A Yorkshire MP has spoken about the attacks levelled at him and his family due to being members of a particular sect of Islam.
By Geraldine Scott
Monday, 23rd November 2020, 10:00 pm
Wakefield Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan led a debate in the Commons on Monday night on the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims, focussing on experiences in Pakistan in particular.
Mr Ahmad Khan, who is the first Ahmadi Muslim to be elected as an MP, said those who follow the movement were “spared no respite from persecution either in life or death” as graves were desecrated by Pakistani state law enforcement officials in Gujranwala District in July.
And he said an amendment to the Pakistani constitution, Ordinance XX, allowed “a three-year imprisonment and an unlimited fine, and even the death penalty, for Ahmadis to simply call themselves Muslim or call their Mosques a Mosque”.
He said: “My own family understand this only too well. I could place on the record the numerous attacks against my family and myself. For example, my first cousin’s Syrian husband, Dr Mousallam Al-Droubi, left Damascus and was worshipping at an Ahmadi Mosque in Lahore in May 2010 when gunmen massacred 87 supplicants and left him, and over 120 other worshippers, with grave injuries, all on account of their belief. Their crime? To worship as Muslims.”
He said although Pakistan was not the only place Ahmadis faced persecution, that the country was “the world’s leading exporter of hate across the globe, which it fabricates on an industrial scale”, and said anti-Ahmadi hate had even been broadcast on British television.
He added: “There is a direct correlation between this sort of hate speech and violence perpetrated against members of the Ahmadiyya Jamaat. Freedom of speech certainly is a vital pillar of our way of life, but incitement to murder and violence is not, and never has been, freedom of speech. Hatred preached in Pakistan does indeed result in violence on UK streets and around the world.”
He urged the Government to ensure aid money did not fund Government-run education in Pakistan, where he said children were taught that Ahmadis were “infidels”.
And that the Government used its influence to “release all Pakistani citizens from the bondage of tyranny and the fear of persecution”.
He also said any future trade deals with Pakistan should be tied to “the protection and freedoms of minorities to live, work and worship as they choose”.
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