My Aunt Overcame Pakistan’s Repressive Laws to Stay True to Her Muslim Faith

Amjad Mahmood Khan, an expert on religious freedom in the Islamic world, is an adjunct professor of law at the University of California Los Angeles

She healed others in the face of hate

Honor and glory be always with thee
God’s blessings shower down on all
Thy beneficiaries, patients and workers

My aunt, Dr. Nusrat Jahan, penned the above lines of poetry in 2003 for the inauguration of the Begum Zubaida Bani gynecology wing of Fazl-e-Omer Hospital in the desert-turned-village of Rabwah, Pakistan. Today, the poem hangs in the wing’s waiting room.

From 1985 until her sudden death a few months ago at the age of 65, Nusrat was a gynecologist at the self-funded hospital that was built in 1958 to serve the indigent in rural Pakistan. She served more than 100,000 women and delivered more than 10,000 babies fofreeMany knew Nusrat as an exceptional surgeon who cared deeply about women’s reproductive health. But what really set her apart was her unbridled altruism despite having a perpetual target on her back.

 

Nusrat was born an Ahmadi Muslim in Karachi in 1951. Granddaughter of Zulfiqar Ali Gohar (brother of Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, two of India’s most revered Muslim nationalists), she was the fourth child of a family and lived in the small quarters of a mosque for most of her adolescent life. 

Despite meager means, she earned top marks at Fatima Jinnah Medical College and membership into England’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 

After her father, Abdul Malik, an Ahmadi Muslim imam, died in a car accident, Nusrat turned down lucrative job offers in England, returned home to Rabwah and dedicated her life to being a surgeon for the poor. 

Ahmadi Muslims recite the kalima (a Muslim’s principle creed), pray facing Mecca five times a day and assiduously follow the Quran. However, unlike other Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims also believe that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who founded the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in 1889, is the promised Muslim mahdi and messiah the Prophet Muhammad foretold would come to guide Islam back to its true path. That belief is criminal in Pakistan.

Under Pakistan’s constitution and criminal codes, Nusrat was not legally “Muslim” and could never publicly self-identity as such without facing fines, imprisonment or capital punishment. She told me that under Pakistan’s notorious anti-blasphemy laws, she could easily have been arrested for “posing as a Muslim.” Indeed, the same laws that threatened her life keep Abdul Shukoor, an 81-year-old Ahmadi Muslim optician, in prison today. 

Today, at least 600,000 Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan face the same grim risks. In Rabwah, local police have tortured Ahmadi Muslims to death, and extremists have gunned down others, including Nusrat’s colleague, American doctor Mehdi QamarHadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the global leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, who guided and inspired Nusrat’s humanitarian work, was forced to leave Rabwah in 2003 and now lives in exile in England. 

Ahmadi Muslims cannot legally vote or obtain passports as “Muslims” without expressly denouncing their founder. Local authorities ordered the word “Muslim” be erased from the tombstone of Pakistan’s first Nobel laureate and Ahmadi Muslim physicist, Dr. Abdus Salam.

Although the Government of Pakistan could try to strip Nusrat of her Muslim identity, it could never strip the Islam in her. Her life’s mission to heal and to provide reproductive care and cancer treatment to Muslim women could never be suppressed. Unfazed by harrowing stories of religious repression, she exhibited courage under fire. Nusrat never refused care to anyone who needed it, including those who would oppress her people.

She spoke about how the wives of high-ranking government officials would travel to her in the night to seek care and would disappear by morning because they did not want to be seen in the company of Ahmadi Muslims. Nusrat would help heal them while also pointing out that the best Muslims were those who liked for their sisters what they liked for themselves. In an era where observance of hijab is under siege, she proudly donned the veil even as she led surgical teams of men and women and undertook complex surgeries. 

In 2013, while visiting California, Nusrat toured a state-of-the-art fertility center to glean ideas for a similar center in Rabwah. When she walked in, fully veiled, the hosts did not expect her to end up educating them on the latest fertility techniques. Behind the veil was a woman who was equally comfortable discussing roller coasters as she was discussing Mark Twain and in vitro fertilization. 

Nusrat’s grave sits next to her mother’s with the words “Dr. Nusrat Jahan” (literally, “helper of the world”) fittingly blazoned on her epitaph. Her patriotic service for Pakistan against all odds provides a powerful repudiation of Pakistan’s repressive laws. 

The final words of Nusrat’s poem for the hospital are her most beautiful: “May the spring kiss laurels and never a fall.” Never a fall indeed, by God’s grace—and never will we forget you either, my dear aunt.

http://time.com/4594069/pakistan-islam-law/

 

We are using cookies to give you the best experience. You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in privacy settings.
AcceptPrivacy Settings

GDPR

This Cookie Policy explains how Ahmadiyya Muslim Association UK (AMA UK)  Limited (“company”, “we”, “us”, and “ours”) use cookies and similar technologies to recognize you when you visit our websites, including without limitation www.ahmadiyyauk.org and its mobile or localized versions and related domains / sub-domains (“Websites”) and/or our mobile application (“App”). It explains what these technologies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control our use of them.

What are cookies?

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website or mobile application. Cookies are then sent back to the originating site on each subsequent visit, or to another site that recognizes that cookies. You can find out more information about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org.

Cookies are widely used in order to make sites work or to work more efficiently.

We use cookies to enhance the online experience of our visitors (for example, by remembering your visits and/or page preferences) and to better understand how our site is used. Cookies may tell us, for example, whether you have visited our site before or whether you are a new visitor.

Cookies can remain on your computer or mobile device for different periods of time. Some cookies are ‘session cookies’, meaning that they exist only while your browser is open. These are deleted automatically once you close your browser. Other cookies are ‘permanent cookies,’ meaning that they survive after your browser is closed. They can be used by the site to recognize your computer or mobile device when you open your browser and browse the Internet again.

Why do we use cookies?

We use cookies for several reasons. Some cookies are required for technical reasons in order for our Websites and/or App to operate, and we refer to these as “essential” or “strictly necessary” cookies. Other cookies also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our Websites and/or App. Third parties serve cookies through our Websites and/or App for analytics and other purposes such as Google Analytics. In particular, we use forms related cookies which when you submit data through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

How can you control cookies?

You have the right to choose whether or not to accept cookies and we have explained how you can exercise this right below. However, please note that if you do not accept our cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of our site.

You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies. As the means by which you can refuse cookies through your web browser controls vary from browser-to-browser, you should visit your browser’s help menu for more information.

How often will we update this Cookie Policy?

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. Please, therefore, re-visit this Cookie Policy regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies.