LAHORE: Under pressure from Islamist extremist groups, police arrested 22 members of the Ahmadi minority community, including children, in the Sialkot district of Pakistan’s Punjab province while they were praying at a local place of worship.
These mass arrests took place last Friday when a mob of religious extremists gathered outside the place of worship, chanting inflammatory slogans.
In response to fears of potential violence, members of the Ahmadi community reached out to the police emergency line for assistance. However, instead of dispersing the threatening crowd, law enforcement officials arrested 22 Ahmadis, transported them to the City Police Station in Daska.
Following the arrests, extremists gathered outside the police station, demanding that criminal charges be filed against the detainees. Yielding to the pressure from these groups, authorities subsequently registered formal charges against the arrested Ahmadi citizens.
In a similar incident last week, 23 Ahmadis had criminal charges registered against them in the Sargodha district for gathering at a community space to offer Friday prayers.
Amir Mahmood, a spokesperson for the Ahmadi community in Pakistan, said the situation for the community has become “grave” and that they are being stopped from praying even within the boundaries of four walls.
Pakistan’s law bars Ahmadis from calling themselves Muslims, and extremist groups have relied on the legislation to justify attacks targeting the community. They vandalize Ahmadi worship places arguing that they look like mosques. Ahmadi tombstones carrying Islamic terms or titles are also often a target.
A judgement of the Supreme Court authored by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah in 2022 had asked the authorities not to stop Ahmadi citizens from practicing their faith within the four walls of their homes and worship places. The SC had held that the act of depriving non-Muslims of holding their religious beliefs was “against the grain of our democratic Constitution”.
“To deprive a non-Muslim (minority) of our country from holding his religious beliefs, to obstruct him from professing and practicing his religion within the four walls of his place of worship is against the grain of our democratic Constitution and repugnant to the spirit and character of our Islamic Republic,” stated a nine-page verdict, authored by SC judge Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah in 2022.
