Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Mahdi has been quite comprehensive in his presentation. I will only underscore a few more matters and then specifically speak to Indonesia.
The issue at hand with regard to Pakistan, if I can summarize, is that ultimately the history of Pakistan is about government somehow, at some point or another, resisting the pressure of mullahs, of extremist militants. As Mr. Mahdi highlighted, in 1953 they managed to resist, although there was widespread violence. The same violence re-emerged in the early 1970s, and at that time we saw placation and capitulation, which resulted in a constitutional amendment declaring Ahmadis non-Muslim.
Eventually, President Zia-ul-Haq--who came from a family with a history of militancy himself—in the context of referring to Ahmadiyya Muslims as a cancer, promulgated military Ordinance XX, thereby criminalizing the actor, not the act, as Mr. Mahdi put it. In particular, in reference to the 1993 Supreme Court decision in Pakistan known as Zaheeruddin v. State, there were three cases put into one. One of them was the simple wearing of a badge with the declaration, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger”--the very declaration that Muslims make when they become Muslims. Just the wearing of the badge was declared criminal and the person went to trial.
In 1989, during the community centenary in the city of Rabwah, they were not allowed to celebrate with simple celebrations, putting lights on homes. It was those types of actions that were taken.
When sending wedding invitations with God's name written on them--Allah--they were posing as Muslims, and they were criminalized.
So these were the three actions that went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declared that just by posing as a Muslim you have injured the feelings of real Muslims, and how can they keep at rest the people who are so injured? It was in that context that they said they were no different from Salman Rushdie; therefore, they were being blasphemous. And from that, the Supreme Court made the connection--leaving Ordinance XX behind and moving to section 295C--to the blasphemy law, which is punishable by death. So in the obiter dicta of the Supreme Court, they were able to leave Ordinance XX aside and move on to an even better law for them. From that perspective, Ordinance XX has actually become less used, and section 295C is the more actively used one.
With respect to that Supreme Court judgment--this was revealed in the lone dissenting opinion of that judgment--when the opinion came out, there were numerous pages of quotations of “the writings” of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, which were a shock to even the state at the time of litigation. All were falsified. Where did they come from? The dissenting justice, by way of trying to note that something went on, thanked “religious scholars” for coming into chambers after hearings and providing them with valuable evidence. And it was on that basis that they said, “Well, of course, look at these inflammatory quotations”—which were all false, by the way, all false—“How can we stop people from getting upset at something like that?”
Throughout the history of Pakistan, we're constantly seeing capitulation to the mullahs. The point is that since Pakistan is a fragile democracy, it needs encouragement and help with regard to resisting those mullahs. In a most recent case, just last Monday, June 9, 23 Ahmadiyya students, students in the medical college in Faisalabad, Pakistan, were all expelled--for no other reason than that they were Ahmadis.
The point to make with respect to Indonesia is that Indonesia is now starting to live the history of Pakistan. Picture early 1970s Pakistan and now you have come to Indonesia. Recently on CBC Radio, just a couple of months back, The Current did a special documentary on what is going on in Indonesia today. The primary way to characterize it is that the same groups that have been instigating the persecution in Pakistan have exported themselves and gone to places like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and others. What was noted is that entire villages were getting burned and looted, even with women and children inside homes, small villages in Indonesia that were completely housed by Ahmadis. They were non-Indonesians. They were all of Pakistani origin or from Saudi Arabia or from other places affiliated with those militant groups. And The Current noted all of that in their documentary.
What has now happened is that the mullahs have demanded that the Government of Indonesia do exactly what the Government of Pakistan did in the early seventies: declare Ahmadiyya non-Muslim. On June 9 they did just that. This was just a week ago. The Government of Indonesia issued the edict that according to the constitution of Indonesia, only enumerated religions are granted freedom of religion. They named Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Animism.
By specifically stating that Ahmadiyya are not Muslims and not part of Islam, they are not afforded freedom of religion. And the promulgation specifically referred to Ahmadiyya as deviant. Despite this act, as was the case in Pakistan in the early seventies, the mullahs are not happy. They want a complete banning of Ahmadiyya in Indonesia, which means that their properties can be confiscated. And of course, because of their deviance, they can also be declared blasphemous and then subjected to criminal sanction. So what is now happening in Indonesia is a repetition of what has already taken place in Pakistan.
Honourable members, the submission, then, is that both Indonesia and Pakistan are fragile democracies. Currently, Indonesia is a fragile holding between rightist and leftist parties, and they are being exploited, from that perspective, by the ulama.
The other point Mr. Mahdi made specific reference to is that the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at is within the pale of Islam. The primary argument you will see made time and again as to why Ahmadiyya are blasphemous or deviant is their belief, basically, in two things. There's no difference in faith and practice between Ahmadiyya and the majority Sunni Muslim population. They're virtually indistinguishable. Their credos, their style of prayer, everything, are exactly the same. The difference is their belief in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as a prophet, which they say is against a central tenet of Islam, and the belief by Ahmadiyya in a peaceful, non-violent interpretation of jihad, both of which they say are a denial and an abrogation of Islamic law. However, both are well within Islamic interpretation. Both are directly rooted in the Quran. There is no such contradiction between our belief and the Holy Quran, despite the propaganda that rages. They then try to instigate violent sentiment among relatively uneducated populations and to intimidate governments on that score.
I'll give you a brief example. The late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, when she visited the U.S. in the mid-nineties, was confronted about the blasphemy law and section 295C. They said that you punish blasphemy with death. She smiled and said, “I am assured by my religious scholars that it is punishable by death under Islamic law, so it's not a matter for me to discuss.”
That is the issue we have. We have a deviant interpretation of Islamic law by militants that has now dominated the discourse in those countries. What is most helpful, then, is that not only does a secular democracy like Canada encourage the upholding of international standards, it can try to encourage those governments to resist incorrect, rigid, and false interpretations of the faith.
Thank you, sirs.