“In the case of Ahmadis, the state of Pakistan has created a basis for these extremist groups to pursue their agenda. However, the law does not warrant any group to take such action. It is only through court of law that the application of this law can be secured.”
Source/Credit: The News | Pakistan
By Waqar Gillani | December 9, 2012
When graves become a target of the wrath of ideologues, one is forced to ask “what happened to the state?”
It was a pre-dawn strike last Monday. Around one and a half dozen masked attackers, equipped with arms, broke into an Ahmadi graveyard in Model Town, one of their main cemeteries in Lahore.
The armed men tied the caretakers with ropes and locked them up in the living quarters of the graveyard before they moved on to the graves. The destruction of tombstones went on for about 40 minutes.
After beating up the caretakers and guards on duty, they desecrated around 120 graves. They broke the tombstones as they were carrying the names of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and Kalma Tayyaba.
Ahmadis in Pakistan were declared non-Muslims in 1974 by the then parliament during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s regime. Later, in the 1980s, General Ziaul Haq brought strict laws forbidding Ahmadis to pose as Muslim, read or recite Kalama, Aazan (call for prayers) and Quran, disallowing them to call their worship place ‘mosque’.
According to the guards of the desecrated graveyard, they were around 20 masked men who claimed association with the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
“The police were unaware of the incident till late Monday night and lodged a case against some unknown persons after keeping the community lawyers waiting for many hours,” says a community representative.
Hitting the Ahmadi worship places and forcing them to remove Islamic verses and names, which they are forbidden to use according to Section 298 A, B, and C of Pakistan Penal Code, has become a tool to harass and persecute them. According to investigations into some of the cases of vandalism in different parts of the country, such acts of harassment and persecution are systematically done by organised groups of clerics and locals having connections with anti-Ahmadi extremists groups.
In July, 2012, a local cleric Tufail Raza, claiming his association with the Khatme Nabuwwat Lawyers Forum, reportedly, approached Liaquatabad police station seeking the removal of Islamic inscriptions from tombstones at this particular Ahmadi graveyard which was established in 1980.
“The police did not follow up on the application,” says Shahid Ataullah, a local representative of the community. “Later, another group of these mischievous elements moved the local court and in October, the Additional District and Sessions Judge Lahore had disposed of this case, asking the police to follow the law.”
So what happens that the job of the state is taken up by some members of society and they don’t even get punished?
“A police case was finally lodged against unknown people for dacoity, breaking in, and desecrating graves and hurting the religious emotions of Ahmadis,” says Chaudhry Amir Rehman, the legal counsel of the community. “However, we don’t know about the outcome of the investigations so far.”
The Ahmadis resist following this law which, they say, is imposed on them. “These are the laws imposed on us because of certain pressures otherwise we were Muslims before 1974. Some of the desecrated mosques and graves are from much before 1974,” says a spokesperson of the community.
“We are facing a systematic ideological extremism. Wherever it is, whether this ideology is worldly or heavenly, the minority groups and the weaker sections of the society will be vulnerable and target of the wrath of these ideologues,” observes noted political analyst, Prof Hassan Askari Rizvi.
“In the case of Ahmadis, the state of Pakistan has created a basis for these extremist groups to pursue their agenda. However, the law does not warrant any group to take such action. It is only through court of law that the application of this law can be secured,” says Rizvi.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has demanded the arrests of those responsible. It says that the attackers’ success in overpowering several persons at the graveyard and completing the destruction in half an hour shows that the incident was well-planned. It appeals to the government to take swift action against the persecution of Ahmadis.
This was obviously not an isolated incident. Almost a year ago, around three dozen graves were desecrated in an Ahmadi graveyard in Dunyapur, district Lodhran, south Punjab. According to the community members, around six months ago, a private school run by a member of the Ahmadiyya community was also forcefully closed down by some residents. “People took to the streets to shut the school where many Muslim children were being educated free of cost,” says a community official.
A couple of months ago before Dunyapur incident, another Ahmadi graveyard in Haveli Majokan, district Sargodha, was dug up by some unidentified people, according to the community reports.
Last September, a similar incident was reported in Jaranwala, district Faisalabad, in central Punjab, where many graves were desecrated by some locals in the presence of police.
-- vaqargillani@gmail.com
Read original post here: Pakistan: Graveyard of tolerance
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If only the "so-called Muslim" terrorists opened their eyes and realized that their harmful acts were so much in common with the enemies of our beloved Prophet (SAW).
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