The Ahmadis And The Politics Of Religious Exclusion In Pakistan

This path-breaking work traces the history of the political exclusion of the Ahmadiyya religious minority in Pakistan by drawing on revealing new sources. This volume is the first-ever scholarly study of the declassified material of the court of inquiry that produced the Munir-Kiyani report of 1954, and the proceedings of the national assembly that declared the Ahmadis as non-Muslims through the second constitutional amendment in 1974. The book chronicles the details of anti-Ahmadi violence and the legal and administrative measures adopted against them, and also addresses wider issues of politics of Islam in postcolonial Muslim nation-states and their disputative engagements with the ideas of modernity and citizenship.

Introduction: Rethinking desecularization -- Colonial genealogy of Muslim politics -- Democratic exclusions, authoritarian inclusions -- Politics of minoritization -- The nation-state and its heretics -- Courts and the minority question -- Conclusion: After secularization.

Following on the work he began in Conscience and Coercion: Ahmadi Muslims and Orthodoxy in Pakistan, Antonio Gualtieri returned to Pakistan to continue his conversations with devotees of the Ahmadi community. He reveals how this traditional society deals with conflicts arising from contact with the non-Ahmadi and shows how the Ahmadi survive in a country that is generally hostile to them. Dedicated to supernatural revelation and the divine governance of society, Pakistan's Ahmadi community has endured mob violence and penal sanctions for refusing to embrace the beliefs of the Sunni majority. They disagree with fundamentalist ideas of exclusiveness and consider themselves a reformed version of Islam. Although they have adopted Enlightenment ideas about the pursuit of scientific knowledge and produced a notable number of technicians, doctors, and scientists, women continue to live under a strict definition of purdah and the community remains conservative. The Ahmadis reveals a society strictly grounded in divinely prescribed patterns - including parental authority, close family ties, a disposition towards gender-specific roles, and separation of the sexes - but at odds with fanatical Muslim fundamentalism, whose wrath has spread beyond the Ahmadi minority to include the West.

The roots of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws can be traced back to the British colonial rule in India, but their harsher clauses were added to the Pakistan Penal Code during a wave of intense Islamization in the 1980s. Everyone in Pakistan is threatened by the misuse of these laws, even Muslims; however a disproportionate number of victims targeted by these laws have come from two minority groups, the Ahmadis and Christians. Dr Qaiser Julius focuses on how these two groups have been affected by Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, their different reactions to these laws, and more specifically, why they are responding differently despite living under the same circumstances. In this well-structured and understandable study, Julius provides a valuable tool for Christians to understand what it means to be a minority in a hostile culture. This thorough analysis presents a way forward for the Christian church in Pakistan, providing hope amidst the discrimination and persecution.

Relates the tragic experience of members of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam and records their testimony of harassment and persecution resulting from their loyalty to their understanding of God and His revelation.

This analysis of Muslim unrest is based on an extended case study of northwestern Pakistan. Professor Ahmed examines power, authority, and religious status as the critical intermediary level of society: that of the district or Agency, which was the key unit of administration in British India. Amhed has joined his insights as anthropologist with his experience as a political agent in Waziristan to produce an innovative and detailed work. The book focuses on the emergence of a mullah in Waziristan who challenges the state. A religious leader's challenge of the state is not new; but contemporary Muslim society's widespread concern over these conflicts reveals that the influence of religion in a traditional society undergoing modernization is greater than many scholars have assumed. The author identifies three types of leaders: traditional leaders, usually elders; representatives of the established state authority; and religious functionaries. From this analysis he constructs an 'Islamic district paradigm,' which he uses not only in making sense of contemporary Muslim society, but also in understanding some aspects of the legacy of the colonial encounter.

This thoughtful ethnography of Islam in Pakistan moves from the smallest scale—a single worshiper striving to be a better Muslim who is seeking guidance at a neighborhood mosque—to the largest, examining the thought of poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, considered to be the spiritual visionary of the country.