Persecution of Ahmadis

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Imran Ahmad Khan

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Imran Ahmad Khan]

I thank the hon. Lady. The tragic news of Dr Tahir and his murder was on Friday evening. A gunman came to their home and shot at him and his family. He sadly died immediately. His father, I understand, is still in a critical condition, fighting for his life. Other members of the family sustained gunshot injuries. I understand they are believed to be making it through. But this is simply a sad testament to the environment of hate and intolerance that is being preached in Pakistan.

This is what I was saying: the Ahmadiyya Muslim community is an object of hate and suffers vicious persecution around the world, but the epicentre of this hatred is Pakistan, where Ahmadis are the only religious community to be targeted by the state on the basis of their faith.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Imran Ahmad Khan]

Maybe in a moment or two—I will just make a little progress, if I may.

In 1974, the Government of Pakistan kowtowed to the extremist hate-mongers that characterise a perverted form of Islam we now sadly see in so many corners of the world, when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto shamefully amended the Pakistan constitution to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims. It is a tragic irony that many of the preachers of prejudice from Jama’at-E-Islami are the political heirs of the exact same people who fought tooth and nail against the great Jinnah in his struggle to establish the state of Pakistan, wherein all Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and others were promised the right to freedom.

Since then, increasingly more draconian measures have been inflicted on the Ahmadiyya community, including the promulgation of Ordinance XX in 1984 under the brutal dictator General Zia. Under that ordinance, it is punishable with three-year imprisonment, an unlimited fine and even the death penalty for Ahmadis simply to call themselves Muslim, or to call their mosques a mosque. As a consequence, Hadrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad, the 4th Caliph, was forced to leave Pakistan. Today, Ordinance XX is used to persecute minorities in Pakistan, including Christians and Hindus. Pakistan suffers the great ignominy of having codified and granted constitutional legitimacy to religious discrimination and persecution.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He touches on the nub of my intervention. Does he not agree that the real tragedy in Pakistan is that it is the very constitution and laws of Pakistan, particularly the blasphemy laws, that are so often the basis for the persecution of the Ahmadis and indeed other religious minorities, when, in any country, these should be the cornerstone of the protection of fundamental rights such as freedom of religion and belief?

[Imran Ahmad Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, with which I agree entirely. Her points are incredibly well made. The great tragedy is that Pakistan was set up initially with a beautiful vision of a country that celebrated diversity and pluralism. Jinnah and the architects of Pakistan saw difference as the gold and silver threads that would weave into the tapestry of the state and make it stronger, not weaker. Jinnah’s lieutenant was Chaudhry Muhammad Zafarullah, with whom I grew up and had a very close relationship. He has been declared a non-Muslim. He was Pakistan’s first Foreign Minister, the President of the UN General Assembly and the President of the International Court of Justice. The state was built by great jurists who were great lovers of freedom and justice and that legacy has been shamefully discarded.

This persecution and that loss of the legacy that could have been is just as evident, sadly, in Pakistan’s civil society. Ahmadis are openly declared “wajibul qatl”, which means “deserving to be killed”, in the Pakistani media and by religious and political leaders. The recent successive murders of four Ahmadis in Peshawar is the evil evidence of just how impossible it is for Ahmadis simply to live and worship as they please. Those murdered include Mr Mairaj Ahmad on 13 August, Mr Tahir Ahmad Naseem on 29 July, Professor Naeem Ud Din Khattack on 5 October and Mr Mahboob Ahmad Khan on 8 November. All four men were murdered in the same city on account of their belief. As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned, last Friday, 31-year-old Dr Tahir Ahmad was murdered at his home when a gunman shot at him and his family.

Horrifyingly, the vile abuse and persecution suffered by the Ahmadiyya Jamaat is not confined to those who are alive. Some 39 Ahmadi bodies have been disinterred from what should have been their final resting place, and 70 Ahmadi Muslims have been denied burial in communal cemeteries. This year, in July, dozens of Ahmadi graves were desecrated and their gravestones destroyed by Pakistani state law enforcement officials in Gujranwala district. Heartbreakingly, members of the Ahmadiyya community are spared no respite from persecution either in life or death. How is it possible that these atrocities occur in a country whose leaders answer when questioned that their constitution provides its citizens with the right to freedom of religion and belief?