Clerics attack Ahmadi house, torture family in Punjab

By Rana Tanveer

KASUR: Local clerics attacked a house belonging to an Ahmadi family in the Kasur district of Punjab on Tuesday and subjected the family members to violence allegedly over their religious belief, The Express Tribune has learnt.

A mob led by a local cleric chanted slogans against Ahmadi families, their religious beliefs and their community before breaking into Mansoor’s* house in the Shamsabad area. The five members of Mansoor’s family tried to take refuge in a room but the mob broke into the room as well. Police personnel were reportedly present at the spot but did not take any action against the mob. Mansoor was severely tortured after which he lost consciousness, while his wife and his 70-year-old uncle were also beaten. Mansoor was shifted to a hospital where authorities claimed that he is in critical condition.

When a state is dysfunctional

By: Abbas Nasir

WHO knows what a failed state is? Such definitions are for the academics and experts. But what one can easily ascertain is a state that is dysfunctional.

For what would you call a state that has neither the power to generate resources and tax those who need to be taxed, nor the system or even the need to ensure that it accounts for what it spends? It can keep piling up a huge deficit without question and have nothing to show for it.

What would you call a state that cannot deliver the very least: the safety of life and limb to its citizens? Where if you particularly happened to be in the smaller provinces the only thing you could get by on is your faith. Yes, God remains the only recourse.

PAKISTAN: A new wave of persecution against the religious minorities

PAKISTAN: Military demolishes temple, Ahmadi graves desecrated, a six-year-old Hindu girl was raped and a 70 year old Christian missionary shot

December 6, 2012 – ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION – Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-200-2012 – The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that a wave of persecution against the religious minority groups has again started with the connivance of military and local authorities. In the recent days more than 100 graves of Ahamadis were desecrated by excavating the graves and breaking the headstones bearing the names of the dead persons. The same happened with a Hindu temple which was destroyed along with the houses by the military authorities, allegedly after being bribed by a private builder who wanted to grab the land. In another case a six-year-old girl from the Hindu community was raped in a bid to push the Hindu community to leave the country and take refuge in India. Also, a 70-year-old Swedish Christian missionary was shot at and is in critical condition. Her cook was also beaten up by the unknown persons two days before the incident.

Read more » ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION (AHRC)

http://www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent-appeals/AHRC-UAC-200-2012

An outrageous ban – The Express Tribune

The Lahore Bar Association (LBA) has banned Shezan drinks from subordinate court complexes on the basis that it belongs to  Ahmadi

By Editorial

Things in our country are really moving from the absurd, to even more absurd. And most frightening of all is the hatred that flows with this madness. The latest example of this comes at the Lahore Bar Association (LBA) — where lawyers following a campaign led by the Khatme Nabuwat Lawyers Forum — have banned the sale of drinks manufactured by the Shehzan Company from canteens at all subordinate courts on the basis that it is an Ahmadi concern. This action takes discrimination against the Ahmadi community to new heights. We can only wonder if the instigators of this plot imagine that sipping the ‘offensive’ drink will in some way contaminate their minds, or alter beliefs. Everyone, after all, has the right to follow the religious philosophy they adhere to — and no drink can alter this. The real aim, of course, is to attempt to hurt the economic interests of the Ahmadis — who have through the decades been subjected to violence in all kinds of different forums, whether it is through physical acts such as murder or other means intended to prevent them from occupying a place as equal citizens in society. The Shezan Company has also been targeted before, during mob violence and through other such means.

The LBA president has said that around 100 lawyers voted in favour of the decision. It is frightening that a so-called ‘educated community’ of professionals could take a decision such as this. The evil of ignorance has obviously sunk deep within our society, leaving scars everywhere. The knives which inflict these wounds are carried by groups dedicated to spreading intolerance and campaigning against the minorities. The Ahmadis, of course, draw the special wrath of the forces committed to acting against them. When professionals such as lawyers, who should know more about justice than most, join hands with them, we can only wonder about the future of our country and ask what grim abyss we are headed for. The direction we have set out in does not augur well for the coming years — with this move also certain to hurt Ahmadi lawyers who practice at lower courts.

Courtesy: The Express Tribune, February 12th, 2012.

 http://tribune.com.pk/story/335000/an-outrageous-ban/

Pakistan should protect Ahmaddiya community against threats of violence

Pakistani authorities must do more to protect the Ahmaddiya community, Amnesty International said today amid threats from religious groups to block Ahmadis from entering their place of worship in Rawalpindi on Friday.

