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India-Pakistan
Pakistan sect members face religious hatred charges
2007-02-03
KARACHI - Pakistani police have charged three adults and two children, from a minority sect designated non-Muslim, for spreading religious hatred, an official said on Friday. The five members of the Ahmadiyya community, including an 11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy, were caught reading and distributing childrensÂ’ magazines that contained offensive material, police said.

“We have registered a case against them ... they have obtained pre-arrest bails from a court,” Shabbir Mohammad, a senior police official told Reuters by telephone from Chora Kalan, a village 150 km (90 miles) south of Islamabad. “We are trying to recover more of these magazines,” he said, adding the magazines spread hatred against other religions.
Because they pointed out that maybe, possibly, Mohammed (may his gummas heal) might not be the last profit.
The sect was founded in Punjab by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in 19th century India, and the Ahmadis do not regard Mohammad as the last prophet of Islam. The community is centred around the town of Chenab Nagar in central Punjab province. Official figures for Ahmadis are unreliable as they have boycotted censuses since 1974, but they estimate their community at around two million, according to a US State Department report.
Sounds like there's a few who don't toe the religious line in Pak-land.
An amendment to PakistanÂ’s constitution in 1974 declared that Ahmadis were not Muslims, and barred them from preaching or propagating their faith.
Because it wouldn't do to make anyone think about their faith.
During military dictator President Mohammed Zia-ul-HaqÂ’s rule in the 1980s a series of changes to the penal code were made that became known as the anti-Ahmadi laws. Ahmadis have long been victims of harassment and religious violence, often instigated by militant Sunni groups.
Harrassment = rape and assault, violence = murder.
Posted by:Steve White

#5  Ironically the Jamaat Ahmadiyya supported the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

They got their Pakistan, their land of the pure.

Except they were not pure enough...

Posted by: john   2007-02-03 10:08  

#4  An amendment to PakistanÂ’s constitution in 1974 declared that Ahmadis were not Muslims, and barred them from preaching or propagating their faith.

Wow. They amended their constitution to persecute another religion.

But Islam means peace and there is no compulsion in religion, right?
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2007-02-03 09:34  

#3  After receiving the Nobel Prize, Dr Salam then went to India where he was received with great fanfare. He had gone there to simply meet his primary school mathematics teacher who was still alive. When the two met, Dr Salam took off his Nobel medal and put it around the neck of his teacher.

The Indian PM Indira Gandhi was so in awe of him that she refused to sit at the same level as Dr Salam, instead sitting beside him on the floor.

Posted by: john   2007-02-03 06:45  

#2  After the great scientist was buried in Chenab Nagar, his tombstone said ‘Abdus Salam the First Muslim Nobel LaureateÂ’. Needless to say, the police arrived with a magistrate and rubbed off the ‘MuslimÂ’ part of the katba. Now the tombstone says: Abdus Salam the First Nobel Laureate.

Posted by: john   2007-02-03 06:39  

#1  Professor Abdus Salaam was an Ahmadi.

He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for his contribution to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including the prediction of the weak neutral current.

From his Nobel Citation

When he cycled home from Lahore, at the age of 14, after gaining the highest marks ever recorded for the Matriculation Examination at the University of the Punjab, the whole town turned out to welcome him. He won a scholarship to Government College, University of the Punjab, and took his MA in 1946. In the same year he was awarded a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took a BA (honours) with a double First in mathematics and physics in 1949. In 1950 he received the Smith's Prize from Cambridge University for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to physics. He also obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at Cambridge; his thesis, published in 1951, contained fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics which had already gained him an international reputation.

How was this brilliant man treated by Pakistan?

In the country of his birth and citizenship, no scientific or other institution, building, or even a street, bears his name. School text books do not mention him, nor are children told about him by their teachers. Fake heroes are spattered all over the place but Salam is never to be found. Reflecting the disdain felt by much of Pakistani academia, a former vice-chancellor of my university scornfully asked in a meeting: 'Who is Salam? What has he done for Pakistan?'" observed Pervez Hoodbhoy

When Professor Salam ran for the post of Director General of UNESCO, he needed an endorsement from his country of citizenship. "Pakistan refused to endorse his candidacy," says Saif. "He was awarded an O.B.E. by the Queen of England and had lived in England long enough to get citizenship there, but he didn't want it; the Italian government, because of his work at the ICTP, were also offering him citizenship, but, again, he never accepted it (even after Pakistan refused to endorse him)."


"Before 1974, Salam was legally a Muslim in Pakistan, but subsequently he became a non-Muslim in a state where non-Muslims are, by law, second class citizens. Subsequent to his excommunication by an act of the Pakistani national parliament, and of his Ahmadiyya sect, Salam resigned as Adviser to the President.
Posted by: john   2007-02-03 06:36  

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