The Ahmadi community in Pakistan’s Punjab province has sought justice from the Pakistani government after Islamists allegedly desecrated sixteen graves at a cemetery for placing Islamic symbols like verses from the Quran on gravestones. The Pakistani government doesn’t consider Ahmadis to be Muslims, and the Ahmadis are not allowed to call themselves Muslims in Pakistan by a law passed in 1974..
Aamir Mahmood, the spokesperson of Jamat Ahmadiya Punjab said on August 25 that unidentified persons desecrated sixteen graves of Ahmadis in the community graveyard in Chak 203 RB Manawala, Faisalabad on August 2.
There have previously been a number of such incidents in various parts of Pakistan in which the graves of Ahmadi community members were desecrated by religious fanatics.
On July 30, Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader Malik Ilyas Awan submitted a letter to the deputy commissioner of Khushab, a district in Pakistan’s Punjab province’s Sargodha Division, demanding him to expel Ahmadis, a minority Islamic sect. He also demanded that the district’s deputy commissioner withdraw the security provided to the region’s Ahmadi people.
In his letter, the leader of the PML-Q, an ally of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), argued that Ahmadis should be confined to Chenab Nagar, Pakistan’s only Ahmadi-majority city.
Imagine a US senator demanding expulsion of Muslims from his state. In Pakistan, VP of PML-Q, an ally of PTI, calls for expulsion of Ahmadis from district Khushab.
— Kashif N Chaudhry (@KashifMD) August 1, 2022
Pakistani friends, time for you to proclaim loudly, “Pakistan belongs to all her citizens, including its Ahmadis.” pic.twitter.com/MG6HXg2PPK
On May 19, one Ishfaq Ahmed’s grave was desecrated in Peshawar. A 36-year-old Ahmadi man was brutally murdered in front of his two children.
The horrors of hatred against Ahmadiya Muslims have been on rise this year. In February, nearly 50 graves of belonging to the Ahmadi community were allegedly desecrated by the local police and Maulanas for using Islamic symbols on gravestones at a cemetery in Punjab, Pakistan.
Aamir Mahmood, the spokesperson for Jamaat Ahmadiya Punjab, had stated that a group of residents in Premkot, district Hafizabad, around 110 kilometers from Lahore, approached the police and complained that Islamic verses were carved on the tombstones of a number of graves at the Ahmadi graveyard. According to him, the gang intimidated Ahmadis not to exhibit Islamic verses/symbols on their homes or graves. Aamir Mahmood told PTI that the local police along with some Maulanas and lawyers reached the Ahmadi graveyard and demolished the gravestones of 45 graves inscribed with Islamic verses.
Who are the Ahmadiyas?
In 1889, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a distinguished Muslim scholar and reformer, established this Community in Qadian, India. He formed a movement that denounced terrorism and the use of violent action to preach religion, i.e. the contemporary notion of ‘Jihad.’ The extreme ulemas are adamantly opposed to this tolerant interpretation of Islam. For years, they have used it as a justification to exclude this minority from Islam. Mullahs, politicians, and the military in authority in many Islamic states, particularly Pakistan, have conspired to repress and persecute the Ahmadiyas.
In 1974, ZA Bhutto, Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister, regarded it as a political advantage to impose “non-Muslim” status on Muslim Ahmadis by a constitutional amendment. The “mullahs” enthusiastically supported this modification. This legislation cleared the path for the persecution of the Community. Since then, the government, the police, and the Mullahs have collaborated to persecute Ahmadis.
Ahmadi community in the Islamic state of Pakistan have been barred from the Pakistani government’s minority commission, which is tasked with protecting the rights of the country’s minorities. According to the Pakistani constitution, Ahmadis are not Muslims, and their places of worship are not called mosques. Furthermore, their houses of worship cannot resemble a Masjid or Mosque, nor may they have structures such as minarets.
