The Gujrat village where the 75-year-old Norwegian Ahmadi homeopath was shot dead last month has a history of religious intolerance towards the minority community, however, the police have so far claimed that the murder was not religiously motivated.
Dr Rasheed Ahmed was shot dead by 22- year-old Hafiz Inam, who then killed himself. Rasheed practiced homeopathy at a small clinic he had set up in his home in Goteriala village, 50km north of Gujrat city.
Shortly after the murder of the Ahmadi doctor, Hafiz Inam was found dead in the fields on the outskirts of the village.
According to a report by BBC Urdu, two religious conflicts involving the Ahmadi community were reported in the village in the past. Following the conflicts, the community in the village remained isolated.
The first conflict involved a mosque in the village where Ahmadis and Muslims in the area used to offer prayers together in the 90s. However, Muslim clerics from the surrounding areas asked locals to not offer prayers with the community since Ahmadis are not allowed to pray with Muslims. Following this, Ahmadis were excluded from offering prayers in the same mosque and the mosque was renamed Khatam e Nubuwwat (Finality of Prophethood).
The second conflict was reported in 2011 when Muslims in the village objected to a Quranic verse written on a house belonging to an Ahmadi community member. The conflict was resolved after the police intervened and removed the verse from the house.
Following the incidents, the locals stopped mingling with Ahmadis in the area despite many of them being related to each other. The report stated that some locals believe that Hafiz Inam was provoked by extremist elements in the village to murder the doctor.
The incident came amid a rise in violence against Ahmadis. Since the start of this year, as many as five worship places of the persecuted religious community have come under attack. In two such incidences, local administration was directly involved in destroying the minarets of a worship place, as per a report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
In another incident, a Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) mob harassed an elderly Ahmadi community leader in Kasur, and threateningly asked him to remove ‘Muhammad’ from his name. They also forcibly stopped the community from offering prayers at their worship place.
