Qadyaniat Defeated in the Parliament
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Qadyaniat Defeated in the Parliament Detailed Proceedings of National Assembly Sessions on the issue in 1974 Reproduced by Sani H. Panhwar QADIYANIAT Defeated in the Parliament A complete account of the proceedings of the National Assembly regarding declaration of Qadianis as Non – Muslims. Reproduced by Sani H. Panhwar Qadyaniat Defeated in the Parliament © www.sanipanhwar.com 1 INTRODUCTION After the fall of Muslim Empire in India in mid-1800s many reformist Muslim movements emerged Ahmadiyya movement was one of them. It was founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who claimed he was under divine instruction to fulfill the major prophecies contained in Islamic and other sacred texts regarding a world reformer who would unite humanity. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad announced to Christians awaiting the second coming of Jesus, Muslims anticipating the Mahdi, Hindus expecting Krishna, and Buddhists searching for Buddha, that he was the promised messiah for them all, commissioned by God to rejuvenate true faith. After his death the Ahmadiyya split into two sects: the ‘Qadianis’ and the ‘Lahoris’. The Qadianis claimed that Mirza was a prophet, and accused all Muslims who did not accept him as being non-Muslims. In 1914 Ahmadiyya leader, Mirza Muhammad Ahmad, began to publicly declare that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a messiah and those Muslims who disagreed with this were infidels. on May 22 1974 a train stopped at Rabwa, (Jamaat-e-Islami) JI students got out and began to raise slogans against the Ahmadiyya and cursed the community’s spiritual figurehead, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The train then left the station taking the charged students to Peshawar. No untoward incident was reported apart from the slogan- chanting and cursing. However, when the incident was related to some Ahmadiyya leaders in Rabwa, they ordered Ahmadiyya youth to reach the station with hockey sticks and chains when the train stops again at Rabwa on its way back from Peshawar. After finding out that the students would be returning to Multan from Peshawar on the 29th of May, dozens of young Ahmadiyya men gathered at the Rabwa station. As the train came to a halt, the men fell upon the bogeys carrying the JI members. A fight ensued and 30 JI men were severely beaten for insulting the religious sentiments of the Ahmadiyya. Interestingly, whereas the first incident had only been briefly reported by the newspapers, the news of the attack on IJT was prominently displayed in the country’s conservative Urdu press. JI demanded that the culprits of the attack be apprehended or the party would hold countrywide protest rallies. Qadyaniat Defeated in the Parliament © www.sanipanhwar.com 2 Police arrested 71 Ahmadiyya men in Rabwa and the Punjab government headed by the PPP’s Chief Minister, Hanif Ramay, appointed K M Samadani, a High Court judge, to hold an inquiry into the incident. A protest movement was launched by different political parties which included the centre-right Muslim League, the right-wing Majlis-i-Ahrar and even the centrist Tehrik- i-Istiqlal headed by Asghar Khan. Joining the protests were also various bar associations of the Punjab, orthodox ulema and clerics and the student wing of JI, the IJT. They demanded that Ahmadiyya members be removed from the bureaucracy and the government; Ahmadiyya youth outfits be disarmed; and that Rabwa be declared an open city because it had become ‘a state within a state.’ The leaders of the protest movement then demanded that the Ahmadiyya be excommunicated from the fold of Islam. On June 4, while speaking on the floor of the National Assembly, Prime Minister Bhutto refused to allow opposition members to speak on the Ahmadiyya issue. He accused the opposition of being ‘hell-bent on destroying the country.’ Then, when the riots escalated, Bhutto gave the Punjab CM the green signal to use force to quell the riots. The police came down hard on the rioters and managed to reduce the intensity of the turmoil after a week. On June 14, opposition parties called for a wheel-jam strike. It was successful in the Punjab and in some cities of the NWFP, but was largely ignored in Sindh and Balochistan. Bhutto reminded the opposition how the army had brutally cracked down against anti-Ahmadiyya rioters in 1954, he appealed to the opposition that the ‘Ahmadiyya question’ can be settled in a more civilized manner without resorting to violence and bigotry. He said now was not the right time. Bhutto appeared on TV and radio and insisted that he will not allow ‘savagery and cannibalism’. He said the Ahmadiyya issue had been around for 90 years and could not be solved in a day. He suggested that the issue be referred to the Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology (ACII) — a non-legislative advisory body that was formed by the Ayub Khan dictatorship in the early 