Religious Freedom and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (Jamaat): A Case Study of a Victimized Community

Abstract

Pakistan is a country with two faces. On the one hand, it is a country of catastrophes: inhabited by rich land lords and industrialists, who are sharing the wealth of the country among themselves; ruled by corrupt politicians, bribable judges and lawyers, and by leaders who mostly misuse religion for personal power; influenced by militant religious leaders, who were previously trained by the Western powers primarily to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan; marked by the presence of the army, which constitutes a state within the state of Pakistan and that from time to time intervenes “to restore order in the chaos”.

On the other hand, the majority of the people in Pakistan are very likeable. The simplicity and hospitality of the lower social class of gentle and devout believers gives Pakistan another face. They are deeply rooted in Sufism and reject every form of fundamentalism.

Pakistan was created in 1947 “in the name of Islam”, and the country is now harassing and killing people who do not belong to the Islamic mainstream or have a different faith. It has a legal system that allows to arrest, to press charges or even to kill people with divergent Islamic ideologies. The Ahmadiyya sect—which sees itself as an Islamic group—was declared to be a non-Islamic religious sect through a parliamentary decision in Pakistan in 1974. At first, this pronouncement had no serious and harmful anti-Ahmadiyya implication. But in 1986, the introduction of the Blasphemy Law included the death sentence for an insult to the name of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh=peace be upon him). During the military dictatorship of Zia Ul Haq (1979–1988), charges were pressed against the Ahmadis and the judges often unilaterally added the blasphemy charge with the argument that the existence of an Ahmadi believer was by itself an act of blasphemy.

This article attempts to answer the questions: What influence do the anti-Ahmadiyya laws have on the Pakistani society, and is there a way out of this “dead end”?

Translated into English by Dr. Amtul Naseer, Amtul Qadeer and Manfred L. Pirner.

Originally published as Religionsfreiheit für eine bedrängte Glaubensrichtung—das Beispiel der Ahmadiyya, in: M. L. Pirner, J. Lähnemann, H. Bielefeldt (Hrsg.) Menschenrechte und inter-religiöse Bildung, EB-Verlag Dr. Brandt e.K., Berlin 2015.