Ahmedi-baiting in Lahore

Ahmedi-baiting: ridiculous or tragic?

The 20 shopkeepers of Green Town in Lahore have been advised to remove any Quranic verses from their shops simply to avoid bloody mayhem, given the atmosphere of extremism in the country. The shopkeepers are Ahmedis who represent the cluster of 200 houses belonging to the community in the nearby Township area. Some of them have written verses from the Quran (like the kalima) on the front of their shops and houses.

The Ahmedis complain that the Sunni shopkeepers had gone to the police in the matter out of business jealousy. They say the verses had stayed written on their houses and shops for many years. But the stark fact is that under the Constitution and the laws framed in line with an amendment made in it, the Ahmedis are not even allowed to show respect towards Islamic symbols. They have been declared non-Muslims but with the distinction that while other non-Muslims can show respect, they cannot.

Outsiders will regard this as ridiculous or even funny, but in Pakistan this is a deadly serious matter. People have died for it, and angry organisations with global connections are calling for more drastic action against the Ahmedis every day. The application to the police against the Ahmedis has been moved in the name of the International Majlis Khatm-e-Nabuwwat. The police in the area of Green Town cannot wave the affair away.

According to Section 298-B of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), the Ahmedi community cannot call its place of worship a masjid and cannot give the call to prayer (azan). According to Section 298-C of the PPC, they cannot pose as Muslims, directly or indirectly. There was this extremely absurd incident of an Ahmedi being hauled up for having written the kalima on the house that he had just bought; but he was hauled up again, for desecration, when he tried to wipe it off. (Daily Times)

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The sectarian-ethnic scourge in Pakistan: The legacy of General Zia-ul-Haq

The sectarian-ethnic scourge

The killing fields of Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP claimed more victims on Tuesday as a grenade attack killed one man and wounded 18 others inside a Sunni mosque. The attacker hurled the hand grenade at the worshippers during evening prayers, causing a stampede and leading to more injuries. This is not a good sign because heretofore it was the Shia community in DI Khan that bore the brunt of attacks from banned Sunni sectarian organisations aligned with the Taliban in the neighbouring territory of South Waziristan.

As if this was not enough worry, the Baloch Republican Army (BRA) owned Tuesday the cold-blooded murder of five Punjabis in Noshki and Mastung districts of Balochistan, saying it was “retaliation for the firing by security forces on a wedding ceremony in Dera Bugti”. The target in Noshki was the shop owned by a Punjabi settler for generations which had been attacked earlier too. In Mastung, the victim was an innocent man standing at a bus stop. In the past few days, Punjabis have become victims of terrorism, including one in Quetta, for violence allegedly committed by the law enforcement agencies against the Baloch. A BRA spokesman told the press, “We will carry out attacks on all Punjabis wherever they live in Balochistan. We do not tolerate Punjabis on our land. It is the Punjabi forces attacking our people”.

There is more bad news. Layyah in Punjab is seeing a repeat of what an educational institution did to its Ahmedi students in Faisalabad last year: a movement led by the uncle of the local MNA wants 10 Ahmedi students expelled from a private tuition centre because of allegations of blasphemy against four students. Handbills distributed in the village ask the Ahmedis to leave the place by February 9 because their four children allegedly wrote blasphemous things on the walls of the latrines of a local mosque. The Layyah police say there are no witnesses and no evidence against the accused and, what is most alarming, the imam of the mosque admits that a false case has been registered by the police under pressure from a group of people that include the local head of the banned Jama’at-ud Dawa and some local journalists.

All these incidents on the same day point to the nature of terrorism in Pakistan. The umbrella of Al Qaeda and Taliban violence now gives shelter to old terrorist tendencies that existed in the country. The DI Khan incident goes back to the tacit permission of the state to consolidation of the power of Sipah Sahaba in DI Khan during the Afghan war. After the dominance of the Taliban in the neighbouring Tribal Areas the simmering animus of the sectarian terrorists found vent in suicide-bombing attacks on the Shia community. It appeared that the suicide-bombing factories of the Taliban and Al Qaeda were taking time out to kill the Shia too. But the latest killing at a Sunni mosque is even more alarming: it means the Shia have been forced to hit back because they have despaired of the state coming to their help.

