Jadeed Qabristan (graveyard) is located near Murree Road in the heart of the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
A signboard dangling outside the house of the gravedigger reads: "It's prohibited to bury Mirzais here." 'Mirzai' and 'Qadiyani' are derogatory terms used against the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistain. While taking a photo of the sign, one is greeted with suspicious stares.
For decades, Ahmadis have faced persecution at the hands of religious forces of Evil and right wing forces. The state jumped into the fray in 1974, when the then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto introduced a constitutional amendment declaring them non-Musselmen to ward off pressure from right-wing forces.
Before the May 11 general elections, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) labeled Pakistain as a country where religious freedom has been extremely limited.
The subjugation of Ahmadis started soon after Independence in 1947. Led by Jamaat-e-Islami
...
The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka
The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an
independentbranch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
, right-wing groups spearheaded anti-Ahmadi campaigns. The first such violent movement erupted in Punjab, in 1953, leading to the imposition of martial law in the province.
Then, military dictator Zia ul Haq
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...furthered the agenda by passing an ordinance making it unlawful for Ahmadis to identify themselves as Musselmens. They were also barred from calling their worship places mosques.
In 2010, in Lahore, 86 Ahmadi worshippers were brutally murdered by the Punjabi Taliban. Over the years, speaking out on 'sensitive' issues such as religious discrimination has become increasingly dangerous -- highlighted by the murder of the then Punjab Governor, Salmaan Taseer.
While the community faces violence and discrimination on a daily basis, few people remember that the sole Noble laureate from Pakistain, Dr Abdul Salam, belonged to the Ahmadiyya community.