Over 120 Islamic scholars from around the world, many of them leading Muslim voices in countries like Egypt & Saudia Arabia have issued an open letter denouncing Islamic State militants and refuting their religious arguments. The 22-page letter, written in Arabic and heavy with quotes from the Quran and other Islamic sources not only denounces Islamic State militants but unintentionally resolves another key issue in the Muslim World.
Gunmen in southern Pakistan shot dead 50-year-old doctor from Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya Muslim minority at his clinic in the latest attack on one of the country’s most persecuted groups. The assailants stormed Mubashar Ahmad Khosa’s clinic in the city of Mirpur Khas on Monday evening and opened fire on him before fleeing the spot on a motorbike. Zafarullah Dharejo, a senior local police official, added that a third attacker kept watch outside.
Sri Lanka is violating international law by deporting Pakistani asylum seekers by force and without allowing the United Nations to assess their asylum claims, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday. “Fundamentally, this is a breach of the principle of no forced returns.
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. …
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 …
The Sri Lankan government has cancelled the on-arrival visa facility for Pakistanis. The decision was taken in view of the rising number of political asylum cases in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Ministry has informed the Pakistan government about its decision to revoke the facility. According to revised policy, Pakistanis seeking to visit Sri Lanka will now have to obtain visa before departing for the Island. Sri Lankan daily Ceylon Today reported last week that nearly 1,500 Pakistanis, many …
Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-California) and Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) released the following statements following the brutal killing of Dr. Mehdi Ali Qamar in Pakistan this weekend. Qamar, an American cardiologist from Columbus, Ohio, was gunned down in front of his wife and toddler son. He was reportedly shot 10 times by one of two men on motorbike as he entered a cemetery to visit a family grave. He was an Ahmadiyya Muslim, a religious community that faces severe governmental and …
CHANDIGARH: Around 5,000 Pakistanis will cross over Punjab to participate in a three-day annual International Ahmadiyya Muslim Conference will be held at the Ahmadiyya Muslim headquarters in Qadian, Gurdaspur, beginning December 27. The first batch of 700 delegates arrived from Pakistan via Attari border and were welcomed by residents of Qadians, including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Muslims. One of the delegates said religious expression of Ahmadiya Muslims in Pakistan was banned 35 years ago. “We are not allowed to express …
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 …
Pakistan was created on a beautiful vision; a vision of freedom, a vision of a secular society, applying the Islamic principles of peace, justice and equality for all. Muhammad Ali Jinnah stated in his speech on 11th August 1947 that, ‘You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or …
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 …
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 …