The Baloch radicals have always accused the Punjabi of trespassing on their rights. In the past, there were cases of “cleansing” the government machinery of Punjabis; but today the “liberation” organisations find it convenient to “avenge” the acts of the Pakistan army by killing Punjabis although the Pakistan army may contain other nationalities like the Pashtun too. The Ahmedis have avoided ghettoisation and hence been relatively safe from attacks, but wherever they become identified they are subjected to ruthless violence through the instrumentality of two laws on the statute books: one specific, disallowing them Muslim rituals and practices; and second general, the law against blasphemy used to entrap Ahmedis and Christians alike to expel them from their property which is later annexed by the attackers.
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Religious extremism: fringe or mainstream?

Suroosh Irfani

Three men who led the anti-Ahmedi movement (including Maulana Maududi, then head of Jamaat-i-Islami) were tried by a military court and sentenced to death, later commuted under pressure from Muslim countries, to life imprisonment. Even so, the writ of the state had prevailed, it did not submit to any of the agitators’ demands, and the campaign remained dormant for the next twenty years

Pakistan’s 57th independence anniversary was as much marked by concern about the threat of religious terrorism as confusion about what exactly the extent of such a threat amounts to. On the eve of Independence Day, the interior minister, Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, told parliament that religious parties were supporting the terrorist activities of Al Qaeda. “All the Al Qaeda operatives arrested recently”, he said, “were picked up from the regional headquarters” of the religious parties. However, in a PTV interview on August 16 President Musharraf ostensibly contradicted the minister’s statement, saying he “did not believe any political party was involved in terrorism”. For his part, Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain told a press briefing at his party’s headquarters in Islamabad on August 17 that “terrorists had had only individual level links with some Jamaat-i-Islami leaders”. Commenting on Mr Hayat’s statement that terrorists were arrested from the JI offices, the prime minister stated that only “a few JI leaders had links with terrorists and had helped them in their individual capacity”.

The president, prime minister and minister for interior seem thus to widely differ in their assessment and articulation of a fundamental problem threatening the country today: The problem of religious terrorism, the degree to which it finds support among the religious parties, and sympathy for the religious extremists in the mainstream society. The vast majority of Pakistanis, the president insisted in his PTV interview, “were moderate and religious”, the fundamentalists, he went on, were “in the fringe”, of which an even smaller fringe “were extremist”.

One would like to share such an optimistic reading of religious extremism in a country that has morphed from a frontline sponsor of international jihad in Afghanistan to a frontline state in the international war on terrorism. However, a cursory glance at recent history indicates that religious violence in Pakistan today reflects a more organised and broader avatar of sectarian violence that has plagued the country for well over half a century. Of this, the following is a partial track record:

Pakistan witnessed its first sectarian flare up in 1950 in Hyderabad, during the holy month of Muharram. Nine people were killed when police opened fire on a rioting mob that was trying to force its way into the police station, where some people of the rival sect had taken refuge. The violence followed a rumour that a Sunni mohajir child had been kidnapped by the Shias during an ashura procession. The day long disturbances were underpinned by strong mohajir-maqami tensions.

The first organised sectarian agitation that gripped the country was the movement against the Ahmedi community in 1953. It led to Pakistan’s first experience of martial law when the army was called in to control the riots that had erupted in Lahore. Led by the Jamaat-i-Islami and Majlis-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, a Sunni pressure group, the rioters demanded that Ahmedis be declared a non-Muslim minority, employment of Ahmedis in government services be banned, and Pakistan’s Ahmedi foreign minister, Zafrullah Khan, be removed from office.

Martial law was imposed after rioters in Lahore went on a rampage on March 5, 1953, burning post offices, buses and a police station, besides shooting dead a deputy superintendent of police. Twenty people had been killed by the time the army restored order four days later. Hundreds of activists barricading themselves in mosques were arrested — as many as 597 of them from Lahore’s Wazir Khan mosque alone. The three men who led the movement (including Maulana Maududi, then head of Jamaat-i-Islami) were tried by a military court and sentenced to death, later commuted under pressure from Muslim countries, to life imprisonment. Even so, the writ of the state had prevailed, it did not submit to any of the agitators’ demands, and the anti-Ahmedi campaign remained dormant for the next twenty years.

