1974: More humiliations in store for Ahmadis of Pakistan

The Times, September 25, 1974 The adoption earlier this month by Pakistan’s national assembly of a Bill conferring non-Muslim status on the Ahmadiyya sect, was a depressing victory for religious bigotry. The assembly’s decision must greatly strengthen the hand of the more rigidly orthodox “Ulema” (professional theologians) and the Muslim fundamentalists of Maulana Maudoodi’s politically active Jamaat-i-Islami a group Mr Bhutto once described to me as ” antediluvian and obscurantist “.

1974: Opposition in Pakistan presses Government to bar Ahmadiyya sect

The combined Opposition in the Pakistan Parliament has demanded that the Government should declare the Ahmadiyya sect, a non-Muslim minority, remove all its members from influential and sensitive offices, and arrest Mirza Nasir Ahmad, who describes himself as third Caliph of the sect. The demand, which came yesterday, even from parties professing to be secular, followed a week of anti-Ahmadiyya agitation in Punjab. Today Opposition members walked out of the National Assembly after tear gas was used to disperse 2,000 …