Source/Credit: Ahmadiyya Times
By AT Staff | Mardan | January 7, 2010
Mardan (Peshawar): Unknown shooters opened fire on Ahmadi Muslim men in Mardan, Pakistan, it was reported.
The incident took place on Thursday, January 6, and the shooting resulted in injuries in this mid-size town situated some 40 miles from Peshawar, Pakistan.
Mian Wajeeh Ahmad Nauman suffered hip injuries and was taken to the nearby hospital.
Mian Nauman, an active member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community himself is son of a prominent Ahmadi Muslim, Bashir Ahmad of Mardan.
Ahmadi Muslims have been the target of many attacks led by various religious groups.
All religious seminaries and madrasahs in Pakistan, belonging to different sects of Islam, have prescribed essential reading materials specifically targeting the beleifs of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
Some religious extremist factions have standing calls to kill Ahmadi Muslims in order to 'earn a higher status in the life hereafter.'
-- Ahmadiyya Times - Staff report
--: Mardan Pakistan: Firing on Ahmadi Muslims, injuries reported
How far the nation has travelled over the decades is evident in the distance between the petal-throwing lawyers and the finest document in the country's history – not its ever-amending constitution, but a judicial report penned by Justices Munir and Kayani in 1954, in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya riots of 1953, which marked the first time the religious right used violence against the state to try and push forward its programme of defining Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteThe riots were designed to press the government into declaring members of the Ahmadiyya sect as non-Muslim. The attempt failed, but showed up certain dangerous problems within the new state. The Munir-Kayani report didn't merely look at the facts surrounding the riots, but delved into theology, philosophy and dry wit to expose the dangers and absurdity of the religious right's position. In a particularly brilliant section the report asks 10 ulema (Islamic scholars) to lay out the minimum conditions a person must satisfy to call themselves a Muslim. After reproducing the wildly divergent answers, the justices write: "Need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental ... And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulema, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim [scholar] but kafirs [infidels] according to the definition of everyone else."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/07/liberal-pakistan-triumph-extremism-salmaan-taseer