The Explorer: Journal of Social Sciences ISSN: 2411-0132, Vol-1, Issue (3):69-73 www.theexplorerpak.org
DOCUMENTING THE EXPERIENTIAL NARRATIVES OF INSTITUTIONALIZED PERSECUTION AMONGST AHMADI STUDENTS: AN IN-DEPTH QUALITATIVE STUDY 1
Lubna Sausan Bajwa , Shaheer Ellahi Khan 1
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M.Phil Student, Bahria University, Islamabad, Senior Lecturer, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Bahria University, Islamabad
Corresponding Author: Lubna Sausan Bajwa Bahria University Islamabad lubnasbajwa@gmail.com Abstract: The current qualitative inquiry employed phenomenological approach to enter into the lived realities of Ahmadi students undergoing organized persecution at a medical college in Pakistan. The study aimed to gather a deeper understanding into the phenomenon of persecution arising out of a situated event that led to rustication of 22 Ahmadi students from their college on basis of ‘religious preaching’. Data was collected primarily through in-depth interviews conducted with 10 Ahmadi students. The purpose was also to link these experiences to generate a broader phenomenon of ‘persecution' and 'experience of being subjected to persecution'. The study gave rise to a range of themes describing the process of religious persecution as experienced by the students. It revealed that persecution led to a transformation within the personalities of the students, disorientation with self and others, loneliness and alienation amongst peers and friends, fear for life and insecurity expressed through dreams, and deformed their identities in a number of ways.
Keywords: Ahmadiyya, Religion, Jamaat, Minority, Pakistan, Medicine, Persecution, Deviance, Heterodox INTRODUCTION The minority situation in Pakistan has been persistently appalling since its very inception, according to official reporting by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (Faruqi 2011). The persecution of the minorities comes in a variety of forms, ranging from verbal vilification, organized legal discrimination to violent attacks on places of worship, homes and individuals belonging to minority communities. The livable space for minorities and their right to practice their system of faith has been narrowing, and the situation keeps deteriorating due to the blasphemy laws that play second fiddle to the cycle of ongoing vigilante violence happening in Pakistan (Khan 2003). The year 2012 noted a sharp acceleration in the events that signify extreme intolerance and religious persecution, according to the Human Rights Watch, where the government’s negligence and egregious reluctance to redress the situation made things even worse for the victims of violence. Mass anti-Christian violence recently occurred in the 2009 Gojra riots, the 2013 Joseph Colony riot and the 2013 Gujranwala riot (Rehman 2013). The Shiite community has had it worse where the recent antiShia violence includes the February 2012 Kohistan
Shia Massacre, the August 2012 Mansehra Shia Massacre and the particularly deadly January 2013 and February 2013 Quetta bombings (Sattar and Zada 2013). In the same vein, the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan has also been historically targeted in the deadly May 2010 attacks on Ahmadi mosques in Lahore. The anti-Ahmadi laws that have been in place since 1984 makes things perpetually hopeless, where the constitution effectively criminalizes certain religious rights and duties of the Ahmadi faith, decreeing their religious practice to be punishable through imprisonment (Saeed 2010). The Ahmadiyya Community lives along the margins of Pakistan’s religious configuration, and exists in a perplexing contradiction where they are declared as non-Muslims and heretics by not only the Muslim orthodoxy within the country but also by the legal declarations of the constitution – despite their persistent proclamations that they are Muslims, and are in fact representing Islam in its pristine glory (Lathan 2008). Individuals belonging to this community often lead troubled existence where they are forced to negotiate their identity in public spaces for the purpose of security. Persecution doesn’t only happen in form of physical violence and attacks on buildings and mosques, but is an everyday common
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phenomenon that many individuals have to live with on daily basis in their work places, educational institutes, travel routes, neighborhoods, daily transactions in market places, businesses, etc. organized persecution has largely been taken up as an issue by human rights activists and journalists to report the severity, scale and expanse of persecution happening in countries like Pakistan. What remains unaddressed is the exploration of ‘persecution’ as a phenomenon experienced by individuals belonging to these minority communities, documented in form of voices and narratives that echo crisply their experiential lived realities. The current study therefore aimed to reach at elaborate descriptions of the lived experiences of persecution to gain insights that illuminate the ongoing and ever-present struggle that such individuals have to face each day. There in an alarming need to develop a lens through which the difficulties and hardships faced by the members of such communities can be addressed on a more human level. The study also aimed to build a representation that can be selectively generalized to individuals belonging to other such minority communities- religious, racial and cultural living alongside a majority that holds unfavorable opinions about them and projects their dislike and disapproval through collective laws, policies, and events that are effectively laden with hateful and discriminatory language and literature. MATERIALS AND METHODS The researcher used interview guides to conduct lengthy in-depth conversations with a respondent RESULTS Themes Emerging From the Data Themes 1. Transformation In personality You are different
