Tuesday, December 25, 2007

GODLESS ISLAMISM (VI)

...and the more we learn about shariah, the more Islamism appears a marker of homicidal insanity...:

Pakistan clerics persecute 'non Muslims'
By Isambard Wilkinson in Rabwah
Last Updated: 11:22am GMT 25/12/2007

Hardline clerics are using Pakistan's blasphemy laws to persecute members of a small Islamic splinter group they say are not proper Muslims.

The two million-strong Ahmadiyya community, based in Rabwah in the Punjab, risks charges of "impersonating Muslims" under the country's controversial religious laws.

Shameen Ahmad Khalid, a community leader, said: "We have people serving long jail sentences for blasphemy or for 'posing as Muslims'."

The laws mandate three years' imprisonment for Ahmadis who dare to call themselves Muslims, call their places of worship mosques, recite the Koran or announce the azan, the call to prayer.

Twenty years ago, the people of Rabwah were charged with impersonating Muslims.

Since the charges are still outstanding, the town's 50,000 inhabitants have to hide their Islamic habits, keep their beards trimmed and avoid using Muslim invocations.

The word "Muslim" has been erased, on the orders of a magistrate, from an epitaph engraved on the tomb of Pakistan's most distinguished scientist, Dr Abdus Salam.

It used to read "the First Muslim Nobel Laureate".

The religious laws are used by hardline clerics to persecute minority groups.

Despite recent improvements in voting rights for Christians and Hindus, Ahmadis are effectively still disenfranchised as they are permitted to vote only as "non-Muslims".

Pakistani popular rhymes defame Ahmadis in lurid terms and militants have stamped thousands of rupee notes imploring believers to "put them to death".

...

Rabwah is surrounded by mosques whose clerics host prominent annual anti-Ahmadi rallies and bellow hateful slogans from their minarets' loudspeakers.

In 2005 gunmen burst into an Ahmadi village mosque at prayer time and killed eight people and wounded most of the 30-strong congregation.

Several months ago, a police officer killed Mohammed Ashraf, an Ahmadi, as he ate his breakfast in a hotel. As he opened fire the officer shouted: "You are an infidel and preaching the infidel creed."

The Ahmadis' reverence for a prophet who lived in the 19th century offends the principle orthodox Muslim tenet that the Prophet Mohammed was the final prophet.

Many Ahmadis crossed into Pakistan at Partition in 1947. But the Sunni mullahs turned against them and anti-Ahmadi riots broke out in 1953.

An amendment to Pakistan's constitution in 1974 declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims.>>

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Can a State dictate religion to its citizens? What if a US or UK or German citizen says that he/she is Muslim or Christian or Jew or Agnostic, will State tell that citizen that you'll be what the State tells you to be? OR if one claims that he/she belongs to human race, will State dictate to such a citizen that only after WE decide you can make such a claim?

Don't they have a single RAJAL UN RASHID among them??

Son Of Jor-El said...

Hey man, GREAT BLOG! I am going to link yours on my blog. You can do the same if you wish, but mine is offensive (I call islam what it is, a cult of death and barbarism, NOT a religion like judaism and christianity, hinduism, etc...)

HAPP NEW YEAR :D