Pakistan: Not a good start | New year starts with more Ahmadi graves desecrated, home damaged

This incident comes at the heels of a similar occurrence that took place in Dunya Pur, Punjab a few weeks ago where as many as 32 Ahmadi Muslim graves were desecrated in a late-night raid.

File photo: Desecrated graves at the Ahmadi graveyard in Dunya Pur.
PHOTO: MASAUD SARWAR / Express Tribune

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Ahmadiyya Times
By Imran Jattala | January 9, 2011

Several headstones of graves belonging to deceased Ahmadi Muslims were broken and desecrated in southwestern city of Quetta in Pakistan.

According to the various reports, as many as five graves were violated by miscreants in the first of such incident to take place outside of Punjab.

The incident took place on January 5th, marking a grusome start of another year of persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan, a minority Muslim sect harassed in many Muslim majority countries.

This incident comes at the heels of a similar occurrence that took place in Dunya Pur, Punjab a few weeks ago where as many as 32 Ahmadi graves were desecrated in a late-night raid.

“What a way to begin new year in Pakistan where [even the] dead aren't safe,” stated the representative of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan through a social media post.


The anti-Ahmadiyya sentiment is ever-present in Pakistan serving the mutual appeasement interests of Islamist clerics, politicians and judiciary, alike.

Earlier in the same week, an Ahmadi family from Lahore faced pressure from Islamist clerics, assisted by the local police, to remove the wording of "Masha’Allah" [“God so willed”] written at the front of their house.

According to the Ahmadiyya community, the homeowner refused to remove the plate citing its presence since 1982 without any objection.

The police brought a hired labourer and ordered him to breakdown the plate with hammer and chisels.

Police high officials remained present at the scene, it was reported, and made sure the Islamists clerics were happy with the manner the plate with Arabic inscription invoking God was totally broken and destroyed.

The house was left with visible damage to the property.

“A simple word that is written on nearly every household in Pakistan has become a tool in the hands of militant, courtesy Anti Ahmadiyya laws,” said the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan.

The persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community through actions and words ‘has been accepted as a norm’ in the Muslim societies, say Ahmadis as well as human rights groups.

On January 7th, Saba Imtiaz, a reporter for The Express Tribune, a popular English Daily in Pakistan reported a member of Sindh provincial assembly Haji Muzaffar Ali Shujra blame "Qadiani [Ahmadis] and Israeli lobbies" for the events leading up to Zulifqar Ali Bhutto’s death.

Zulifqar Ali Bhutto, once a popular prime minister of Pakistan, was deposed in a military coup and later sentenced to death and hanged by his sucessor Gen. Zialul Haq for ordering a hit on one of his political rivals.

Haji Muzaffar Ali Shujra was delivering his comments in a speech at the Sindh Assembly floor memorializing Zulifqar Ali Bhutto's services to the country.

In the Punjab, in the mean time, the halls of the provincial assembly were also stirred up by the anti-minority rhetoric by the provincial law makers.

Planning and Development Minister Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor issued the most stern warning to the minorities implying they are the reason that peace and order in the province could not be guaranteed.

His warning to the minorities went beyond the reaches of law.

"If blasphemy against the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) continued," Ghafoor warned, "the faithful would not always wait for court orders in such cases."

Muhammad Ilyas Chinioti, a member of the provincial assembly representing Jhang - and son of Mullah Manzoor Chinioti, a Tehreek-i-Khatme Nabuwat (TKN) leader - further warned that minorities should refrain from discussing Aasia Bibi’s blasphemy case.

The extremist groups such as TKN promote that even the discussion about the Aasia Bibi case is blasphemous, a crime carrying capital punishment, promising a direct mob action as threatened by Minister Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor.

According to the Ahmadiyya community the discriminatory Ahmadi-specific laws in Pakistan have caused over 30 incidents of grave destruction in different parts of the country.

In 1974, the National Assembly of Pakistan had amended the constitution to declare Ahmadiyya Mulim sect in Islam as non-Muslims for the purposes of the law.

Later in 1984, during dictator General Ziaul Haque’s government anti-Ahmadiyya ordinance XX was passed criminalizing all acts of worship by Ahmadis, including saying Kalma (Muslim Creed), offering Muslim greetings of peace,  Assalam-o Alaykum; use of any Muslim terminology and “posing as a Muslim”.

  -- Pakistan: Not a good start | New year starts with more Ahmadi graves desecrated, home damaged
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  -- By Imran Jattala: - Follow on Twitter: @IJattala