A tiny Indonesian province has banned a minority Islamic sect from conducting religious activities, a move activists say raises concerns over intolerance in the Muslim-majority nation. The move by Bangka-Belitung, made up of two main islands off South Sumatra, is the latest in a series in which religious minorities including Christians and Shi’ite Muslims have faced harassment and complained of a lack of protection.
On Saturday Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. PM Sharif was received by Director General CERN Fabiola Gianotti. Uoin meeting PM Sharif Ms.Gianotti said that the Pakistani scientist Dr Abdus Salam had played an important role in the establishment of CERN.
The Vice President, Mr K. B. Amissah‐Arthur, yesterday met with the National President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission, Ghana at its headquarters in Accra. They discussed a range of issues including the protection of minority rights, religious tolerance and how to sustain the prevailing peace and stability of the country.
An Australian man will turn to the Australian Government for help after his 81-year-old Ahmadi Muslim father was imprisoned in Pakistan last month. Khalid Ahmad’s father, Abdul Shakoor, who owns a bookshop in Pakistan where the Ahmadi faith is outlawed, made international headlines when he was jailed for eight years in December for selling books deemed hurtful or hateful to another religious group’s beliefs.
Bangkok’s little-known population of Pakistani asylum seekers uses community action to respond to the challenges facing refugees without a camp. In an unremarkable concrete apartment block on the outskirts of Bangkok, over 100 families from Pakistan wait.
“Are these the people with bullets who took my papa away?” two-year-old Sabiha Ahmad asked her mother anxiously when AFP visited her family, members of Pakistan’s persecuted Ahmadi minority, who are currently living in hiding. The toddler’s family have had little contact with anyone since they were forced to flee for their lives on November 20 when hundreds of people torched a factory in the eastern city of Jhelum after rumours spread workers were burning copies of the Koran. Sabiha’s …
An American University Professor has exposed a Pakistani University’s secret hiring policy that prohibits hiring of Ahmadiyya Muslims. The professor is a member of an external committee that reviews applications of faculty candidates at Pakistani Universities.
My family moved to Lahore in early 1970s. We rented the lower portion of a house in what was still called Kirshan Nagar, despite being renamed Islampura, probably after the 1965 war. It was an old style house with an open central courtyard. There were two front rooms both having an opening onto the street. The owners lived in the upper portion but they purposefully kept one of those front rooms. They would hold a weekly religious gathering in that …
Anyone remotely familiar with the poetry of Dr Muhammad Iqbal would know of his multi-pronged flirtations with numerous – often paradoxical – ideologies, at the same time. From fluctuating between a poet and a preacher to being the torchbearer of theocracies and personal faith at the same time – from presenting an anti-capitalist case for theism through Vladimir Lenin in Lenin Khuda Ke Huzoor Mein to his appraisal for sultani, while ostensibly challenging the British Raj – from promoting a …
Pakistani actor Hamza Ali Abbasi, who has not shied away from discussing controversial issues on social media, has this time spoken out in favor of religious freedom and criticized the country’s growing intolerance towards Ahmadiyya and Shia Muslims.
The Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan (JA) will not partake in the forthcoming local government polls to register its protest against what it calls the step-motherly conduct of the state towards it. These elections have separate elections only for Ahmadis, says a letter written to the Election Commission of Pakistan, a copy of which was made available to the media. It is strange that Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians are included in one electoral roll and only Ahmadis are registered in a separate …
A documentary featuring testimonials and stories of minorities was screened at the Jinnah Institute (JI) on Friday. Titled ‘Strangers in their own land’ and ‘اپنی زمین پر اجنبی’ for English and Urdu segments respectively, the documentary is an initiative of the institute. It was screened at a closed-door event and was attended by its filmmaker Ali Aftab Saeed, human rights activists, and researchers, who opened the floor for discussion and encouraged feedback post-screening.