while more than 150 are critically injured. Ahmadiyya Muslim Community strictly follows the policy of “Love for All, Hatred for None”. Unlike other religious groups, Ahmadis will not retaliate, they will not raise arms, and they will not come out on the streets to protest or destroy public property. Their 120 year history is filled with patience, tolerance, and non violence. These brutal attacks have however, raised some questions.

How can Ahmadis trust the motives of Pakistan government with the above track record? How can any minority feel protected in a state that has seen Ahmadis literally thrown under the bus over and over again? How can any Pakistani citizen sleep soundly at night with a corrupt government in charge? And how can we Americans trust the motives and sincerity of Pakistan as an ally in this war on terrorism?

(Cover Picture: Chaudary/AP) — Op-Ed Article Contributed By: Aziza Faruqi

URL: http://inewp.com/?p=3127

NA condemns killing of Ahmadis

FROM THE PAPER » FRONT PAGE

NA condemns killing of Ahmadis
   By Raja Asghar
   Friday, 04 Jun, 2010

Stating that “Islam does not permit attacks on minorities but instead seeks to protect all human life as sacred”, the resolution called for a thorough investigation and bringing militants who carried out the attacks to justice. – APP Photo

ISLAMABAD: It was after an apparent hesitation and a bold initiative by some women that the National Assembly on Thursday unanimously condemned Friday’s “barbaric massacre” of Ahmadis in Lahore.

It initially appeared that the brutal gun attacks on two places of worship, which killed about 90 people and wounded 105 others, would find no mention on the opening day of the lower house’s budget session as had happened in the Senate a bit earlier, for fear of possible ire of hardline Anti-Ahmadi religious groups.

But PPP’s former information minister Sherry Rehman would not let it go like that and called for an immediate attention to her two adjournment motions on the most deadly attack on the Ahmadi community and the Israeli commando attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla on Monday after Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Malik Amad Khan informed the house of Pakistan’s diplomatic moves against the Israeli action.

Immediate support for her move came from three more women members — ANP’s Bushra Rehman, MQM’s Khushbakht Shujaat and PPP’s Farah Naz Ispahani — while some men from both the treasury and opposition benches also jumped into the discussion before agreed resolutions on the two issues were drafted and adopted unanimously as substitutes for the adjournment motions.

One of them, moved by Ms Rehman, called the Lahore carnage “barbaric massacre” and a “coordinated act of terrorism” that it said represented a “serious challenge to the writ of the Constitution in Pakistan”.

Stating that “Islam does not permit attacks on minorities but instead seeks to protect all human life as sacred”, the resolution called for a thorough investigation and bringing militants who carried out the attacks to justice.

The other resolution, moved by PML-N’s Zahid Hamid, described the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla as “an act of aggression and state terrorism” as well as a “crime against humanity” and asked the government to seek intervention by the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Conference and the United Nations to get the Israeli blockade of Gaza lifted.

At the beginning of the proceedings, PPP’s re-elected member Jamshed Dasti came to the house in style, seemingly dismissing the shame of being found to have been elected in the first instance in February 2008 with a fake graduation degree and evoked “jiay Bhutto” slogans from supporters in a visitors’ gallery as he and another newly elected party member from Punjab, Asghar Jatt, took oath as MNAs.

Mr Dasti wore a band on his forehead inscribed in Seraiki language with “Asan qaidi takht Lahore dey” (we are prisoners of Lahore’s throne) and a black band on his left arm to protest at alleged excesses against him by the PML-N’s Punjab government.

Some other members also appeared targeting the Punjab government in their speeches about the Lahore attacks for allegedly ignoring intelligence reports about militant threats to Ahmadis.

PML-N chief whip Sheikh Aftab Ahmed dismissed the allegations, saying “terrorism is on the rise in the whole of Pakistan”, not only in Punjab, and was a national problem.

PPP’s chief whip, Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah, said his party did not want to politicise the issue of terrorism and wanted it to be fought by all together.

But he said he had no objection to a demand by Mr Dasti for a house committee to investigate his charges of victimisation by the Punjab government and would like the PML-N to be its part.

However, PPP’s Nawab Yousuf Ali Talpur, who was chairing the proceedings, gave no ruling on the demand before adjourning the house until 10am on Friday.

The house business advisory committee decided before the sitting that the national budget for fiscal 2010-11 would be presented on Saturday and approved on June 28.

©2010 DAWN Media Group. All rights reserved

URL: www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-...condemns-killing-of-ahmadis-460

Ahmadis plead for world help after Lahore killings

FROM THE PAPER » FRONT PAGE

Ahmadis plead for world help after Lahore killings

    Friday, 04 Jun, 2010

Militants last week stormed two Ahmadi prayer halls in Lahore, killing 82 worshippers in gun and grenade attacks. — Photo by AFP

NEW YORK: A leader of the Ahmadi community pleaded Thursday for international pressure on Pakistan, warning that extremists were bent on wiping out the community after nearly 100 people were killed.

The Ahmadi community in the United States urged Pakistan to repeal laws restricting the community and to clamp down on hardline Sunni clerics, who it said have waged a campaign of incitement.

“The time is now for the world to wake up to the realisation that the goal of the extremist clerics is to execute a full-scale holocaust,” said Naseem Mahdi, the missionary-in-charge of the US Ahmadi community.

“Even today, after this massacre, on television, in the streets, on billboards, in public meetings, the hatred continues to be preached and no one in any governmental body takes steps to stop people from such incitement to murder,” he told a news conference in New York.

Militants last week stormed two Ahmadi prayer halls in Lahore, killing 82 worshippers in gun and grenade attacks. Gunmen later raided the hospital where victims were treated, killing four people in a shootout.

