A video showing a small boy cursing the persecuted religious minority quickly went viral on social media.
by Massimo Introvigne
“Qadianis were infidels yesterday. And even today Qadianis are infidels. Also, the one who supports a Qadiani is an infidel. A Qadiani is an infidel! A Qadiani is an infidel! Labbaik Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah! (We’re here, we’re here, O Prophet of Allah). Labbaik Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah! (We’re here, we’re here, O Prophet of Allah). The Seal of the Prophets.”
These words can be often heard in Pakistan, where the Ahmadis are officially discriminated by the law, persecuted by the government, and attacked by mobs. They are derogatorily called “Qadianis,” from the name of the Indian town where their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was born in 1835.
Ahmadis are accused of being infidels and heretics and of rejecting the Muslim doctrine that Muhammad was “the Seal of the Prophets,” meaning that no genuine prophet could appear after him. Ahmadis regard their founder as “both a prophet and a follower of the Holy Prophet [Muhammad],” which is not good enough for conservative Muslims, who would not tolerate the use of the word “prophet” applied to any post-Muhammad spiritual master.
That somebody vituperates against the Ahmadis in Pakistan with the words transcribed in the first paragraph would not be news. However, this time these words come from a video that went viral on social media this week, where they are uttered by a young male child.
Hate speech is bad enough but using children to promote it is truly disgusting. Apart from the effect on the audience, one should consider how the child himself, and probably many others like him, are indoctrinated to hate a religious minority. The systemic violence and intolerance against minority religions in Pakistani society is thus passed from one generation to the next.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
