A member of Pakistan Ahmadiyya community A mob of fundamentalist was killed on Friday after a crowd of worshiping an Ahmadi in the Sadar neighborhood of Karachi.
The crowd, many people from the anti-blasphemi political Grouphree-e-Labbak Pakistan (TLP), forced their way through narrow roads, chanting anti-Ahmadi slogans around the place of worship of the colonial-era. Tension increased when the group accused the minority community of violating Pakistan’s controversial anti -Ahmadi laws.
Muhammad Safdar, a senior police officer from Karachi, said, “A member of the crowd was killed as a member of the mob after being identified as Ahmadi.”
“They attacked him with sticks and bricks.”
Police said members of several religious parties were part of the crowd. To protect others from further violence, the authorities took around 25 Ahmadis into custody and took them away in a police-eskorted van after interacting with the mob, which was swollen about 600 people.
The Ahmadiyya community, considered a heretical by the state of Pakistan and many religious groups, has long been faced by systemic discrimination. Ahmed, who has a population of about 10 million worldwide, consider themselves Muslims and believe in almost every way as mainstream Islam. Although they consider themselves Muslims, a constitutional amendment of 1974 declared him non-Muslim, and the 1984 ordinance criminalized many of his religious practices.
Friday’s murder is the latest in a long history of harassment. According to community records, over 280 have been killed since 1984, six Ahmeds have died in 2024 so far. Thousands of people have faced criminal allegations, which include hundreds under the strict condemnation laws of Pakistan.
52 -year -old businessman Abdul Qadir Ashrafi, who participated in protest, said the group intended to pressurize the police to take action against Ahmadis.
“We requested that the place be sealed and those who operate Friday’s prayers were arrested, criminal proceedings were initiated against them,” he told the AFP.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the attack, saying that it was “influenced by the orchestrated attack by a far-flung religious party at a colonial-era.”
The Commission posted on the social media platform X. said, “This failure of law and order is a memory of the state’s continuous complexity, which is in systematic harassment of a rejected community.”
The mob violence has become a well-common response to allegations of Ish condemnation in Pakistan, often with fatal consequences. Last year, in a similar incident, dozens of churches were yearned in the city of Jaranwala after the accused of blasphemy accused on a Christian person.
