Bilawal Bhutto deletes tweet endorsing Ahmadi rights

Chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto deleted a tweet on Tuesday in which he had endorsed equal rights for the country’s minority Ahmadis. Bhutto posted the original tweet back in 2013 in response to the arrest of an Ahmadi man for reading the Quran. “No greater crime vs. Islam than banning someone from reading Quran, @ijattala: Bail denied to 2 Ahmadi caught reading Quran” The tweet once again caught the attention of rights activists after a renewed campaign …

Bilawal Bhutto hints at abolishing Pakistan’s anti-Ahmadiyya Laws

Chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari dropped hints that he will work towards abolishing Pakistan’s controversial laws against Ahmadi Muslims. The 28-year-old politician admitted that Pakistan had a lot to answer for the way how minorities were being treated in the country. Responding to a question about the role of Pakistan People’s Party in introducing the legislation against Ahmadis in 1974, Bilawal said: We can go into the past and keep talking about what people have done at …

Sherry Rehman accused of bias due to Jang gaffe

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Vice President and former federal minister Senator Sherry Rehman has been accused of inciting religious hatred against the persecuted Ahmadiyya sect after a hateful article appeared in an Urdu daily under her name. The article which was published on April 4th wrongly attributed a hateful statement against Ahmadis to Pakistan People’s Party’s Vice President Sherry Rehman. Soon after the publication of this article Ms. Rehman personally responded and clarified her stance with the following tweets: @RabwahTimes pl see several clarifications. This …

How Bhutto used Gestapo style FSF to silence his political opponents

This story is of my father Rashid-Ud Din and the Federal Security Force (FSF). The FSF was a Gestapo style security force created by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto back in 1972. Bhutto was the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) which he founded in 1967. He served as the 4th President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973 and then served as the 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977. The story begins in June 1973, when FSF recruiters started hiring people all over …

Three and a half Ahmadis and a Shia

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 …

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 …

Why don’t Ahmadiyya Muslims perform Hajj ?

Only 2 Muslim groups have EVER been denied Hajj. Muhammad (saw) & his Sahaba by Meccan Kuffar & Ahmadi Muslims by the Ummah. “And Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) to the House (Kabah) is a duty that mankind owes to Allah, those who can afford the expenses (for ones conveyance, provision and residence); and whoever disbelieves (i.e. denies Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah), then he is a disbeliever of Allah), then Allah stands not in need of any of the Alameen (mankind …

Shadows of endless nights

During the ghastly summer of 1974, five Ahmadi students in Multan were ruthlessly beaten. Prof. Abbas bin Abdul Qadir was killed in Hyderabad. On September 7th 1974, the day when Ahmadi Muslims were declared Non-Muslim, five Ahmadi students were expelled from a Faisalabad university. Two students were forced to ride a donkey through city streets with their faces painted black. Later, Master Ziauddin Arshad, a teacher in Sargodha, was murdered.