Meanwhile, the extremist Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan calls for “slitting the throats” of the members of the persecuted religion.
by Massimo Introvigne
“Bitter Winter” reported that on March 5 bail was denied to 22 members of the Ahmadiyya community, who had been arrested on February 28 in Daska, Punjab, just for praying inside their house of worship on Friday. The arrests followed a campaign instigated by the extremist religious-political organization Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), to which “Bitter Winter” devoted a series of seven articles.
Twenty days have passed since, and despite protests by international organizations the Ahmadis remain in jail, including several minors and one person with intellectual disability.
On March 21, Friday again, another two Ahmadis were arrested for praying in Islampura, Lahore, Punjab. According to TLP, praying on Friday for the Ahmadis is tantamount to claiming to be Muslims, something they are not allowed to do by Pakistani anti-Ahmadi laws.
A 14-year-old detainee is missing his final exams that are scheduled on 25th March 2025 due to imprisonment, jeopardizing a year of academic progress and his future. Despite knowing this, the state continues to hold him in custody.
Two minors, aged 16 and 17, are also imprisoned due to a system that punishes them for their faith.
Meanwhile, TLP is making its campaign even more aggressive. Naeem Chatta Qadri, a senior TLP cleric, openly called for the extermination of Ahmadis in a video released this month. “Their throats should be slit, and we will do so, God willing,” he said. He called the Ahmadis “apostates, heretics, filthier than the urine of swine,” concluding that they are unworthy of any rights or protections and should be exterminated.
While the Pakistani government sometimes tries to rein the TLP in, it is also scared by its threats of riots. Its hate speech is both left largely unchecked and influences local police and courts of law.
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.
