Essentially today, the charter of the Pakistani laws, are incompatible with the modern times or even to the Pakistan envisaged by the Qaid-i-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah or Sir Muhammad Iqbal (who was an admirer of Ataturk’s republican secularism). However, Pakistan has virtually legalized the persecution of the vulnerable minority with the frequent invocation of the convenient “blasphemy laws” that are routinely abused to bludgeon the Ahmadiyyas into social subservience. The retrogressions of Pakistani society go beyond the traditional strains of the sectarian Sunni-Shia divide and the more expected animus towards minorities like the Hindus, Christians, Parsis – it is deliberately formalised persecution of the ostensible, “Non-Muslim” Ahmadiyyas (approx. In India, the law does not allow the other majority sects of Islam to declare the Ahmadiyyas as apostates, even though the mainstream clergy takes a dim view of the Ahmadiyyas. 4 to 5 million adherents), that is particularly pertinent.This perforce ensures that the Ahmadiyyas do not sign it and therefore are debarred from visiting Mecca to perform the Haj.There is no official identification, discrimination or persecution in their status, even though they are not permitted in the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, by the other leaders.This perforce ensures that the Ahmadiyyas do not sign it and therefore are debarred from visiting Mecca to perform the Haj. Similar instincts in other Islamic countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, have been spared the state-sponsored, “ban” or declaration as “kafirs” (infidels).
The absolutist and simplistically linear logics of Donald Trump’s thinking will trip Pakistan on multiple fronts – from its sovereign sincerity (or otherwise) on fighting terror, in its sincerity in fighting discriminatory laws, etc. Later, these same retrograde forces consumed Bhutto himself and naturally aligned themselves with the openly puritanical instincts of Zia-ul-Haq. Supporters of Hafiz Saeed, head of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and its front organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa, protest in Lahore recently after the Pakistani authorities took him into custody after rising international pressure. It is this constitutional mandate that will hold us better than most other multi-religious countries, in the rocky times ahead. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto betrayed his supposedly “secular” moorings when he initiated the excommunication of the Ahmadiyyas in a bid to solidify himself amongst the reactionary forces with the passing of the parliamentary bill that declared them to be “Non-Muslims”, in 1974. However, there is an inherent lesson in intolerance that countries like Pakistan need to introspect within, before beseeching the Americans with more sense in their official policies.
