Wednesday, May 23, 2012

10/17/05, Letter to the Editor, printed in The Washington Times

(Printed in The Washington Times, Oct. 17, 2005, in response to news article, “8 Killed, 19 Wounded in Pakistan Mosque”)


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Dear Editor:

Gruesome earthquake pictures from Pakistan draw an ironic parallel with the powerful and graphic images depicted in various international newspapers which covered the recent invasion of an Ahmadi mosque in village south of Islamabad. Over forty national and international newspaper accounts, including your own, reported masked gunmen raided and showered bullets on an Ahmadiyya Muslim community while they peacefully engaged in morning prayers. While Pakistan has sought the compassion and relief aid the world is extending, dramatic images in world papers capturing the plight of Ahmadi Muslims have failed to win the sympathies of Pakistani politicians themselves for years. This is a blatant double standard which holds for the suffering of minority communities in Pakistan in general, and with the Ahmadiyya community in particular.

In 1974, the Government of Pakistan passed the Second Amendment to the Pakistan Constitution, which expressly declared Ahmadi Muslims to be non-Muslim, and passed the "anti-blasphemy" penal provisions in 1984 and 1986, which regards virtually any public act of worship or devotion by an Ahmadiyya Muslim as a criminal offense. 

I am an Ahmadi Muslim and spent my childhood years in the same town of Mandi Bahauddin where the frightful murders which violated this holy month of Ramadan where perpetrated. The overwhelming grief of the families of those who died within the bullet pierced and blood splattered walls of the Ahmadiyya mosque, is the same grief and torment that families of earthquake victims are enduring now. Certainly, the experience of pain is universal. Now is the season for Pakistan to wake up having slept on this glaring human rights issue as though in a coma for over 30 years.

Bilal A. Rana
Houston, Texas

Comments (1)

Can you post the link to the WT article which this is responding to? Jazakallah.
asif - April 29

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