An Ahmadi spokesperson yesterday said local religious groups have warned they will not allow Ahmadis to carry out religious activities this Friday, local media reported. ….

Read more » Amnesty International

Stop the ongoing anti-Ahmadi hate campaign in Rawalpindi

A hate campaign against the Ahmadiyya community in Rawalpindi has been brewing for the last many months. A massive protest rally against the community has been planned by extremist elements for Sunday, January 29th, 2012 in Satellite Town area of Rawalpindi city.

Through this petition, we urge the Federal Government and the Government of Punjab to immediately take notice of, intervene and put an end to this ongoing hate campaign against its fellow citizens.

The least the government can do is protect its citizens. We urge the government to provide adequate security to the vulnerable Ahmadis under attack on Sunday.

News: http://alufaq.com/pakistan-hate-campaign-ahmadis-satellite-town-rawalpindi

Read more » http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-ongoing-anti-ahmadi-hate-campaign-in-rawalpindi

Persecution of Minorities in Pakistan, Never Ends even after death

For minorities in Pakistan, persecution never ends

By Abdul Manan

In a gruesome incident late Saturday night, 29 graves in an Ahmadi graveyard were desecrated in Dunyapur, district Lodhran, around 100 kilometres away from Multan. …

Read more » The Express Tribune

Countering Extremism in Pakistan

Countering Extremism in Pakistan: Need of Political Approach

By Jamil Junejo

ESCALATING sectarian and religious violence has made a disquieting situation for religious minorities in particular and other vulnerable sections of society in general in the country. In just less than a year, a number of such cases from murders of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Federal Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti and mishandling of a 10-year-old Christian girl for her alleged misspelling of a word, the Sept 19 massacre of 26 Hazara Shia in Mastung to expulsion of Ahmedi students from a university in Punjab and scores of other such incidents have put the social, religious and sectarian harmony at peril.

PAKISTAN: A senior surgeon belonging to the Ahmadi sect is abducted with his son and remains missing

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

HRC-STM-167-2011 (November 3, 2011) – A senior surgeon belonging to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam has been missing since October 30, 2011. He was traveling in a car with his son of eleven years. The car was found abandoned far away from his home.

Deep state as a whole going into suicide

Our atomic bomb complex

By Saroop Ijaz

There is something very falsely mawkish and diabolically insensitive about celebrations and chest-beating at the end of a week which suffered multiple terrorist attacks, including one on an important naval base. The venue was Lahore on May 28 and the cause for this sloppy jubilation was the Yaum-e-Takbir, i.e. the anniversary of the ‘Islamic atomic bomb’. A disgracefully and wilfully ignored anniversary falling on the same day was the wanton murder committed in the Ahmadi places of worship, one year ago. The irony here is agonising. If there is one item that brings moral and political certainty in the otherwise grim flux, it is the bomb. The bomb allows for a complete suspension of reason across the political spectrum. The ritualistic solidity of the opinion regarding the bomb is completely apt at some level, given its theological nature. Revelry regarding an instrument of mass destruction, which can kill millions of people in a matter of seconds, defies rationality and decency. ….

Read more : The Express Tribune

Deathly Silence Prevails in Pakistan

By Gwynne Dyer

While the people of Arab states are overthrowing dictators, Pakistan is sinking deeper into intolerant Islamic extremism. Emboldened by the meek response of the people to the assassinations of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, Islamist vigilantes will now become more brutal.

At least with a dictatorship, you know where you are  and if you know where you are, you may be able to find your way out. In Pakistan, it is not so simple.

While brave Arab protesters are overthrowing deeply entrenched autocratic regimes, often without even resorting to violence, Pakistan, a democratic country, is sinking into a sea of violence, intolerance and extremism. The world’s second-biggest Muslim country (185 million people) has effectively been silenced by ruthless Islamist fanatics who murder anyone who dares to defy them. What the fanatics want, of course, is power …

Read more : Scribd

Salmaan Taseer : My Father Died for Pakistan

My Father Died for Pakistan

By SHEHRBANO TASEER, Lahore, Pakistan

TWENTY-SEVEN. That’s the number of bullets a police guard fired into my father before surrendering himself with a sinister smile to the policemen around him. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, was assassinated on Tuesday — my brother Shehryar’s 25th birthday — outside a market near our family home in Islamabad. …

Read more : New York Times

Pakistan Ahmadi buried body forcibly exhumed from graveyard in Punjab

Pakistan Ahmadi man forcibly exhumed in Lahore
By M Ilyas Khan

Police in Pakistan have forced a family of the Ahmadi sect to exhume the body of a relative because it was buried in a Muslim graveyard.

