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Glasgow:  A UK-based human rights organisation is calling on the authorities in Pakistan to release a 72-year-old doctor who was arrested for ‘posing as a Muslim’ after being secretly filmed by a patient at his surgery. Global Minorities Alliance, a Glasgow-based human rights organisation which advocates for the rights of minority communities the world over, denounced the imprisonment as a further example of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws being used to persecute minorities and whip up religious hatred rather than seek justice in a country which is increasingly being divided by violence. Mr Masood Ahmad, a member of the Ahmadiyya community, was charged under Pakistan’s anti-Ahmadiyya blasphemy legislation after a religious leader posing as a patient attended his homeopathy clinic in Lahore and secretly recorded him reading a verse from the Quran. Mr Ahmad, who has dual Pakistani/UK nationality and previously lived in London, was arrested shortly after and is now in pri...

A 17 year old Ahmadi boy, Arsalan Sarwar, was shot fatally in Satellite town area of Rawalpindi yesterday, it is reported. According to the Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya Pakistan spokesperson, Saleem-ud Din, the circumstances surrounding the youngster’s killing are not yet clear. Mr Din said he did not want to speculate without full and accurate information. “I will have further details and I will update tomorrow.” "Please bear with me in the meantime and do not speculate without facts," the Ahmadiyya spokesperson further cautioned. According to some unconfirmed reports in the social media, the victim was seen installing decorative lighting on the day of Eid Milad-un-Nabi, the Holy Prophet Muhammad's birthday, when he was killed. Many rights groups say the Ahmadi killings are the direct result of a reckless disregard by Pakistani authorities of the hate-materials routinely published against Ahmadis which openly provoke and incite public to kill Ahmadis. “Governmen...

There are four fundamental forces in nature, namely, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity. Electromagnetism can be observed in daily life experience. For instance, lighting is a natural phenomenon. Weak nuclear force is manifested in radioactivity, which is used to cure cancer. Strong nuclear force, on the other hand, is responsible for keeping the nucleus (protons and neutron) together. Whereas, the gravity is observed in everyday life, for example, the planets of solar system rotate around the sun due to gravity. It is important to note that electromagnetism and gravity are long range forces, i.e., these forces can act for longer distances, whereas, weak and strong nuclear forces are only manifested at very short distances, i.e., of the size of a nuclei which is about  10 -15  m . Gravity is very weak as compared to other three fundamental forces and it only manifests itself on massive objects. Since the mass fundamental particles like...

An Ahmadi Muslim who was shot in the head in Pakistan has arrived in the UK for treatment and will now claim asylum here in order to avoid returning to his home country. Ummad Farooq, who was in the UK studying in Sunderland on a student visa, had gone home to Karachi for his brother Saad's wedding on the 19 October when the same brother was killed in the attack. He came back to the UK with the bullet still lodged in his head and is now getting treatment at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham - the hospital treating Taliban victim Malala Yousafzai. Ummad Farooq says his family were targeted because his father is the president of the Ahmadiyya community in his locality. Ahmadis are a Muslim sect whose views differ from mainstream Islam. They suffer persecution because of this and in 1974 the Pakistani government declared the sect non-Muslim. He spoke to BBC Asian Network reporter Catrin Nye. You can hear more on this story on  Asian Network Reports  at 13:00 ...

KARACHI:  Tragedy struck an Ahmedi family in Nawabshah once again when the son was shot at by an unidentified man only a few years after his father was killed. The victim A*, who is a lawyer, was at his brother’s shop – taking a break from his morning work at the district courts – when a man walked up to him, opened fire and disappeared into the crowd. The incident took place at Liaquat Market Road on April 2, according to the victim’s cousin, K. “I heard a gunshot and when I reached on the spot a few people were trying to take him to the hospital in a rickshaw,” the cousin recalled. “He might have been targeted because of his religious beliefs as he had no personal enmity.” Initially, A was rushed to Civil Hospital, Nawabshah, but was later moved to Karachi. “The bullet pierced his liver and the doctors have removed the affected part in a surgery,” said MA Khan, a spokesperson for Ahmediya community, “The bleeding hasn’t stopped until now.” The doctors feel, however, ...

