Religiously motivated crimes are escalating in Pakistan, and new threatening tones can be heard in the voices of religiously motivated criminals and their supporters. Ideas and actions that are in clear contradiction to the UN Charter of Human Rights are being openly propagated and executed; and, violence against women is unashamedly condoned by the elders and lawmakers.
No wonder, Pakistani rights activists and defenders are aghast at the spectrum.
Each religion and each religious grouping exists because its members think that the universal and ultimate truth resides ‘herein’, and the rest of the population is walking the ‘wrong’ path that needs to be ‘corrected’ for the universal good and for their own salvation in the ‘thereafter’. So, in a religious context, the most discriminatory, even violent, ideas and actions are justified, and then projected as admirable and rewarding acts. I was about to cite an example when i realized that i was choosing between the many violent incidents that have happened in Pakistan in the past couple of weeks. I wish to never find myself in a situation of such multiplicity again but clearly we have been furnished last Sunday with some of the classic examples of faith-based crimes by a TV anchor, Dr. Amir Liaquat Hussain in a religious program called ‘Alam (Scholar) Online’.
In a TV broadcast on 7 September 2008, this religious ‘scholar’ with two other cowards ‘declared’ that in accordance with Islamic teachings, the Ahmadi sect members are Wajib ul Qatal ‘Must be killed’ for not believing in the last prophet Mohammad PBUH.
‘Dr. Amir repeated his instruction several times, urging fundamentalists Muslims to kill without fear’. Within 18 hours, a 45 year-old Ahmadi leader in Mirpur Khas, Dr. Abdul Manan Siddiqui was executed with 11 gun shots by six people; he ‘died on the spot’. His private guard and a woman sustained injuries. The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) notes
‘The killers remained at the hospital until the doctor was declared dead, then they walked out of the building’s front entrance. Police registered the killers as unknown‘.
On September 9, Mr. Yousaf, a 75 year-old rice trader and district chief of the Ahmadi sect was killed on his way to the prayer house in Nawab Shah, Sindh.
‘Yousaf was fired on from people on motor bikes, and sustained three bullet wounds. He died on the way to the hospital. The assailants had taken a route past a police station. No one was arrested‘.
PAKISTAN: TV Anchor Incites Murders of Two People
This is happening amidst threats of acid attacks on women, closures of schools, women being buried and burnt alive for a male concept of ‘family honor’; protectors become perpetrators; and, the worst atrocities in the name of ‘honor’ are being justified and covered up on the basis of tradition.
Still, in my view, Saudi Arabia is way ahead with a Saudi cleric who wants death for TV ‘sorcerers’. Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan told al-Madina daily ‘The Muslim consensus is that the apostate’s punishment is death by the sword’ and ‘Those who call in these shows should not be accorded Muslim rites when they die’; that the purveyors of horoscopes on Arab television should be sentenced to death. This came ‘days after another cleric argued death for TV owners’. Situation in Pakistan however is not as luxurious as for us to be going after horoscope-readers or tv-owners yet because here we are still going after women and minorities; and, within it, the women of lower economic/social status and members of Muslim Ahmadiya community.
Today, Indian Mujahideen killed 20 and injured 100 in Delhi with a series of bomb blasts in the busy commercial centers of the city. And this sad day was made sadder by the news that UK has allowed Muslim clerics to form Shariat Courts and to implement Shariah Laws for Britain’s Muslim communities. ‘The British government has ‘quietly sanctioned’ shariah judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to domestic violence’.
UK’s first official sharia courts
– Fauzia Rafiq
First published at Uddari Weblog
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Secular Pakistan 
Crimes against Ahmedies in Pakistan and rest of Islamic world are condemnable and Ahmedies should be allowed freedoms to practice their religion. All discriminatory laws against Ahmedies must be scraped.
At the same time I advise Ahmedies also to change their policies and stop cruel practices like ‘social boycott’, expulsions, hate propaganda, forced divorces and family breakups that they use against people who chose to leave Jamaat or express dissent about the policies or personal behaviour of Ahmedi leadership. It is highly hypocritical that Ahmedies don’t allow any Ahmedi to object on any belief or people of Mirza family but expect that others will tolerate their beliefs that are in conflict with some basic tenants of Main stream Islam.
A lot of problems against Ahmedies are direct result of social isolation that Ahmedies have self-created due to their policy of not having marital and social relations with non-Ahmedi Muslims. This policy of Ahmadiyya has made this community a fortress community that is held hostage by their own dogmas – many purely based on hate.
I am an Ahmedi by birth and hel many positions in Jamaat in my youth. Right now I am facing a severe social boycott by Ahmedi community including families of me and my wife. Is such practice human? My only crime was that I criticize corruption among clergy and so-called holy Mirza family and also some wrong practices including discrimination against women.