No country for Ahmadis?

I am an Ahmadi woman who was lucky enough to escape Pakistan, bury a haunting past and get a chance to start anew. I am thankful for all that I have now, to be living in Canada. But - believe it or not - I miss Pakistan very severely sometimes. Pakistan is - and forever will be - a part of me. I can never remove it from my being, despite how it treated me.

It was the year 2008 when my family and I immigrated to Canada. It was in the month of August. The weather in Karachi was beautiful. The breeze whispered many promises for a better future. I will never stop missing that Karachi breeze. While the weather was bright and sunny, the social atmosphere certainly was not. The atmosphere was one of religious militarism and intolerance. It had been that way for a while. Our Sunni neighbours declared that it was easy for us to get immigration because we were Ahmadis, and that Canada made it deliberately hard for Sunnis. I wanted to laugh, but did not.

At my school, everyone was very obsessed with others' sect and religion

Discrimination, according to my neighbours, is when Ahmadis and other minorities in Pakistan get some kind of leeway when it comes to immigration. I do not know how true that is, but even if it were, it is not discrimination. Discrimination comes in various forms, and in Pakistan, it often comes in violent, deadly forms.

Sometimes, discrimination comes in the form of sexual harassment. For instasnce, two guys grabbing your rear end and calling you an “Ahmadi whore”. That happened to me. I was quite young then and I thought the way to combat such things was to convert myself into a Sunni. I thought that being Ahmadi was actually wrong. I formed some faint resentment towards my family for being Ahmadi. I actually started believing there was something inherently impure about us all. Perhaps there was something that led others to see us as “untouchables” - only to be touched and grabbed from the rear end.

I remember that at the school I went to, every one was very obsessed with what sect and religion others came from. The first time I was asked the question, I was 9, and blissfully unaware of how much the country I loved actually hated me. My parents sheltered me from that. I answered, “I come from an Ahmadi family!” I stated it gleefully and proudly, like a young girl would when introducing herself for the very first time, in the hope of making new friends. The little girls and boys who had asked me the question were very aware that Ahmadis were not be associated with. Their form of boycott: never to eat with me during lunch time ever again.

That night, I told my parents about the incident, and they scolded me hard. They said, “Yeh kehnay ki kya zaroorat thi? Tum chahti ho ke loug tumhara boycott kar dein?” (Is that a thing to be said? Do you want people to boycott you?) They were very angry, very scared and very sad. Their anger hurt at the time because it reaffirmed that I had done something terribly wrong. How was I to know that my identity was something I had to hide? They never told me so, at least not directly. Looking back at it though, I realise they were angry because they blamed themselves for my naivete. They never knew a way to articulate: “Hey daughter, you will always be hated”.

I thought there had to be some logical reason for such prejudice but prejudice alone is enough to justify prejudice. Which is why it made sense for one of my acquaintances at school, who also lived in my neighbourhood, to come to me and say, “I know the secret practices you Ahmadis have, and if I tell it to anyone else, they would be so disgusted by you.” I never really found out what those secret awful practices were, though. I did not fight back then. I also did not fight back when Islamiat teachers openly taught about the importance of prejudice towards Ahmadis - in classrooms. I just bit my lips. I wish I had fought back at all those times, but that doesn’t matter now.

No one in my immediate and extended family had the will to fight back. There was always just that painful acceptance on their part. That acceptance was there when my uncle got fired because his boss found out he was an Ahmadi. It was there every time we heard news that people had been killed for being Ahmadi. It was there when people left notes outside our house telling us we are better off dead. And that acceptance on our part was there when a family friend died in the bombing of an Ahmadi mosque in Lahore on the 28th of May, 2010.

The faith of the bigots was so weak that it was threatened by my very presence

We were drained. My family and I had the opportunity to escape and took it: the rest of our relatives did not. Very recently, they received threats from people in their neighbourhood, whom they have known all their lives. They were told either to convert to the “true Islam” or leave the neighbourhood. They refused to convert but they were afraid for their lives and probably still are. I heard that the paperwork for moving to another area was in process, but it has been almost a year since the threats and they are still there. I fear for them every day.

One rare time, though, my family and I did fact fight back. It was months before leaving for Canada. We were at the passport office, and we were told to sign the declaration denouncing Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. We refused. We told the person at the passport office that we could not do so because we were Ahmadis. He looked at us, shocked and disappointed, and then asked us to sign it - again and again. At the end, he begrudgingly accepted that we would not sign. Consider this a sign of humanity or a fluke, but our passport application was approved.

I suppose one could say that a few months before leaving for Canada, my family and I did try to make up for all the times we did not fight back, and I am forever glad we did. But it was a painful confrontation to go through, one that we may never have to go through again, now that we have our Canadian passports. But that confrontation could have cost us our very lives, by holding us back in Pakistan. I still do not know if standing up for yourself and to your principles is worth risking your future for, but it is certainly worth something.

All the religious extremists and bigots tried taking away my country from me. This was the country that I was born in, spent my childhood in and from which I carry countless memories. They tried to take it away from me because being Ahmadi denies me my right over the very land I was born in. They are all afraid of themselves, not me. Their faith was so weak that it was threatened by my very presence.

I have heard people talk about how important it is to hate those who are from my background. I have had teachers lecture about the importance of prejudice towards Ahmadis. I have heard TV anchors and politicians applauded for their prejudice towards Ahmadis. I always thought I was unlucky to be born in a religious sect that is so persecuted, but the unlucky ones are really those who did not know better than to hate someone over these differences. The incidents of shootings and bombings that are often seen as isolated incidents are a result of hatred that is commonplace. It is never simply about a few extremists.

The reality is that despite all that happened to me, no one could take away my country from me. It is still mine. It still has my footprints. Nothing on earth can keep me from being there if I ever want to be: not even relentless hatred. Even if I were to be killed when I am there, a religious extremist would still have to deal with the fact that he is breathing in the air which has the smell of my ‘untouchable’ Ahmadi blood mixed in it. My country will always be mine, as long as I live, and even after I die.

Farah Anjum lives in Canada