However, in an atmosphere marked by Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 war with India, the break up of the country, and the coming to power of the secular government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the religious parties stepped up their anti-Ahmedi campaign. The pressure bore fruit when Ahmedis were declared a non-Muslim minority following a constitutional amendment passed by Pakistan’s National Assembly in 1974.

By the mid-1980s, however, the focus of sectarian politics had shifted to Shia-Sunni violence amidst an atmosphere marked by Shia activism and Sunni extremist demand for declaring Shias a non-Muslim minority. Before long, Shia-Sunni violence was endemic in both the tribal and urban areas of Pakistan. In Parachinar and Hangu, in the areas bordering Afghanistan, sectarian strife assumed the form of a virtual tribal civil war, with “free use of missiles, mortars, and rocket launchers”. When the army restored order and carried out a house-to-house search in Parachinar, it recovered huge amounts of illegal weapons.

The Parachinar paradigm of sectarian violence — use of heavy weapons by both sides, support of Afghan settlers and Taliban for the local Sunnis, and the deployment of army for restoring order — was replicated in several other clashes in the Tribal Areas during the years that followed.

Speaking in the National Assembly during the second Benazir government, the interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, expressed his dismay at the situation, saying: “two neighboring countries (Iran and Afghanistan) are fighting their war in Pakistan” (Dawn, 16 September, 1996). He also blamed the religious schools calling them “the main cause of bloodshed in Parachinar”, and regretted that the government had given land to two countries (Afghanistan and Iran) for building their madrassas.

In urban Pakistan, Shia-Sunni violence became a contest for body counts among rival death squads, claiming 1,287 victims between 1990-2002.. Initially, the violence was restricted to target killing of sectarian leaders and activists, teachers and students. The scope of the violence then expanded exponentially, with attacks on police patrols, jail superintendents, high-ranking government officials and judges carrying out investigations against sectarian terrorists. At the same time, worshippers in mosques and mourners in cemeteries also became victims of sectarian gunmen, indicating that the hatred underpinning such violence was virtually taking the form of indiscriminate slaughter. By the start of the new millennium, doctors were added as a high-value category in the sectarians’ death list: the militants believed that “a doctor presented a strategic target because of the publicity his killing generated”, a report in Newsline (August 2001) reported.

With the coming to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1996, the Sunni sectarian groups got a massive boost: They plugged in their lot with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan on the one hand and the jihadi groups fighting in Indian held Kashmir on the other. Following the rout of the Talibanic state after 9/11, many of these sectarians and their sympathisers morphed into voluntary foot soldiers of Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Suroosh Irfani is co-director of the Graduate Programme in Communication and Cultural Studies at National College of Arts, Lahore. This is the first of a two-part series
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Taliban's FM Radio "Intolerance 101" - By Tariq Aqil

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
by Tariq Aqil

The month of September witnessed the brutal and senseless murder of three Ahmedis in Pakistan. This gruesome tragedy happened in the aftermath of a popular TV programme in which Ahmedis were blamed for everything under the sun. It appears as if some of our TV channels have been taken over by the dark and sinister forces of obscurantism. All non-Muslims and those who dare to stand up to the forces of religious fanaticism are declared infidels and worthy only of death.

Despite the carnage at the Marriott in Islamabad, and many other similar incidents before it, much of the educated elite of the country still believes in the fallacy that 'Muslims cannot do such a thing'. Regrettably, large sections of the media also refuse to accept this ground reality and mimic the same line. This is accompanied with America-bashing – virtually every suicide bombing, atrocity, every senseless killing is blamed on America, India, and the CIA. Another all-time whipping boy is the Jewish lobby or the 'Yahood-o- Nasara' meaning Jews and Christians. We seem to blame everyone including Charlie's aunt except our own homegrown obscurantist religious bigots. We are so blinded by our religious intolerance and hatred of Western nations that our vision is now limited to the tip of our nose. If we do not wake up from our deep slumber of ignorance the country is very likely to tear apart at the seams.

