Syed Sharfuddin
This last Friday instead of taking the car to the mosque for praying Jumma Namaz I took the local bus. After I got the seat and took out my folded head cap from my bag, the gentleman sitting next to me saw it and greeted me with Assalamoalaikum. After exchange of Salams, he asked me if I was going to the (Ahmadi) Baitul Futuh mosque in Southwest London. I told him I was going to another (Ahl Sunnah wal Jamaat) mosque near the Borough Council building. The gentleman said he was Ahmadi. He asked me where I was from. I replied that I was from Islamabad. He informed me that he was from Faisalabad. We then started a small conversation in Punjabi.
He turned to the treatment of Ahmadis in Pakistan. He said he was appalled how intolerant the people of that country were to the Ahmadis. I said yes it was unfortunate but there was a background to it rooted in the 1974 Constitutional Amendment which declared them a minority, a position which they never accepted. He said he knew all about it because he was now 75 years old. His family moved to the UK to avoid persecution and he had been living here for the last 30 years.
He then raised some interesting points about Ahmadism being the only sect that was on the right path according to the Prophet’s Hadith of 72 sects of Islam.
I encouraged him to speak more about his religion so that I could get an insight into what made him an angry old Ahmadi. He said the following:
*Bhutto and Zia were responsible for suppressing Ahmadism and consequently they both died in humiliating circumstances. Mirza Tahir’s prediction about Zia that neither earth nor sky will accept him had come true after Zia’s death in a mysterious air crash.
*Molvis were responsible for spreading inter-communal hatred. Ahmadis cannot even use the greeting Assalamoalaikum in Pakistan because under the Khatm Nabuwat laws they can be charged for saying peace be on you.
*No Pakistani leader can stand up to these Molvis. Even Imran Khan could not challenge them when he was Prime Minister.
*Those who opposed the creation of Pakistan such as Jamiat Ahrar and those who called the English infidels during colonial times were happy to migrate to Pakistan in 1947 and subsequently they came to live in a kafir country UK. These hypocrites were in the forefront of opposing Ahmadis.
*If Pakistan’s Muslims were correct in their assumption that Ahmadism was an invented religion and their religion was the right one, then Allah should have showered His blessings on them. Pakistan should have become a land of milk and honey. Instead, Pakistan has touched the abyss since 1974 which is a sign of divine condemnation for opposing Ahmadism.
*The title of Kafir has been so liberally traded in Islam over the centuries that no sect of Islam is free from it. Calling Ahmadis non-Muslims is like the kettle calling the pot black.
I could have refuted the gentleman’s claims by saying that the manner of death is no measure for a man’s character or honour, alluding but not referring to circumstances how Mirza Ghulam Ahmad himself died. I also did not tell the gentleman that Muslims are Masakeen more and Umaraa less. They are generally tested by Allah more by absence of comfort and resources than by abundance of milk and honey. I also wanted to tell the gentleman that the right to movement is a natural right of every human being as all earth belongs to Allah and the children of today are not beholden to the opinions of their parents due to change of circumstances and social contexts.
But instead of saying all this, I told the gentleman that difference of opinion was part of human nature. There is a painful history associated with the origin of Shia Islam. The Ibadi Islam is an outcome of this history. The Ibadis, Fatmids and Sabais have had their own extremist ideology in the past. Not only Muslims but Christians also have a bloody history of disagreement over faith. The War of the Roses fought six centuries ago in England was an example of it in Christianity. The birth of Anglican Church was the result of differences developed by King Henry VIII with the Catholic Pope over biblical divorce laws. Extremism is not unique to Islam or Pakistanis. The right-wing extremist groups in Europe and the UK don’t like Asians and immigrants. They also don’t like Muslims. There are many other places on earth where hatred and violence exist. The Holocaust, Rwanda civil war and Srebrenica genocide are part of the civilised world’s recent history. Koreans have not forgotten how imperial Japan treated them. The Palestinians are re-living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory the past that the Jews went through in Nazi Germany.
