INCITEMENT TO MASS VIOLENCE AT STATE-TOLERATED CONFERENCE IN RABWAH, PAKISTAN

20,000 people gathered in the headquarters town of Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to hear calls for the eradication of Ahmadis

On 29 and 30 October 2026, the anti-Ahmadi organisation, Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat, held its 45th annual conference in Rabwah, the town that is the headquarters of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan. Around 20,000 people attended the six session event held over the two days.

One of the  speakers, Muhammad Ismail of Shujabad, told the gathering that the killing of a false claimant to prophethood and his followers in the time of the first Caliph of Islam was “akin to killing hundreds of thousands of Qadianis [a derogatory term for Ahmadi Muslims]”. He added that the eradication movement would continue for as long as a single Ahmadi Muslim remained in the country.

He was not alone . Other speakers , including a cleric from Jamia Ashrafia Lahore and the Punjab Nazim of Wifaq-ul-Madaris al-Arabia, declared that the punishment for apostasy is death and that Ahmadi Muslims are heretics whose punishment does not change “even after 100 generations”.

Maulvi Allah Wasaya, who chaired the final session, described urinating on the grave of the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as a most meritorious act, and said that the declaration of jihad against Ahmadis should come from the government of Pakistan. Hafiz Hamdullah of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) told the audience that Ahmadis have two options: conversion or punishment. Another speaker pledged that even if Ahmadis fled to the moon, they would be pursued there.

Others who attended or addressed it included Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar, a prominent member of the governing Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and husband of the Chief Minister of Punjab, Maryam Nawaz; Sirajul Haq, former Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami; Tahir Ashrafi, Chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council; Dr Muhammad Amjad of the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional advisory body; and Mufti Taqi Usmani.

Captain Safdar used the platform to demand that no Ahmadis should be permitted to be judges of the superior courts or a member of the armed forces ; that political party tickets and visas to Muslim countries be made conditional on obtaining certificates condemning the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community; and that every employee of the Ministry of Law, including the Minister, sign an affidavit declaring they had never represented an Ahmadi Muslim. He described the late human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir as “accursed” and said lawyers who represent Ahmadi Muslims were taking a ticket to hell.

Speakers repeatedly urged the economic and social boycott of Ahmadi Muslimsand participants were asked to pledge to boycott Ahmadi Muslim businesses and products

The conference adopted resolutions calling on the government to bar Ahmadi Muslims from senior government, administrative and diplomatic posts, and to remove the Islamic features from the Ahmadiyya Muslim mosque in Garhi Shahu, Lahore. It also welcomed the recent Federal Constitutional Court ruling upholding the ban on the collected written works of the founder of the Community. It accused Humanity First, a charity registered in the United Kingdom and run by Ahmadi Muslims, of involvement in human smuggling, and condemned Pakistan’s ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire for attending a Humanity First event in September 2026 where a new hospital was opened.

Pakistan ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2010. Article 20(2) obliges the state to prohibit by law any advocacy of religious hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. Sections 153-A and 505 of the Pakistan Penal Code and sections 8 and 11W of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 already criminalise the promotion of sectarian hatred. Applied to these statements, the six-part threshold test of the UN Rabat Plan of Action is met on every limb: the standing of the speakers, the size of the audience, the explicit reference to killing, and the organised call to boycott.

No prosecutions have followed the conference and there has been no response from the Punjab authorities, in whose jurisdiction the conference took place. This was not a clandestine gathering of extremists. It was an advertised annual event, held in the open, attended by 20,000 people, addressed by members of the ruling party and of a constitutional advisory body, and it was permitted to take place in the very town that is home to the community it seeks to eradicate.

The contrast is stark. Ahmadi Muslims have been prohibited from holding their own annual convention, the Jalsa Salana, in Pakistan since 1983, yet those who call for their killing may gather in their tens of thousands in Rabwah itself.

Source: Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK.

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