The anti Ahmadiyya hate campaign has claimed another life on this Muslim holy day, Friday, in the city of Karachi in Sindh province of Pakistan. According to a report released by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan, an Ahmadi man of Baldia Town area of Karachi was killed and his father, brother, and father-in-law were critically injured when they were attacked while returning home after Friday prayer services. The group was travelling in a family caravan that was targeted by unknown assailants. According to the external affairs’ office of the community, the victim, Saad Farooq, was riding a motorcycle and following his other family members in a car when the caravan was sprayed with gunshots fired from behind. Saad Farooq on his motorcycle, and his father, Farooq Ahmad Kahloon, brother Amaad Farooq, and father-in-law, Chaudhary Nusrat, in the accompanying car, were all injured.

LAHORE: Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday directed federal government to block all blasphemous sights and material on Google and other websites. The judge placed this order on petition filed by Jamat-e-Islami. The judge ordered federal government to file its reply by November 08. The petition was filed by JI leaders Liaqat Baloch and Farid Ahmed Paracha seeking ban on all internet sites containing blasphemous material. Meanwhile, on another petition seeking directions for federal government to take the matter to the international court of justice, the LHC issued order to federal government to submit reply within three weeks. Justice Sagheer Ahmad Qadri of LHC was hearing the case. As proceedings started in the court advocate A K Dogar, the counsel for the petitioners contended that US president Barak Obama however, strongly condemned the anti-Islam movie but also stressed upon the supremacy of the constitution that allowed all such activities and...

Physicist Mohammad Abdus Salam was the first Pakistani and the first Muslim to win a Nobel prize in science. His discoveries continue to dazzle the world as demonstrated by the verification last summer of a theory to which Salam had contributed, on Higgs boson, or the “God particle.” But in his home country, Dr. Salam is without honor. Throughout his lifetime Dr. Salam was a practicing member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, whose very existence was pronounced blasphemous by a 1974 constitutional amendment and by later criminal laws. In protest,

“Had they not left the house, the situation could have been really bad,” - investigation officer Muhammad Bux (ISLAMABAD, Pakistan) - On Friday evening, when I reached in AFP Karachi office directly from the airport, I observed some 600 extremists had attacked the St. Francis Church, old Goli mar. Earlier the house of the accused Ryan Brain Patris (boy) was ransacked and furniture was set on fire in a violent protest, this time it was not in a slum but in Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), Karachi. Ryan Brain, a 15-year old Christian boy, has been accused of sending text messages containing ‘blasphemous’ content to his Muslim friends. The numbers written in FIR are 0346-278 1298 (sender) and 0302 2222 544 (receiver) The incident took place in the staff colony of the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) located at the junction of University Road and Abu al Hasan Ispahani Road, Karachi. Police said that the boy was accused by the residents that he had sent text messages containing b...

The Ahmadis, a sect that believes in Islam and claims to be an ardent follower of it, has been declared as non-Muslim under the Pakistani legislation. Evidently, the Government of Pakistan has not only confiscated their freedom to faith, belief and practice, but also proactively victimises them socially, economically and educationally. The declaration goes against the very fundamental tenets of democracy which accords all the citizens of the country their fundamental rights and freedom, of which freedom to faith is an integral part. It is to this effect that the United Nations has provided a declaration on human rights and there are international civil rights which provide the basic traits of a Democracy. Pakistan had proclaimed to be a democracy four years ago and it was in this context that everyone hoped that its government will soon fulfill all criteria essential for being recognized as a democratic State. However, even today, there is a substantive portion of the citizenry ...

LAHORE:   National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) has conducted a content analysis of the revised curriculum of Punjab and Sindh textbooks for 2012-2013 for inclusion of biased and discriminatory content against religions other than Islam. The findings reveal excessive use of the words Hindu, Christian and Jew while discussing the history of Pakistan and Islamic Studies, which portray the said faiths in a negative light. For example, an Islamic Studies book of Sindh board for class 5, in a chapter on Eid (religious festivals), includes a line saying, “People of other religions usually stay busy in useless activities during their religious festivals. There is no concept of God or submission among them.” The chapter “Pakistan, an Islamic State” in the same textbook of Punjab board includes this line: “Hindus harmed Muslims in every way.” The content analysis has been published in Urdu to generate a debate on how the inclusion of discriminatory content in curric...

ISLAMABAD: Late Zafarullah khan the first foreign minister of Pakistan, remembered on his death anniversary on Saturday, Zafarullah Khan was born on February 6, 1893, in Sialkot, Pakistan. He was a Pakistani diplomat, Read full Post here...