2. Disorientation Why was it happening? What had I done? Wasn’t aware of intolerance
community of 10 Ahmadi students studying medicine at a government college in Pakistan. The event focused by the current inquiry was the rustication of 22 Ahmadi students from the college on the basis of ‘religious preaching’ that took place 2 years prior to the interviews. Two of the students were in their final year of medicine when the rustication took place, while the rest of them were in their intermediary years. The phenomenological approach was actually chosen for two specific reasons. Firstly, in order to illuminate the pure essence of, and going to the experiences themselves, in an attempt to access and document lived experience of individuals going through persecution on the basis of religion. The intention was to focus on descriptions of the respondents while they were going through the event that led to their persecution. The technique of indepth interview was chosen because this was the only way to actually get the respondents to narrate the event as it unfolded, and describe in detail how they felt while it was occurring. The second reason for choosing Phenomenology was the indispensability of the feature of ‘Epoching’, as propounded by Husserl that requires the researcher to study phenomena in a transcendental realm rather than the situated realm (Rochnak 2001). Its usefulness lies particularly while studying contentious and controversial issues where bracketing-out preconceived notions is critical - in a manner that the voices of the respondents emerge as an over-arching category of findings. The results are presented in form of patterned qualitative descriptions that echo vastly the narratives of the respondents.
Verbatim quotes In personality like before that incident I was a very normal person I was not a part of that college, I did not feel like there was anybody who was loyal to me in that college, and even now if somebody tries to come near me, closer to me, I realize that unconsciously I push them away, because I just think that I’m different and can’t go along with these people. I used to socialize a lot, but now I just sit quietly in one corner, and I just reply if someone asks me anything, till now. No sense of belongingness. You are different Before that I had never felt like one (a member of a minority) Why was it happening? What had I done? I could not understand what was going on.. or Why this was happening I was so confused. I basically did not understand that why this was happening, and what they will get out of this, and I did not understand that why my name
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3. Hatred Celebrations when rusticated Didn’t want to go back
4. Loneliness and Alienation Friends Seclusion (institutionalized) Odd-one-out Alienation Felt like criminals
5. Fear and Insecurity Threat to life City Dreams Didn’t trust anyone
is on this paper, on this notice board, after the rustication Wasn’t aware of intolerance I had no idea (she continues) that people felt that way about our community or the amount of hatred in the heart of these people, I had no idea (she repeats constantly slightly raising her voice) because I was openly sharing everything with them Celebrations when rusticated everybody saying Maubarik Mubarik to each other that they got expelled you know, they were celebrating, the students, they were celebrating the rustication.. Didn’t want to go back It was like I was going to a place I was never going to come back from , I was going to some place, far far far away, the hatred had increased, there was resentment in the eyes of everyone, that why is she back there was hatred, I hated these people Friends those who were not willing doesn’t really say anything, she said okay, and like there was this awkward silence, her face was expressionless and she said Thankyou, to leave us, they started threatening them approached all our close friends, theek hai na, and they approached them and they were like you HAVE to tell us something that proves that they were preaching.. Oh I got you this present and she she did not come to my room after that Seclusion (institutionalized) they kicked us out of the hostel, because they wanted to seclude us They did not want us to live in the midst of all those people…. That was for our own protection basically.. but that only, you know.. sort of, uh told us kay “Yes! You’re Different! You don’t blend in seclude us in one corner of this corridor Odd-one-out I used to cry in my room I used to lock myself in my room and then I used to cry and then I used to pray and they used to put posters especially outside our rooms.. Alienation I used to go to the lecture, and the bench that I used to sit on, and everybody on that bench used to .. just get up and leave alright! and I’m just the only person sitting on that entire bench, in.. in the middle of the matlab.. in the entire lecture hall, I’m the only one sitting on a bench alone.. a bench that accommodates normally 10 to 15 students Felt like criminals it was just as if we were trying to ESCAPE, literally like prisoners we thought that being an Ahmadi was a crime Threat to life you feel like anybody is going to show up on your door and they are just going to.. you know.. I don’t know.. it was weird. It was very very weird.. Leave the campus RIGHT NOW or they would come after you tip-toeing through the corridors not to wear our burqaas told not to stroll our bags around so that may wake other people up I felt, kind of afraid, passing by the boys hostel that oh, somebody is going to come out and they’re going to see us leave and they’re just going to stop us.. City