Officials in the Sargodha district of Punjab province say they took the unusual move after anti-Ahmadi Muslim groups threatened peace in the area.

Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims but a 1984 law barred them from identifying themselves as followers of the faith.

The law also put restrictions on their religious practices.

‘Law and order situation’

Shehzad Waraich, a farmer in the Bhalwal area of Sargodha district, died on 30 October and was buried in a shared graveyard designated by the government.

“The police approached the relatives of Mr Waraich on 31 October and asked them to remove the body from the Muslim graveyard as this could lead to a law and order situation,” Salimuddin, an Ahmadi community spokesman, told the BBC.

“The family complied with the request and exhumed the body. They have now buried it in a different graveyard reserved for the Ahmadis several miles away from the village.”

The police said the family was asked to exhume the body because the burial was “illegal”.

“They buried Mr Waraich in a Muslim graveyard, which is against the law,” Javed Islam, the Sargodha district police chief, told the BBC.

“Members of the Khatm-e-Nabuwat organisation and some local people approached the police and conveyed their objection to the burial. The objection was within the ambit of the law, so we acted accordingly,” he said.

Khatm-e-Nabuwat is an anti-Ahmadi religious organisation that acts as a watchdog on their activities.

Mr Islam said that he was not concerned about the moral aspect of the exhumation of Mr Waraich’s body – his job was to enforce the law.

Ahmadis in Pakistan are often mobbed and lynched by extremist elements who critics say are encouraged by favourable laws.

The Ahmadi spokesman, Salimuddin, said it was the 30th incident since 1984 in which an Ahmadi body has been forcefully exhumed by the administration to satisfy the opponents ….

Read more : BBC

Blackened

by Nadeem F. Paracha

Kudos to television journalist, Talat Hussain, for surviving the audacious Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla, and returning home to tell the tale.

Now, if only our brave media personalities could exhibit exactly the same kind of commitment and guts in condemning all the gore and tragedies that take place in the name of faith in our own country …

That would be asking for a bit too much, wouldn’t it? After all, they know that if they were to do so, not only would they suffer labels of being ‘liberal extremists,’ or ‘western/Indian/Zionist agents,’ but no prominent government functionary would dare or bother receive them as heroes either.

The way certain frontline members of the present government received Talat (as if he had just returned after liberating Palestine from the clutches of the aggressive Zionist state), the question arose (at least in some cynical minds), where exactly were the same ministers and elected politicians (from both the PPP and PML-N), when the Ahmadi community was picking up the bodies and limbs of their dead ones slaughtered by extremists on the May 28?

TO READ FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

Courtesy: http://blog.dawn.com/2010/06/04/blackened/

June 4, 2010

HRCP blasts attack on Ahmadis in Lahore

Lahore, May 28: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has strongly condemned the militant attacks on the worship places of Ahmadi community in Lahore and called upon the government to take adequate measures to protect the minorities.

Pakistan Punjab Police erased Kalima

YouTube source – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqYyHh1MTw4

NEWS EXPRESS CHANNEL DISCUSSES ERASING OF KALIMA BY PAKISTANI AUTHORITIES (ISLAM AHMADIYYA) Ahmdi mosque destroyed

Description- URDU/Hindi: Pakistani TV hosts Mr Mubashir Luqman discusses the recent persecution against Ahmadi Muslims where Pakistan Punjab Police erased Kalima from Ahmadiyya mosque and other Islamic inscriptions from Ahmadi houses. The logic given by the panel justifying these unIslamic acts is even more irrational than these unholy actions. We thank Mubashir sahib for showing this courage. May Allah reward him for his integrity and honesty.

Courtesy: Wichaar.com

To watch the discussion, please click here

Source – http://www.wichaar.com/videos/ahmdi-mosque-destroyed/news-express-channel-discusses-erasing-of-kalima-by-pakistani-authorities-islam-ahmadiyya-video_9e075493d.html