Mahdi, who put the death toll at 94, said urged US officials to raise religious freedom with Pakistan, which is receiving a 7.5 billion-dollar US package aimed at building its economy and democratic institutions.

“The US government must take every measure in its power to have all levels of government in Pakistan eliminate the laws and ordinances that have become the tools to facilitate and institutionalize the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims” and have been used against other minorities, he said.

Founded by Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1838, the Ahmadis believe that Ahmad himself was a prophet and that Jesus died aged 120 in Srinagar.

Pakistan declared them non-Muslims in 1974 and 10 years later they were barred from calling themselves Muslims.

The Ahmadis are strongly critical of violence in the name of Islam.

“The extremists have repeatedly used their power over the masses to brutally attack us in the name of the defence of Islam. They try to gain by violence what they fail to gain by argument, reason and rationality,” Mahdi said.

Religious violence in Pakistan, mostly between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shias, has killed more than 4,000 people in the past decade.

The Ahmadi community has also encountered problems in other countries including Egypt, which earlier this year detained nine Ahmadis.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government advisory board, called on Egypt to release them “immediately and unconditionally.”

Egypt has held the Ahmadis using a prohibition against insulting Islam along with a controversial emergency powers law.

Neither charge has “any merit whatsoever,” said Leonard Leo, the chairman of the US commission.

“Both are a blatant violation of their international right to freedom of religion or belief as well as contrary to Egypt’s own constitutional protections,” he said.

©2010 DAWN Media Group. All rights reserved

URL: www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-conte...-world-pressure-pak-qs-07

The Demonization of Ahmadis in Pakistan

RELIGIONS, WORLD

The Demonization of Ahmadis in Pakistan

By iNewp Citizen Journalist
Published: June 4, 2010

Even during the immediate aftermath of last Friday’s brutal attacks on two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, Pakistan, even as Ahmadis around the world attempt to comprehend the savagery that has swept through their community, there are those who doubt the religious hatred which motivated these attacks. These skeptics claim that the attacks are simply the latest in a series of attacks by Islamic extremists against innocent Pakistani citizens, attacks in which militants target people indiscriminately. Therefore, they claim, these attacks should receive no special treatment or discussion.

This is disingenuous at best. The extremists who perpetrated these attacks were aided by the government, media, and people of Pakistan.

The government’s role in this tragedy began in 1974, when it declared Ahmadis to be “non-Muslim.”

As Pakistan is an Islamic state, this had wide-reaching ramifications for Ahmadis. A further injustice occurred in 1984, when it became illegal for Ahmadis to practice their faith. One of the consequences of these laws was that it became a trivial matter to accuse an Ahmadi of blasphemy, a crime in Pakistan punishable by fines and prison. Though the rule of law is tenuous at best in Pakistan, the situation is even worse for an Ahmadi.

It is commonplace for the government to ignore Ahmadis who have been threatened, harassed, or attacked.

Occasionally, this is taken to the cruelest extremes: murderers of Ahmadis, often religiously motivated, face no consequences. Local and provincial governments are no better; they often claim to be taking action while sitting idly, ignoring the plight of their citizens. This gross mistreatment of the Ahmadi community is exemplified by the fact that even today, almost a week after the attacks in Lahore, the government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari has not issued any statements condemning the attacks or offering condolences to the community.

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan.

Alongside Pakistan’s government, the media has chosen to ignore the needs of the Ahmadi community. If an Ahmadi is murdered, it goes unreported; if an anti-Ahmadi rally takes place, the views of the Ahmadi community are not represented.

After the Lahore attacks, the Ahmadi community held a press conference which went completely ignored by Pakistan’s news outlets. That an average Pakistani citizen’s knowledge of Ahmadis comes from the community’s opponents is only a natural consequence of the lack of fair reporting.

Finally, and perhaps most dishearteningly, the people of Pakistan are complicit regarding their government’s treatment of the Ahmadi community. It has become extremely difficult for Ahmadis to advance in government careers or work for many Pakistani companies—because of their beliefs.

An Ahmadi can also expect to be ostracized or treated poorly by friends and family who don’t share their beliefs. Many Ahmadis, in order to protect themselves, do not associate with those outside of the religion or are extremely discreet about it.

In Pakistan, Ahmadis are stripped of many of their fundamental rights. They have few allies. The government has abandoned them, the media ignores them, and the Pakistani people have left them to bleed. To say that the Lahore attacks, attacks which deliberately targeted Ahmadis, are not worthy of special attention is beyond callous—it’s dead wrong. The Lahore attacks, which left more than ninety people dead, were not acts of random, extremist violence. They were premeditated attacks which could have only occurred in an atmosphere created by the widespread institutional and social bias against the Ahmadi community.

Militant Islamists protest outside an Ahmadiyya mosque; Ahmadiyya Muslims are accused of being infidels and are often victims of violence. (Meredith Davenport for The New York Times)

To correct the misperceptions about Ahmadis inculcated in the Pakistani population will take time, but the government must stop treating Ahmadis as second-class citizens.

All courses of action which will achieve these ends begin with the repulsion of the Second Amendment to the Pakistan Constitution, which declares Ahmadis to be non-Muslim. The government must also repeal the blasphemy laws which have been used to oppress countless people, not only Ahmadis.

Equality under the law is an ideal which the Pakistan government must strive for, regardless of the citizen’s religion. Only when these laws have been repealed will peace be on the horizon for not only the beleaguered Ahmadi community in Pakistan, but other minority groups like the Christians and Sikhs who all call Pakistan their home.

(Cover Picture: AFP) — Article Contributed By: Nurul Ain

URL: http://inewp.com/?p=3110