Pakistan clerics persecute 'non Muslims' (Ahmadi sect members jailed for 'impersonating' muslims)

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | December 25, 2007 | Isambard Wilkinson

[Stoat]

Pakistan clerics persecute 'non Muslims'

By Isambard Wilkinson in Rabwah
 

Last Updated: 11:22am GMT 25/12/2007

 

 

Hardline clerics are using Pakistan's blasphemy laws to persecute members of a small Islamic splinter group they say are not proper Muslims.

	Hardline clerics protest against the Pakistan government

The two million-strong Ahmadiyya community, based in Rabwah in the Punjab, risks charges of "impersonating Muslims" under the country's controversial religious laws.

Shameen Ahmad Khalid, a community leader, said: "We have people serving long jail sentences for blasphemy or for 'posing as Muslims'."

The laws mandate three years' imprisonment for Ahmadis who dare to call themselves Muslims, call their places of worship mosques, recite the Koran or announce the azan, the call to prayer.

Twenty years ago, the people of Rabwah were charged with impersonating Muslims.

Since the charges are still outstanding, the town's 50,000 inhabitants have to hide their Islamic habits, keep their beards trimmed and avoid using Muslim invocations.

The word "Muslim" has been erased, on the orders of a magistrate, from an epitaph engraved on the tomb of Pakistan's most distinguished scientist, Dr Abdus Salam.

It used to read "the First Muslim Nobel Laureate".

The religious laws are used by hardline clerics to persecute minority groups.

Despite recent improvements in voting rights for Christians and Hindus, Ahmadis are effectively still disenfranchised as they are permitted to vote only as "non-Muslims".

Pakistani popular rhymes defame Ahmadis in lurid terms and militants have stamped thousands of rupee notes imploring believers to "put them to death".

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has presented himself to his Western allies in the US-led war on terror as a bulwark against Islamic extremism.

But despite his policy of "enlightened moderation" and pledges to repeal the blasphemy law, so far the secular-minded retired general has not dared to tackle the clergy on the issue.

Rabwah is surrounded by mosques whose clerics host prominent annual anti-Ahmadi rallies and bellow hateful slogans from their minarets' loudspeakers.

In 2005 gunmen burst into an Ahmadi village mosque at prayer time and killed eight people and wounded most of the 30-strong congregation.

Several months ago, a police officer killed Mohammed Ashraf, an Ahmadi, as he ate his breakfast in a hotel. As he opened fire the officer shouted: "You are an infidel and preaching the infidel creed."

The Ahmadis' reverence for a prophet who lived in the 19th century offends the principle orthodox Muslim tenet that the Prophet Mohammed was the final prophet.

Many Ahmadis crossed into Pakistan at Partition in 1947. But the Sunni mullahs turned against them and anti-Ahmadi riots broke out in 1953.

An amendment to Pakistan's constitution in 1974 declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims.

The anti-Ahmadi laws, which allow Ahmadis to be charged with impersonating Muslims, were promulgated by late dictator Gen Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s.

[Stoat]

Please also see this related FR thread from 2006

Pakistan's blasphemy laws used to persecute non-Muslims

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The Ahmadis' reverence for a prophet who lived in the 19th century offends the principle orthodox Muslim tenet that the Prophet Mohammed was the final prophet.

If American Christians began gunning down Mormons in the streets, there would be a massive, earthshaking upheaval throughout Christendom, with strident condemnations of the acts and calls for swift and sure justice to immediately stop such a thing....Christians would speak with a loud, unwavering and unified voice at all levels to denounce such insanity, as we do on those incredibly rare occasions when some delusional nutburger bombs an abortion clinic. 

These constant accounts of officially-sanctioned persecution that we hear from all 'muslim nations' coupled with a deafening silence (which serves as tacit approval) from 'muslim leaders' in the West serve only to remind us all that Islam is far from being ready to join civilized humanity on an equal footing.

[xcamel]

Proof that the Neanderthal gene pool has resurfaced... might be some cro-magnon too.

[G8 Diplomat]

Pakistan ۋﮧ۱م

FReepmail if you want on or off

[muawiyah]

No red-heads here; these pukes are pure Cro-Magnon

[Stoat]

Proof that the Neanderthal gene pool has resurfaced... might be some cro-magnon too.

Agreed...quite a thing to juxtapose with Islam's apologists who endlessly bleat about the intellectual contributions of Islam to the rest of the world (ancient contributions which, btw, were made by non-Islamic cultures that Islam's armies crushed under their swords prior to enslaving them).

Subhuman throwbacks should expect to be treated as such.

[G8 Diplomat]

That would be an insult to cavemen. Neanderthals had more decency than these people!

[Stoat]

Thank you very much for pinging your list  :-)

[metmom]

If they manage to kill all of us, they’ll simply turn on each other and wipe out the human race. Satan’s goal all along and he’s got willing accomplices.

Sick.

[river rat]

The sentence for Pakistanis impersonating humans, will be far more severe....

Throughout their very short history -— they have been more cockroach than human....

[Stoat]

If they manage to kill all of us, they’ll simply turn on each other and wipe out the human race. Satan’s goal all along and he’s got willing accomplices.

Agreed.  And in nations where muslims have settled in any number, those who do not actively work toward killing 'infidels' work toward dominating the host culture.

[Stoat]

Throughout their very short history -— they have been more cockroach than human....

I would only wish to politely suggest that the cockroach is a far more honorable and virtuous member of God's Creation, in that cockroaches do not seek to wantonly destroy anything and everything around them that is not exactly like them.

[353FMG]

It always reminds me what a great and wonderful religion Islam is. To think that its adherents are entering our country legally in droves. The US has put a loaded gun against its head for the past 30 years by allowing Muslim immigration, all the while slowly squeezing the trigger.

[metmom]

And when there’s enough of them, we’re dead.

They’re building their military occupation through immigration and reproduction. That’s why they refuse to assimilate. If they can keep the mindset of them infiltrating behind enemy lines, they never will either.