At least 80 graves were destroyed just two weeks before the elections.
by Massimo Introvigne
On January 24, as reported and documented on social media by minority rights activists, the police under pressure of local Sunni radicals destroyed at least 80 Ahmadi graves in two cemeteries in Daska, a city in Punjab located some 100 kilometers from Lahore.
The Ahmadis complained that the portions of the cemeteries where the graves were destroyed were allocated to their community by the authorities and were clearly separated from the Sunni areas. This did not avoid the destruction.
Ahmadis report that the extremist group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan incited the desecration, which was carried out by the order of the Assistant Commissioner of Daska, Anwar Ali Kanju, known for his hostility to the Ahmadiyya community. The same bureaucrat had ordered the attack on another 75 Ahmadi graves in September 2023.
The Ahmadis are considered as non-Muslims by Pakistani laws. They regard their 19th-century founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as “both a prophet and a follower of the Holy Prophet [Muhammad].” This is not good enough for conservative Sunnis, who believe the Ahmadis violate the Islamic tenet of the “finality of prophethood,” which teaches that there can be no prophet after Muhammad.
Since they are regarded as non-Muslims, Ahmadis are prevented from using Muslim symbols on their places of worships and graves, although court decisions stated that Ahmadi cemeteries and mosques built before 1984, when the law was changed, should be left undisturbed.
Videos show police officers destroying and painting in black the Ahmadi graves in Daska, certainly without checking whether they were older than 1984.
It is significant that this new incident happened two weeks before Pakistan’s general elections, and among appeals by religious minorities to all parties to solve the problem of their discrimination and persecution. From Daska comes a very negative sign, one indicating that those who hate minorities will continue their hate campaigns, no matter who wins the elections.
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.