After the creation of Pakistan, religion became politicized. Most religious parties became political outfits that used the name of Islam and exploited religion for their own political objectives. Religious scholars, clerics, pirs, and sajjada nashins became politicians or stooges of politicians and the phenomenon of 'mullahism' was born. Illiterate, narrow-minded clerics became willing tools in the hands of greedy and corrupt politicians. The rise of the mullah, in Pakistan and in other parts of the world, is a direct cause of sectarianism and religious intolerance – creating sectarian schisms and conflict in not only Pakistan but India, Sudan, Egypt, Nigeria, Jordan and Iraq.

The Taliban in Pakistan are a recent phenomenon hell-bent on taking us back to the Dark Ages. They have complete disregard for human life, human rights or even human values. Dozens of girls' schools have been torched or dynamited in Swat and FATA, men have been forced to sport beards and music and CD shops have been bombed. Many schools in Islamabad have also received threats and warnings from these so called champions of Islam. Imagine the state of affairs in the country if these mindless religious fanatics take control of the state.

Many of our political leaders and intellectuals argue that terrorism in Pakistan is a direct result of Pakistan's support to the US in their war on terror after the happenings of 9/11. They fail to recognize the simple fact that the roots of terrorism lie deep within Pakistan and its chequered past. The terrorism we face today is a direct offshoot of sectarian violence and religious killings of the past. Who created the Sipah-e-Sahaba or the Jaish-e-Mohammad? These extremist militant groups were founded well before 9/11 or even before the birth of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And the fact also is that they were founded, nurtured and led by Pakistanis and not by the 'Yahood-o-Nasara'. Also, take a look at the case of Harakat-ul-Ansar or Harakat-ul-Mujahideen. Who founded, supported and financed these groups? Today we have Swat's Maulana Fazalullah spitting fire and brimstone from his electronic pulpit, an FM radio station, spreading hatred and venom across the beautiful valley. All these gentlemen are Pakistani Muslims up in arms against the state of Pakistan.

The founders and leaders of our home grown religious extremist groups did not spring up overnight. They were educated, nurtured, trained and finally launched by the numerous madressahs which have mushroomed all over the country. There is a clear co-relation between the rapid growth of madressahs and intolerance and extremism. Some of the madressahs which have been established by semi-literate mullahs are spreading intolerance and helping produce today's and tomorrow's suicide bombers. Such madressahs have played a pivotal role in creating the hardcore terrorists of today.

These madressahs function without any supervisory body and their syllabus is based on a doctrine of intolerance and rigid obscurantism. In their worldview women who do not wear a veil and men without beards are all kafirs. Listening to music or watching TV or movies is forbidden, and the only way to reform society and those who live in it are imposition of Sharia, by force if necessary. They also teach that suicide bombing is okay if done against infidels and that those who die as suicide bombers will find a place in Paradise. It is this teaching and preaching that has resulted in the dozens of suicide attacks that have taken place inside Pakistan and have killed women leaders such as Benazir Bhutto and provincial minister Zille Huma (killed by a self-professed fanatic in Gujranwala). The Lal Masjid fiasco is too recent to forget but let us not forget it was the maulanas of the mosque who motivated their students to occupy government property illegally, destroy video shops and kidnap citizens.

The Taliban have succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear and horror. The Taliban philosophy has destroyed the ideals and beliefs of a free society. According to them, freedom of thought and expression is not needed at all and anybody who dares to disagree with them is butchered. The image of the country has suffered irreparable harm the name of our religion has been defamed by the acts of these barbarians. This scourge is not confined to the tribal areas only and is slowly but surely creeping towards the settled urban areas of the frontier, Punjab and Sindh. The choice before us is pretty simple: face this menace and defeat it or hand over the country to these obscurantist forces. (The News)


The writer is a teacher and freelance writer. Email: taqil17@hotmail.com
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