1960s and was mostly headed by liberal Islamic scholars. After the June 14 strike, Bhutto allowed the issue to be discussed in the assembly and told the press that his party members in the House were free to vote on the issue according to their individual conscience. Qadyaniat Defeated in the Parliament © www.sanipanhwar.com 3 Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) chief, Maulana Mufti Mehmood, who was heading the opposition’s stand on the issue, responded by accusing Bhutto of trying to put the ‘Ahmadiyya question’ in cold storage. Religious parties, the fundamentalist JI, the Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) and the Barelvi Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP) had formed an ‘Action Committee’ with the centre-right Pakistan Democratic Party (of Nawabzada Nasarullah) and Pagara’s Muslim League. They called it Qadiyani Muhasbah Committee (Committee for the Exposition of Qadyanism). Opposition parties such as the left-wing National Awami Party (NAP) remained silent. Mufti Mehmood demanded that a bill be passed in the assembly that would once and for all declare the Ahmadiyya community as a non-Muslim minority. Jamaat-i-Islami’s Mian Tufail demanded the same and warned Bhutto that ‘his double-talk on the Ahmadiyya issue would trigger his downfall.’ The centre-right PDP also joined the chorus and demanded that a bill be introduced in the Parliament declaring the Ahmadiyya as non-Muslim. Opposition parties and clerics again threatened to take to the streets to force the government to introduce the suggested bill. Bhutto maintained that declaring the Ahmadiyya a minority and pushing them out from state and government institutions would be detrimental to the economy and political stability of the country. He also protested that the issue was a religious one and hence the National Assembly should not be used to resolve it. The religious parties disagreed. They reminded him of the constitution all the political parties had approved only a year ago (1973). They told him that the constitution had declared Pakistan as an Islamic Republic so how could he claim that a religious issue had no place in the National Assembly? It was about this time that some advisors of Bhutto warned him that if the crises was allowed to simmer or be sidelined, the party might lose some members in the Punjab and National Assembly who were sympathetic towards the demands of the opposition. On Bhutto’s orders, one of his ministers, Kausar Niazi, led a government delegation that held a series of meetings with the ulema belonging to Sunni (both Deobandi and Barelvi) sub-sects, and the Shia sect. They agreed to form a parliamentary committee to look into the demands of the parties that were leading the anti-Ahmadiyya movement. The government convinced the opposition members of the committee that the spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya community also be given the opportunity to present his thoughts and opinion on the issue. After weeks of intense dialogues among the parliamentary committee, the ulema and the head of the Ahmadiyya community, the committee decided to finally introduce the Qadyaniat Defeated in the Parliament © www.sanipanhwar.com 4 bill in the assembly. It was reported that a majority of PPP legislators were unwilling to vote for the bill. But even though the report that was prepared by the committee was never made public, parts of it were leaked to the legislators and the report allegedly recorded the head of the Ahmadiyya community telling the committee that he only considered those who were Ahmadiyya as Muslims. On Sept 7, 1974, the bill was passed and the Ahmadiyya became a non-Muslim minority. Later on in 1984, the Zia's government issued an ordinance which prohibited the Ahmadiyya from preaching or professing their beliefs. Their places of worships cannot be called mosques and they are barred from performing the Muslim call to prayer, using the traditional Islamic greeting in public, publicly quoting from the Quran, preaching in public, seeking converts, or producing, publishing, and disseminating their religious materials. We have reproduced the detailed proceedings on National Assembly sessions and few articles at the end of the book. Sani Panhwar California 2017 Qadyaniat Defeated in the Parliament © www.sanipanhwar.com 5 HISTORIC RESOLUTION OF OPPOSITION On 30th of June 1974, the opposition in the National Assembly moved a resolution to get the Qadiyanis declared a non Muslim minority. The content of the resolution is as follows: Respected Mr. Speaker National Assembly of Pakistan Sir, We hereby request to be allowed to present the following motion: Whereas, it is a proven fact that Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadiyan claimed to be a prophet after Khatam un Nabiyyeen (the last of the prophets), Hazrat Muhammad (SAW). And whereas, this false claim by him is tantamount to falsify the Quranic verses, nullify the Jihad and a revolt against major injunctions of Islam.