Daily Times

During a trip to Kashmir on May 23, 1944, Jinnah was asked a question as to who was a member of the Muslim Conference, the Kashmir equivalent of the All India Muslim League. The questioner was concerned that Ahmedis were being allowed to join both the Muslim Conference and the All India Muslim League. Calling it a disturbing question, Jinnah sternly told the questioner that the Muslim League was open to all Muslims and that raising such sectarian questions was detrimental to the interests of not just Muslims but all communities. He said: “I appeal to the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir not to raise sectarian questions, but instead to unite on one platform under one banner. In this lies the welfare of the Muslims. In this way, not only can Muslims make political and social progress effectively, but so can other communities, and so also can the state of Kashmir as a whole.” When pressed further, he stated: “What right have I to declare a person non-Muslim, when he claims to be a Muslim?”
Thirty years later, Pakistan’s parliament on September 7, 1974, ignoring this advice from the father of the nation, amended the Constitution of 1973 to declare that Ahmedis were for the purposes of law and the constitution non-Muslims. Whether parliament has the power to do so is an academic question that vexes jurists. After all, the 1973 Constitution, as passed by parliament, contained within it the express guarantee that Islamic provisions would be interpreted and applied in line with the beliefs of each school of thought. This was the basis of the national compact that was arrived at by a broad consensus. Let us assume, however, that parliament had the power to play God and make a decision as to whether or not a person who calls himself a Muslim and who says the kalima — La Illah Illallah Muhammad ur Rasool Allah (there is no God but Allah and Muhammad (PBUH) is his messenger) – is a Muslim. Conversely, today some of the biggest supporters of the idea that Islam is the basic structure of the Constitution argue that the same parliament has no right to undo what it did in 1974. The whole argument is absurd. If parliament could act like God then, presumably it should be able to act like God now. Why the double standard now? This is precisely the kind of logical absurdity that the infusion of religion into the state can cause.
The decision to declare Ahmedis non-Muslims was also accompanied by an express guarantee by the then Prime Minister (PM) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that their fundamental rights would be fully protected as citizens of Pakistan, including their right to worship freely. Subsequently, however, the state has enacted many laws that have done the exact opposite. Ordinance XX of 1984, promulgated by General Ziaul Haq and saved by parliament through the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, declares that Ahmedis can be jailed for three years for pretending to be Muslims. What does that mean? The law has been deliberately kept vague to allow for further absurdities. In a clear violation of Article 20 of the Constitution, which promises unfettered freedom to practise and propagate one’s religion, Ahmedis are not allowed to hold their religious gatherings. Consequently, their annual religious gathering in Rabwah was discontinued in 1984 by force. Ahmedis are routinely jailed in Pakistan for the offence of saying Assalamualaikum, which is central to their faith. However, no such restriction applies to Hindus, Christians or Sikhs in Pakistan. One gentleman, whose parents named him Muhammad Ali, was jailed under this draconian law for writing his name outside his own house in Sargodha. The graves of Ahmedis are routinely desecrated by either overzealous constitutionally approved Muslims or by the state itself. Ahmedis’ places of worship (which cannot be called mosques by law) are destroyed by the state so as to ensure that they look nothing like a Muslim mosque. As if this humiliation was not enough, passport forms were amended in the 1980s whereby now every Muslim in Pakistan applying for a passport has to curse and abuse Ahmedis, calling their founder an imposter and a fraud. We have all signed this statement and we are all equally guilty in the persecution of this community.
These restrictions are not without precedent of course. But to look for the precedent we have to either revisit the history of Nazi Germany, which treated its Jewish population as subhuman or we have to hark back to 16th century England when similar restrictions were imposed on Catholics under King Henry the VIII, Edward and Queen Elizabeth I, and on Protestants by Queen Mary. Are these really the precedents we want to follow? In doing so we have achieved nothing but to bring shame to both Pakistan and Islam. The world looks at us, rightly, as an intolerant and bigoted lot who are unwilling to accept diversity within our ranks. The enemies of Pakistan — not out of any love for the cause of humanity — point to the treatment of Ahmedis as another example of how utterly incorrigible we as a people are.
As a Pakistani I have no answer to this. My head hangs in shame because as a Pakistani I do not even have the power to right these wrongs. This is not freedom; it is slavery to dogma. It is the antithesis of what Pakistan was envisaged to be by Jinnah. I wonder if Jinnah had known that is what we would make of his Pakistan, he would have still pressed for the country. He certainly did not want a theocracy to be run by priests with a divine mission. Yet that is precisely what we are today. We have allowed priests and half-baked religious scholars to destroy that ideal. Here, one must praise the courage of Wajid Shamsul Hasan, son of Syed Shamsul Hasan, a close confidant of the Quaid-e-Azam, for speaking the truth unwaveringly at the annual Ahmedi gathering in London. It is absolutely shameful the way the Punjab Assembly passed a resolution against him for doing so.
For the love of God and for the sake of sanity, undo these laws now or else this sectarianism will eat us from the inside. No amount of cosmetic action and no number of national action plans will undo the scourge of religious extremism until we undo the historic mistake we made 41 years ago.

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