Voices from Ghana: Killing Ahmadi muslims in the name of Allah

Since the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was founded in 1889 by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam, who claimed to be the promised reformer in the latter days, he and his followers had been described by the other Muslims as heretics and apostates.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff | Int'l Desk
Source & Credit: Ghanian Chronicle | Modern Ghana
By Mohammed Affum | June 16, 2010


If there is any country where government has legislated a religious community out of their faith, that country is Pakistan. If there is any country that has criminalized the profession and manifestation of religious belief of a religious community, that country is Pakistan. And if there is any country on this planet where the government has given succour, protection and provided legitimacy to people who murder members of a religious community because such a foul act is regarded as meritorious enough to win the pleasure of God, that country is Pakistan.


The victims of such legitimized and unconscionable atrocities are the Ahmadi Muslims. They suffer, on a daily basis, the most eggregious violation of their fundamental human right to life, right to equality before the law, and the right to freedom to profess their religion, practice and manifest same. Over the years more than a thousand Ahmadi Muslims have been killed, their property destroyed and mosques razed down. Their crime? Their religious beliefs differ from that of the other Muslims.

The Friday, May 28, 2010 attacks on Ahmadi Muslim mosques in Lahore, Pakistan, by gunmen firing and exploding grenades that killed over 100 Ahmadi Muslim worshippers, and injured many more, were part of the continuing senseless violence against members of this community. They were, perhaps, unprecedentedly shocking in their scale of barbarity, heartlessness and callousness.

These brazen attacks might be dismissed by some as instances of sectarian conflict in Islam. Far from it, it is here that lay the roots of what is now the phenomenon of terrorism against which the whole world is fighting The present war on terrorism is a case of the chickens coming home to roost.

Had the international community acted and prevailed on successive governments of Pakistan, and other Islamic countries, to stop their persecution of Ahmadi Muslims, the story would have been different. But geo-political and diplomatic interests took the better part of the international community. Ironically, the powerful members, who exploited religious fundamentalism and bigotry in those countries for their political and ideological goals, have been the victims of terror attacks, and have now deployed huge resources, both human and material, to fight and defeat terrorism.

Since the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was founded in 1889 by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam, who claimed to be the promised reformer in the latter days, he and his followers had been described by the other Muslims as heretics and apostates.

Residing outside the pale of Islam, deserve to be killed, according to them. In 1953, the Muslim clergy, the Mullahs, so called, organized protests and demonstrations against Ahmadi Muslims calling on the government to declare them as non-Muslims. To them, Ahmadi Muslims deserve to be driven out of their own country whose independence struggle, they played no mean role.

Among their demands was the removal of the first foreign minister, Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan, lawyer, judge and international statesman, who was an Ahmadi Muslim. The government at the time, did rejected such demands, arguing that Sir Muhammad, having been appointed the foreign minister by Muhammad Ali Jinah, the Founder of Pakistan himself, had served his country and the entire Muslim world most creditably.  On his own accord, Sir Muhammad resigned later. His exit from the foreign ministry led him on to the International Court of Justice in The Hague where he was president for two consecutive terms.

The inconducive and hostile environment also triggered the resignation of another Ahmadi Muslim. He was Professor Abdus Salaam, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Pakistani government, and the architect of that country's nuclear programme.

While plying his trade as teacher and researcher in Europe and the United States, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his monumental work in Quantum Physics. His advocacy for an institute to train scientists from Third World led the United Nations to establishing the Abdus Salaam Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, from where many  scientists from developing countries have acquired knowledge.

The continued agitation against Ahmadi Muslims by Islamic political parties from which successive Pakistan governments, both military and civilian, have obtained support, culminated in the passage of a constitutional amendment bill by the then government of President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that declared Ahmadi Muslims to be a non-Muslim minority in the country. Thus began the government-sanctioned persecution of Ahmadi Muslims. Ahmadi Muslim military officers, including many generals, and top civil servants were sacked from their positions in the wake of that legislation.

In 1975, after the World Islamic League conference, sponsored by the Saudi monarch, King Faisal, declared Ahmadi Muslims non-Muslim, the fortunes of members of this community took a turn for the worse in a number of African and South East Asian countries. Ahmadi Muslims were denied visas to perform the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Ali Bhuto was overthrown by General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq. He was later hanged like a common criminal.

To gain the political support of Islamic fundamentalists and consolidate his dictatorship, Zia-ul-Haq issued the infamous anti-Ahmadiyya Ordinance XX in 1984. Under the Ordinance, still part of the Pakistan criminal code, an Ahmadi Muslim can be imprisoned for three years and fined any amount for professing his faith or for 'posing' as a Muslim. An Ahmadi Muslim can be jailed for three years for injuring the feelings of the other Muslims if he/she is heard to have greeted with the salutation of Salaam alaikum (i.e. peace be unto you). Ahmadi mosques can neither be described as mosques nor can they call their faithful to prayer through the Azan. Their publications are banned and so are they prevented from holding conferences.

Also caving in to pressures by the Mullahs, Gen. Zia promulgated the blasphemy law prescribing the death penalty for an Ahmadi Muslim who refers to holy founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as prophet. These strengthened the Mullahs, who brazenly called, through loud speakers and posters, some posted on walls of court buildings, on their members to kill Ahmadi Muslims.

They whipped public hatred against Ahmadi Muslims and inciting their followers that killers of Ahmadi Muslims would be rewarded with paradise.. The cumulative effect of these laws was the sanctioned-murders, and imprisonment of Ahmadi Muslims. What was surprising, even the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the obnoxious anti-Ahmadiyya laws, which are seen as senseless, medieval and a blot on the conscience of right thinking human beings. The fate that befell Gen Zia was horrifying. He was torn to pieces in an explosion aboard a military aircraft.

What is of interest is that the government of Pakistan and other so-called Islamic countries claim their actions against Ahmadi Muslims are to protect the purity of the religion. Shamelessly, they have chosen to ignore the fact that their actions find no sanction and authority in the Holy Quran, where in Chapter 2:257, God states without any ambiguity that 'There should be no compulsion in religion.' In the Quran, God goes further to command the Holy Prophet Muhammad that his mission was to preach to the people; he had no authority to compel them to accept his message.

In the light of this, it is obvious that no government or any group of people has the right to sit in judgment over the faith or beliefs of others, declare them to be outside the pale of Islam, and pronounce their beliefs blasphemous. These are alien to the basic teachings of Islam. Islam guarantees the right to freedom of belief, religion and conscience. Anything to the contrary is misguided and self-serving and does serious damage to the image of Islam.

For Ahmadi Muslims, our response to the May 28 martyrdom of 100 worshippers in Lahore and maiming of over 100 others is simple: Surely to Allah we belong and to Him  shall we return (Holy Quran 2:157). The perpetrators of these dastardly acts and their sponsors can never escape the wrath of the Almighty God. They should take a cue from the ignominious deaths of Bhuto and Gen. Zia, who chose to persecute innocent and law-abiding Ahmadi Muslims.



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