Really terrific post by Jasmine about the legal discrimination and oppression of Ahmedis in Pakistan, particularly in light of a recent crime against Ahmedi medical students in my home province of Punjab.
Here’s the last two paragraphs:
Ahmadi communities are terrorized by Islamist vigilante groups, often with the connivance of the police. Forced apostacy is seen as the only way not so much as to preserve Islam’s purity in Pakistan, but to prevent the rise of a real spiritual challenge to the dead hand of the Ulema’s legalism. Ahmadis have been the victims of massacres, dug up from cemeteries, hounded out of public life, denied jobs, ghettoized, harrassed in every way and generally treated as a underclass. This, meted out year after year, to a industrious and gifted little community any sane country would be proud to have in its midst. Religious persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan is endemic with murders happening all the time. As Islamists sense power, their eyes are gleaming at the thought of unifying fragmented Pakistani society behind a easy target, yes- the Ahmadis, weak, vulnerable, with no international connections, except the good will Ahmadi refugees have fostered in places like the UK through hard work and good community relations. But there are no Ahmadi militias or international action groups, not for a belief whose creed is simply, “LOVE EVERYONE-HATE NO ONE.”
Hundreds of Jamaat activists arrived on the PMC Campus exactly like a fascist milita. They were determined to find the Ahmadis and they had little trouble. The dormitories were ransacked, the principal’s office trashed and the whole college laid siege to. Then the assaults started. And who were these enemies of Islam and the Pakistani state? Just eight female medical students and five male students whose only crime was to believe that Islam can be more than what the Mullahs say it is. Beaten by the mob and their clothes thrown out the windows, the 8 Ahmadi girls and 5 boys were led away by the police. Hours later, the Jamaat thugs already celebrating, the PMC principal announced that for spreading Ahmadi beliefs on campus- the victims were EXPELLED. There are no more Ahmadi students at Punjab Medical College- the College that betrayed its own kids in much the same fashion the Pakistani state has betrayed some of its most promising citizens. Hey, PMC- the Pakistani Heretical Girl says, “FUCK YOU.”
But read the whole thing.
I should mention one fact in support of Jasmine’s characterization of this persecuted community as forward-looking and educated: The only Pakistani who has ever won a Nobel (in physics) was an Ahmedi.
Filed under: Islam/Religion
