Ahmadis are considered heretics; they aren’t even allowed by law to call themselves Muslims in Pakistan. So while Bitter Winter is shocked that this sort of thing would happen in Ramadan, from the point of view of the perpetrators it’s actually a quintessential Ramadan, purifying the community as one is supposed to purify one’s soul during the holy month.
“Pakistan: Ahmadi Mosque Vandalized by Police During Ramadan,” by Marco Respinti, Bitter Winter, March 28, 2023:
…Imam Gill is the President of the Ahmadiyya Jama’at Community (AMJ) (“jama’at” meaning “community”) in Argentina. AMJ is a messianic Islamic religious movement, which some other Muslim clerics and theologians consider non-Islamic and heterodox and some Islamic countries persecute for heresy. In fact, Ahmadis strictly abide by the five pillars of the Islamic religion.
Any aggressive violation of their freedom to respect one of the obligatory Islamic commandments is lived by Ahmadis as a severe abuse against their religious identity, is performed by perpetrators in scorn of Ahmadis’ belief, and should be regarded by the international community as an intolerable infringement of the principle of religious liberty and Ahmadis’ human rights. And in case intemperate perpetrators are other Muslims who consider Ahmadis to be non-Muslim, it is also a grave example of the use of violent means, including ferocity, fury, and brutality, to arbitrarily influence and control a religious group.
For this reason, it is seriously insulting that on March 24 and 25, 2023, the local police in Kalra Kalan, a village in the Gujrat District, Punjab, Pakistan, razed the minarets and the dome of the local Ahmadiyya mosque to the ground, exactly during Ramadan. (The English transliteration from the Urdu language of the name of the village is also spelled “Karla Kalan” and should not be confused with Karla Kalan, in Madhya Pradesh, India, as well as Punjab province in Pakistan should not be confused with Punjab state in India).
Pictures of this act of vandalism were provided by the International Human Rights Committee, a non-profit and non-governmental organization focusing on freedom of religion or belief based in London, and clearly show the police acting with disdain and disregard.
Evidently, this act of persecution was performed by the public authorities and the law enforcement officers of an Islamic country during a highly significant Islamic period of the year to underline and show that Ahmadis should not be considered as true Islamic believers, and their places of worship deserve only contempt and destruction rather than respect. It is in fact noteworthy that all took place during a month that Islamic people consider holy and non-Islamic people are asked not to vilify….