Asia

Al-Fazl: Pakistan’s oldest, and most censored, newspaper

Rabwah, PAKISTAN – This must be the only newspaper office in all of Pakistan that is alive and buzzing at 9:00am. While the country’s other sub-editors, reporters and publishers are still sleeping off last night’s print deadline, these journalists are already hard at work, drafting the next edition of Pakistan’s oldest continuously published daily newspaper. Al-Fazl, the community newspaper of the Ahmadi Muslim sect, was first published in 1913, in the town of Qadian in what is today Indian Punjab. …

Fijian Government commends Ahmadiyya school management

The Public Service permanent secretary Parmesh Chand has commended the management of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Secondary School for committing itself in the education of children from nearby communities. The school which is located in Voloca, Batiri, Macuata today celebrated the construction and opening of the new Teachers’ Quarters. Mr Chand officiated today at the celebrations as Chief Guest. The Voloca Ahmaddiya Muslim Seconday School first opened its doors in 2003 with a total of only 40 students. The school, today, …

Ahmadiyya: Persecuted from birth to death

Rabwah, Pakistan – Seeing her lying in her hospital bed, it’s difficult to tell what Mubashara Jarra has been through. Outwardly, she appears fine. No intravenous tubes snaking into her body, and no bandages covering up her wounds. “I’m feeling much better,” she says, in a low voice. It is, perhaps, only her vacant eyes that betray her ordeal. Jarra, 32, was trapped in a room, along with many of her family members, in her home in the Pakistani city …

Jinnah persuaded to return to politics by Ahmadiyya Missionary

The history behind Jinnah’s return to Indian politics in 1934 makes for an inconvenient truth. The man whose eloquent persuasion left Jinnah no escape in returning to politics, has been forgotten in the annals of official Pakistani history. That man was not Liaqat Ali Khan and certainly not Dr. Muhammad Iqbal but Abdur Rahim Dard – an Ahmadi missionary in London. August 14, Pakistan Independence Day, is a date of great significance for Pakistanis everywhere but it has a particular …

Woman and two children burned to death by anti-Ahmadiyya mob in Gujranwala, Pakistan

A woman and two children were burnt to death when local extremists set five houses belonging to members of Ahmadiyya community on fire. On Sunday night an angry mob lead by son of a local Imam attacked Ahmadiyya community in Gujranawala a town 140 miles southeast of the capital, Islamabad, over alleged blasphemy, killing four people. Four other Ahmadis were critically injured and taken to the District Headquarter hospital. According to People Colony Circle’s Deputy Superintendent of Police the mob gathered to …

Ahmadi man shot dead in Nawabshah Pakistan

Ahmadi Muslim man murdered in Nawabshah, a town 170 miles northeast of the Pakistani port city of Karachi in the Sindh province. According to a statement issued by the press department of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Pakistan the victim, 38-year-old Imtiaz Ahmad was standing in front of the business he owned in Trunk Bazaar when he was shot in the head. The incident happened at about 3:30pm local time.

Persecuted Pakistani Ahmadi Muslims seek refuge in China

Fleeing discrimination and violence, members of a Muslim sect have abandoned their homes in Pakistan to find an unlikely refuge in China. “Every day I heard the sound of guns,” said 37-year-old Saeed, who used to live in Lahore, Pakistan’s second city. “We prayed every day, because we felt something could happen to us at any time.” He is one of hundreds of people who have sought asylum in China in recent years, often from conflict and violence-stricken countries including …

American doctor from minority Ahmadi sect shot dead in Pakistan

An American doctor of Pakistani origin was shot dead in central Pakistan by unidentified gunmen on Monday, police said, in an attack that appears to have targeted him because he was a member of the minority Ahmadiyya religious community. Mehdi Ali Qamar, 50, from Lancaster, Ohio, had traveled to Pakistan’s Punjab Province late last week to volunteer at the Tahir Heart Institute, one of Pakistan’s most highly regarded medical clinics. At around 5 a.m. he was walking out of a cemetery with …

Pakistan Army rejects TTP’s allegations

A spokesperson of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) has categorically rejected outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s allegations about their women and children in the custody of security forces. Commenting on the factual position of the issue‚ the spokesperson clarified that not a single woman or child is in the custody of security forces. In fact‚ women and children have never been detained. The spokesperson said this baseless accusation by outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan is mere a propaganda to divert the attention from the real …

Ahmadi sect under siege in Pakistan: British Doctor arrested for reading The Quran

A 72-year-old British doctor is in prison in Pakistan for “posing as a Muslim”, charges that reveal an escalating ideological fight that often spills over into violence. Masood Ahmad is a quiet, reserved widower who returned to Pakistan to open a pharmacy in 1982 after decades of working in London to pay his children’s school fees, his family said. He is also an Ahmadi, a sect that consider themselves Muslim but believe in a prophet after Mohammed. A 1984 Pakistani …

Minorities under pressure in Pakistan

Being a member of an ethnic or religious minority in Pakistan brings with it inherent risks – something dramatically illustrated in Peshawar last month when a bomb attack on a church killed at least 85 people. The US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2012 notes that the 5 percent who constitute the non-Muslim population in a country of just over 190 million face persecution in many forms, including “attacks on houses of worship, religious gatherings, and religious leaders …

For Pakistan’s Ahmadis, a depressing tale of two gatherings

A fortnight ago, tens of thousands of members of the Ahmadi Muslim community gathered in the historic English market town of Alton. They were there for an annual conference. This year, the community was also marking the centenary of its presence in Britain. As far back as 1926, the Ahmadis established London’s first mosque. In countries as diverse as Canada and South Africa, there are similar events that take place throughout the year. But the one country where Ahmadis aren’t …