Out of the silent night, two men moved swiftly through the mosque's front gate. Magazines loaded and safeties off, one stopped at the front door, the other proceeded through. All that separated a fully loaded Kalashnikov in the hands of a madman from 50 innocent worshippers was a straw curtain that hung helplessly in the doorway.
"In the end, they killed eight of my brothers, and shot 20 more."
I listened silently as Yusef related the events of that ominous October day in 2005, in his hometown of Mong, Pakistan. The two men belonged to a Taliban offshoot. The 50 innocent worshipers were Ahmadi Muslims. In Pakistan, Ahmadi Muslims are nothing more than the Wrong Kind of Muslims, and therefore declared worthy of death.
But Pakistan remained silent.
And the story did not end in Mong. Not long after, eight Christians from Gojra, Pakistan would be burned alive on account of their faith. Every day, another Hindu woman is kidnapped, raped and forcibly "converted" to Islam. Wait until Maharram and Shiite Muslims become the national target of choice. If you are an atheist, you ostensibly don't exist -- and if you are street smart, you won't exist in the public eye. Then on May 28, 2010, the Taliban returned to brutally murder another 86 Ahmadi Muslims, and one Christian -- in broad daylight with police watching.
And Pakistan remained silent.
But Pakistan was not always like this. My father, born just three years after Pakistan's birth, tells me of a time when millions flocked to Pakistan as the land of opportunity. Today, as one-third want to leave, Prime Minister Gilani callously retorts, "Why don't they leave then, who is stopping them?" My father reminds me of a time when Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah specifically appointed non-Muslims to his cabinet to champion Pakistan's pluralistic platform. Last year, Pakistan's only non-Muslim federal Minister, a Christian named Shabazz Bhatti, was assassinated because he specifically championed Pakistan's pluralistic platform. Likewise, Governor Salman Taseer -- the single politician to speak up for Ahmadi Muslims -- was brutally murdered for doing so. My father tells me when the dream of Pakistan was to give India's persecuted Muslim minority the priceless opportunity to build the world's greatest, most tolerant nation. Today, Pakistan endows Salman Taseer's assassin as a hero and sentences the doctor who helped kill Osama bin Laden to 33 years in prison.
Yet Pakistan remains silent.
I ask my father about Pakistan's beautiful beginnings because they are things I have never seen. By the time I was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in the early '80s, I was already a constitutional kafir (legally declared non-Muslim). I was a criminal by age 2 because uttering asalaamo alaikum to my father, while being a legally declared non-Muslim, was a crime. By age 4, I was liable to receive capital punishment from the Pakistani government simply for believing that Muhammad is only the greatest prophet, but not the last prophet.
In my adopted country, America, I needn't deal with such bigotry. Here, no one calls me the Wrong Kind of Muslim, no one can silence my words and no one can silence my right to believe -- or not believe -- as I wish.
But for millions of Ahmadi Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Shias and atheists living in Pakistan, what began as state sanctioned persecution of the Wrong Kind of Muslims has now spread into an all out war against anyone not deemed the right kind of human.
We must remain silent no more.
While the silenced suffer in deafening agony, I am striving to make their voices heard. My humble effort launches with my story, "The Wrong Kind of Muslim," for which I am building a base on kickstarter.com. My sincere hope is that this book gives voice to the millions who have had their voices ripped away -- ripped away through terrorism, rape, burnings, unjust laws, an apartheid government and a silent majority.
And I hope you do not remain silent.
It won't be long before another helpless curtain is all that remains between another madman with a Kalashnikov and dozens of innocent human beings. A bigger Kalashnikov in response is not the answer. But, the voice of reason and compassion through the power of the pen is more powerful a weapon than any force on Earth can withstand.
Join me, The Wrong Kind of Muslim, to give those innocent people a voice. Help me ensure that from now on, millions do not go silently into the night.
Follow Qasim Rashid on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MuslimIQ
@ Qasim Rashid, does your dad drink a lot ?
My friends Anahita1 and FedUpIndian caught this faux pas of yours: "My father tells me when the dream of Pakistan was to give India's persecuted Muslim minority the priceless opportunity to build the world's greatest, most tolerant nation."
Until now, the claim had been that if the British left India (most Muslim League-rs hoped they wouldn't leave), Muslims would remain a "permanent minority" in a democracy dominated by Hindus--who were 75% of the population.
Nobody actually said that Muslims were a persecuted minority. In fact, no one expects such a claim from a group of aristocrats and princes (who the ML-ers were) who had ruled over much of that Hindu majority for centuries.