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on our way, we just, you know, entered Faisalabad, there was a petrol station at the entrance of Faisalabad, and I just did not want to enter that city, I was so scared. Dreams in one dream, we were all running and it’s like somebody after us, and in the hostel, we are hiding in the hostel, from somebody.. and another one I saw in which I saw that college is on fire and this friend of mine had a dream who was with us, that the walls of the hostel are bleeding Didn’t trust anyone we did not trust anybody.. we thought they might even help those people hurt us, and they might just sit silently and let them do whatever they wanted to do 6. Identity Deformed Categorized/Classified Physical elements of identity
7. Education No worth of doctors Teachers Less value of medicine (Before and after) Role of institution Destructive impact( Vacations etc)
Deformed Like you would walk down the corridors.. and all you would hear was Qadiani, qadiani, qadiani Categorized/Classified everybody looked at me as if this thing you know ‘this thing’ doesn’t have the right to exist Physical elements of identity not to wear our burqaas, so no one identifies us and harms us No worth of doctors They did not care about anything (our excellence or expertise).. All they cared about was okay, these people are Ahmadis and they should not be a part of this institution and they should not be studying with us Teachers was this one teacher.. Hystology teacher.. I was sitting there.. and he said that these people are ‘Wajib-ul-Qatal’ he was openly abusing you know, our Prophet.. in my presence, Im sitting there, and he is, and he points towards me and he says there were so many teachers involves who wanted us expelled Less value of medicine (before and after) .. it has killed the passion in some ways so I always took things very seriously, my education. But after this whole thing, I have some how become less dedicated to my studies I have always been very competitive, but not any more. Role of institution was like he was giving them time to do what they wanted to do with the boys They clearly said that we cannot protect your children tell your children or you tell your daughter that she has to go to the college, and back to the hostel, she doesn’t go anywhere else. Destructive impact( Vacations etc) the admin, they couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to, because the next day, there was a huge protest, the entire college was protesting outside the admin department and they wanted us expelled from the college right away or they wouldn’t move, they even broke the windows, the admin. they pre-poned the summer break because of the whole issue.
CONCLUSION The study highlights the dearth of understanding and empirical evidence required to develop practices and policies that could prevent such events from occurring. Although much beyond the scope of this paper, the fact that the event took place in a Medical
College points to a burning issue of pedagogy in this country that must be addressed, perhaps through further research. The presence of such strong student unions organized on the basis of religion and the phenomenal amount of power and legitimacy they
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enjoy highlights the fact that how in universities and educational institutions, religion takes precedence over education to an extent that it becomes destructive. This study also aims to highlight the need to realize the deep seated resentment within a seemingly unified single cultural and national identity, create sensitivity and understanding, and bring about an alteration in the attitudes of people towards such issues and such people, something which can’t be achieved unless attention is paid towards understanding such closely-knit communities and minorities from an insider perspective. REFERENCES Faruqi, Mariam 2011 A Question of Faith A Report on the Status of Religious Minority in Pakistan. Jinnah Institute.
Saeed, Sadia 2010 Politics of Exclusion: Muslim Nationalism, State Formation and Legal Representations of the Ahmadiyya Community in Pakistan. The University of Michigan. © 2015 “The Explorer” Journal of Social Sciences-Pakistan
Khan, Amjad Mahmood 2003 Persecution of the Ahmadiyya Community in Pakistan: An Analysis Under International Law and International Relations. Harvard Human Rights Journal 16: 217-244. Lathan, Andrea 2008 The Relativity of Categorizing in the Context of the Aḥmadiyya: The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Islam. Die Welt des Islams New Series 48 (3/4): 372-393. Rehman, Sonya 2013 Joseph Colony: AttackUnprotected http://thediplomat.com/2013/ colonychristian-community-in- lahore- attackedand-unprotected/. Rocknak, Stefanie 2001 Husserl's phenomenologization of Hume: Reflections on Husserl's Method of Epoch. Philosophy Today. Philosophy Today. Research library 45:28-33. Sattar, Abdul and Shirin Zada 2013 Bombings kill 115 people in Pakistan http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/ world/2013/01/10/pakistan-bombbilliards-hall/1823409/.
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