Daily Times

I am a registered voter from NA-122 Lahore. Till recently I was sure who I was going to vote for: the great Imran Khan who is standing from my constituency. Khan has been a hero to me as long as I can remember. We grew up admiring him as a cricketer, as an Oxford educated playboy (this is when Article 62 and 63 were not taken seriously), and as a philanthropist who gave us Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital. I was 16 years old when Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) was launched and I remember trying to convince my parents that they should vote for Khan then. In 1998 when I went to the US for college, I met a famous religious leader from a religious party who called Khan a Jewish agent and I almost came to blows with him.

There is also a personal emotional connection that makes me want to vote for Khan. My late father who had voted for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) all his life decided to cast his vote for PTI in 2002 unexpectedly. By this time I had decided to vote PPP largely because I did not think Khan’s candidate had a chance of winning from our constituency. I asked my father why he was wasting his vote, and he said that Khan was the only man with any character or integrity left. He predicted that sooner or later everyone would get around to voting for Khan. He died suddenly before this could happen in 2007, and 2013 seems to make his prediction come true.

So I was all set to vote for Khan from NA-122 till of course I read the press release by the PTI on the Ahmadi issue and it has given me pause. Let me state that I never expected the PTI or Khan to repeal the second amendment or even undo the horribly unjust Ordinance XX of 1984. It is not politically feasible and, therefore, all the defences cited by Khan’s tigers of the press release are justified. However, the press release itself was so poorly drafted and so horribly worded that one wonders if Khan is actually arguing for more state-sponsored persecution of Ahmadis. Then there is the larger problem. Khan has, in many private gatherings, said that anyone who professes to be a Muslim is a Muslim. This is a principled position, a position that Jinnah subscribed to as well but unlike Jinnah who openly said Ahmadis were Muslims and no one had the right to say otherwise, Khan only says it privately. Be that as it may, it makes the press release a lie.

The story as I gathered from various sources goes something like this. One lady Nadia Ramzan Chaudhry, an information secretary in London, visited the Ahmadi Jamaat headquarters (quaintly named Islamabad) as part of a peace symposium, and in her personal capacity asked an innocent question about why Ahmadis, if they believe in justice, would not vote for the PTI. A video clip of this was then used by the mullahs to suggest that Khan was trying to mobilise the Ahmadi vote by promising them repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Of course, this is a minefield no politician would dare go near at election time and there was nothing to suggest that it was an official PTI overture.

PTI’s reaction was abysmal. First Shireen Mazari came out with a statement denying that Nadia Chaudhry was even an office bearer. Then came the press release. It would have been alright if Khan had merely said that he never canvassed the Ahmadis as a community for their vote. It would be equally alright if Khan had merely affirmed that he believed in the absolute and unqualified finality of the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) prophethood. After all, no one has questioned Khan’s personal belief and no one thinks he subscribes to the Ahmadi beliefs. The statement, however, did not stop there. First it declared that not only is this Khan’s belief but he also believes that anyone who does not believe like he does is a kafir (infidel) and any claimant of prophethood since is a liar. This part, of course, goes against what Khan has said on several occasions at other places and there is enough evidence to the contrary on YouTube. Secondly, if Khan’s belief is that Ahmadis are non-Muslim, then the Ahmadi religion constitutes a separate category. Whither tolerance for other faiths? As if that was not enough, he also affirmed his faith in the constitutional status of ‘Qadiyanis’. Now granted that Qadiyani is not necessarily an offensive term like say Mirzai. However, Ahmadis call themselves Ahmadis and they are described as such in Article 260 of the Constitution. Secondly, one wonders if by merely speaking of Qadiyanis, is Khan saying that he does not agree with the constitutional status of the Lahori Ahmadis? Perhaps whoever drafted the statement should have read Article 260 of the Constitution clearly. In any event it goes without saying that Ahmadis object to the word Qadiyani in much the same way as Muslims in general object to the once in vogue word Mohammadan. Khan could at least have followed the Constitution in letter and spirit.

What could Khan have done? He could have taken a principled stand like Jinnah. Jinnah was repeatedly pressured on the Ahmadi issue and he repeatedly shot it down publicly and said that those trying to raise the anti-Ahmadi issue were actually trying to divide the Muslims. Granted that would have been too much for a lesser man of not the same sterling quality. If not that then Khan could have remained silent and ignored the hoopla. He didn’t. It takes me back to the 2008 US presidential election campaign when certain Hijab-clad women in Barack Obama’s audience were removed because there were accusations by the right wing that he was secretly a Muslim. Obama had the moral courage to call them up and also publicly apologise to those Muslim women, despite everything.

Imran Khan has proved that he is no Jinnah. He is not even an Obama. So I ask you who should I vote for from NA-122? Perhaps I should not vote at all.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com