The Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya (JA) on Saturday claimed that a police team had razed minarets atop an Ahmadi worship place in Gujranwala.
The incident transpired between the night of December 7 and 8, according to the JA. Opponents of the community, the minority said, had approached police in connection with the structures six months earlier. The community had then had the minarets concealed.
A police party, however, arrived at the spot at the aforementioned time and quickly razed the structures after blocking a road leading to the worship place and turning off lights in the area. The team departed with the rubble after razing the structures.
The minarets, the JA said, predate the promulgation of the Ahmadiyya-specific Ordinance XX.
Pakistan’s tiny Ahmadi community is routinely subjected to discrimination which often enjoys legal and state sanction.
An Ahmadi man was booked by Karachi police under the nation’s Ahmadiyya-specific penal provisions for using ‘Syed’ as a prefix earlier in the same month. A copy of the FIR is available with The Friday Times — Naya Daur. The suspect, a lawyer, had been representing other Ahmadis before a court. The man had submitted some documents in connection with the case. The documents, it has been claimed, featured Islamic terms. His name featured alongside.
Leading Pakistani Urdu Daily Jang ran a Quetta jail ward story with a bizarre anti-Ahmadi headline earlier in September. “The Muslim world must act in concert to annihilate Qadianiyat*,” the story was headlined as. The story carried under, on the other hand, is on Balochistan Ombudsman Muhammad Nazar visit to Bolan Medical Complex Hospital. Nazar, who visited the medical facility to inspect sites for the establishment of both: a temporary and permanent jail ward, is no where quoted as having made the anti-Ahmadi remarks. Nowhere does the story feature anything on the minority.
A school in Punjab’s Attock district expelled four Ahmadi students over their confession earlier in September. Tahir Khan**, a relative of the students, said they had been expelled for simply being Ahmadi. He said a class fellow of one of the students had been harassing one of the students for some time. The students, Khan said, were expelled after some parents prevailed on school principal Kulsoom Awan.
*Qadiyaniat is a derogatory slur employed for the beliefs espoused by the minority Ahmadiyya community.
**Name changed to protect identity.