I did not deliberately engage with the gentleman in an academic discussion on faith because I realised that he had little knowledge of the history of Islam and Islamic sects. He also knew little about his own faith as my references to Isa Ibn Maryam and the replies of Mirza Tahir to Attorney General Yahya Bakhtiar in the 1974 parliamentary debate on Qadiyani Problem did not cut mustard with him. I told him that Ahmadis do not consider anyone a Muslim unless he believes in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as a prophet. He confirmed it and added that whoever did not believe in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the greatest Nabi of all times was a non-Muslim and a Jehannami. The gentleman did not realise that while the Ahmadis call the deniers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad non-Muslims, they themselves do not want to be called non-Muslims for believing in a new prophet after the end of prophethood after the last and final Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, peace be upon him. Ahmadis do not marry their daughters in Muslim households and neither do they participate in the funeral prayers of Muslims.
As our destination had arrived, the conversation ended. The gentleman apologised for opening out his heart to me. I said such conversations should take place more often to understand each other better. He said he was also of the same opinion and spoke to me because he was motivated by Talqeen due to my patient hearing. We then went to our respective worship places to pray to the same One Lord.
When I returned home, I realised that this encounter took place only a day after the Pakistan Supreme Court expunged two controversial paragraphs (7 and 42) from its 24 July 2024 judgement on the Mubarak Sani case in response to a reference filed by the government for its review. By taking this corrective action, the Supreme Court recognised that it could not go against the 1984 Pakistan Criminal Code Section 298 B & C and rewrite the law to allow the Ahmadis to preach or propagate their faith wrapped in the covering of Islam.
As a result of this recent development, Pakistan is once again on the radar of human rights organisations and Western countries’ parliaments concerned about the freedom of religious minorities. The important point that has always been missed by Pakistan’s diplomats and lawyers is that never in the history of Islam a group of Muslims believing in a false Prophet after Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has been accepted as a religious minority and given constitutional protection. Throughout Islamic history commencing with the first Caliph of Islam, Abu Bakr Siddiq, false claimants of prophethood after Prophet Muhammad’s passing away have been declared apostates and wars were waged against them and their followers until they withdrew their claim and reversed or were eliminated. However, Pakistan took a bold step in 1974 by giving the Ahmadiyya community a major concession in that instead of declaring them ‘Zindiqs’ it declared them ‘Dhimmis’. Had this point been made clear from day one, the Ahmadi community would have been grateful for this concession and could be easily persuaded to accept the constitutional and legal provisions about their new faith outside mainstream Islam.
I end with a simple example. East Pakistan separated from Pakistan in 1971 and chose a new name Bangladesh for the new country with its own leaders and heroes. But it retained the same ideology of two nations by not merging with Indian East Bengal in the name of Bengali nationalism. Had the founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujib, kept the name of his new country Pakistan on the basis that the idea of Pakistan was formed in Dhaka in 1905 at the first meeting of the Indian Muslim League, the precursor of Bangladesh Awami League, it would have caused a great confusion internally as well as at the UN. Pakistan would have rightly objected to the new country insisting on calling it the real Pakistan. It would have caused confusion and conflict and even international intervention until the matter of the new country’s national identity was resolved. The Ahmadiyya religion is the same as this example. It was created out of Islam. It was a new religion based on its own prophet, its own interpretation of the divine verses of the holy Quran and Hadith, and its own set of caliphs and companions. It formulated a non conformist, radical interpretation of the Sharia law of Islam and transgressed from the fundamental teachings of the religion from which it ceded.
The Ahmadi community has suffered from an identity crisis for over a century. They deserve better than that. They need a proper identity and a new name for their religion such as Deen-e-Ghulam Ahmad or Ahmadiyya Faith. This will end the century old feud and make them a respectable religious minority in Pakistan recognised by the constitution of the country and protected by the laws enacted by its parliament for safeguarding the rights of Pakistan’s religious minorities.
24 August 2024
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