Jinnah and the Ahmadi Muslims

This is a brief comment on Saroop Ijaz’s otherwise brilliant article in Express Tribune.

Good news is that Saroop Ijaz has woken up to the Ahmadi issue. Bad news is that what he finds irksome is not as much the mistreatment or discrimination but that those who choose to speak against this discrimination choose to do so in Jinnah’s name. Tragic that not everyone is as well educated as Saroop Ijaz to produce references of obscure authors at a drop of a hat.

Here it must be stated that Jinnah’s relevance to Ahmadi case is not limited to piddling subsection of his career such as his championing unpopular causes like child marriages restraint act or his efforts to legalize inter-communal marriage without renunciation of faith or his warnings against the misuse of 295-A, grandfather clause to 295-c. No Jinnah’s relevance has to do with the fact that he was last popular political leader who said that Ahmadis were Muslims and no one had the right to say otherwise. His relevance is that he resisted all demands by the Mullahs to expel Ahmadis from the League. Indeed the Majlis e Ahrar started its anti-ahmaddiya campaign partly to discredit Jinnah and as an election slogan.

This is precisely why the Munir Report dedicates an entire section to Jinnah’s Pakistan. Maybe their lordships Munir and Kayani were not as educated as Mr Ijaz.