Persecution of Ahmadis in the Islamic Republic

The basic premise on which we won ourselves Pakistan was that a permanent majority cannot and should not dominate a permanent minority on account of numeric strength. Yet contrary to that founding logic, Pakistan is today legally a totalitarian fundamentalist theocracy

A fresh round of hate has been unleashed against the hapless Ahmediyya community once again. A young woman has been expelled from her university for daring to stand up to hate speech against her community on campus in Lahore. In Rawalpindi, ignorant and boorish mobs have been agitating to close down an Ahmedi ‘place of worship’ for being ‘unconstitutional’. In other words, practising their own faith in their own space is deemed unconstitutional by a mob that has probably never opened the constitution. All the while this community goes on praying and fasting for Pakistan, where a majority continues to persecute them for believing differently.

1973 Constitution is theocratic in form and substance

By Yasser Latif Hamdani (courtesy Daily Times)

While there is no consensus on whether Pakistan was envisaged as an Islamic or a secular state, there is remarkable consensus that Pakistan was not meant by the founding fathers to be a theocracy. Indeed, most Pakistanis insist that Pakistan was not envisaged as and is not a theocratic state but as a modern Islamic democratic state.