I hope you will correct your mistake (or support your claims).
Many Pakistani commentators (Hassan Nisar, Najam Sethi, et al.) have pointed out the problems in what was to be "the world's greatest, most tolerant nation". A country is founded on a dubious "Two Nation Theory", then breaks into two (after a genocide of over a million Bengalis), continues to decimate the Baloch, and ends up as the epicenter of fundamentalism in the world.
The dream, if there ever was one, never materialized into reality.
So forgive me if I don't swallow this unadulterated swill about "the dream of Pakistan [which] was to give India's persecuted Muslim minority the priceless opportunity to build the world's greatest, most tolerant nation." The Muslims were not persecuted - they were the persecutors of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs for centuries. And after Pakistan was formed, they paid lip-service to tolerance as long as Jinnah was alive, and tossed it aside the day he died.
But I should make it clear that unlike many of my foolish fellow Hindus, I have no problem with the creation of Pakistan. If the Brits and Jinnah had not done that, India today would be blessed with roughly 350 million more Muslims on top of the 175 million we are already blessed with. In another generation, we would be back where the British found us when they showed up around 1700 - dhimmis in our own country, at the mercy of Rashid's poor, persecuted co-religionists.
^I'm assuming you must not be from Indian land/territory that now falls in Pakistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ahmadis
However, in many Islamic countries the Ahmadis have been defined as heretics and non-Muslim and subjected to persecution and often systematic oppression.
- You are admitting that Muslims are oppressing religious minorities in Pakistan.
From my own experience they are doing the same thing in ME!
He11, they are doing it now to Jews in the West and everyone who dares to criticize them.
What will the liberals say now?
Mr. Rashid, you speak bravely about the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims and other minorities in Pakistan. Indeed the pattern in Pakistan since its inception has been to eliminate minorities and thus silence dissenting voices altogether.
However, to your point above - when exactly were India's Muslims persecuted? Until British colonization, the rulers and elites of India were Muslim, not Hindu. It was the Mughal empire and the next to last emperor Aurangzeb who had embarked on a brutal campaign of Hindu suppression shortly before the British arrived. Aurangzeb even re-introduced the dreaded Jizya tax on Hindus. Indeed Hindus haven't ruled India for nearly 700 years or more. Our present secular government in India isn't Hindu either. The demand for Pakistan was one made by Muslim elites (read MJ Akbar's "Pakistan, a tinderbox), concerned by the potential loss of political clout (with the departure of the British) in what would be a majority Hindu republic. However, Hindus who had no political power until then had hardly been in any position to "persecute India's Muslims".
Arguably, the subcontinent's Muslims are far more persecuted in Pakistan than they are in India. This by your own post above. Want more proof, ask India's Muslims.
The reality is that before the British came to India, Islam had coiled itself for centuries around India, Hindus/Sikhs/Buddhists/Jains were "dhimmis", and led their lives while at the mercy of Muslims. How we could persecute Muslims in this condition is unclear, but this BS is emitted constantly by Muslims and swallowed unquestioningly by people in the West. We need to call this nonsense out.
Thank you very much for this wonderful article! Your cause is worthy and I pray you find the support you need. There is no wrong Muslim and no wrong human being!
DD: [In] Pakistan ... the non Muslim population has gone from 23% to
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"I hope I have provided you with excellent technical support today."
non Muslim in Pakistan region in 1947 -- 54 %
Same in 2012, less than 2%.
Probably not before then.
I have done the research that led me to make the statement.
Your responsibility is to show how that research is faulty. It is not my job to convince you.
If I am wrong, prove it.
A similar phenomenon happens with other religions too (although not to the same extent in the US as it does elsewhere). There are plenty of non-believers stuck in religious communities. They feel they can not speak out without risking being completely outcast by their family and friends.
'I believe in the one true god and everyone else is wrong. If they don't believe what I believe then I will shun or condemn them and allow myself to feel morally superior'. This is never explicitly stated but it is implicit in the beliefs of many theists, whether or not they admit it.
What religion would you adhere to if you weren't born in Pakistan, but were instead born somewhere in the US bible belt to a typical American family? The point being that your religion is based on the culture you came from, and is essentially determined by where you are born. Religious differences are therefore just as arbitrary as the geopolitical and socio cultural boundaries that dictate them.
Also, this article begs the question 'what is the right kind of religious person?'. My answer is one that does not speak of a word of their belief and is morally indistinguishable from a non-religious person.