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

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 governments 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
Pakistans 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 doesnt 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?
Wasnt 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 Im different and cant 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
Didnt 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
Didnt trust anyone

is on this paper, on this notice board, after the rustication

Wasnt 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..
Didnt 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
doesnt 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!
Youre Different! You dont 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 Im just the only
person sitting on that entire bench, in.. in the middle of the matlab.. in the
entire lecture hall, Im 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 dont 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 theyre going to see us leave and theyre 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 its 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
Didnt 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 doesnt 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 doesnt go anywhere else.
Destructive impact( Vacations etc)
the admin, they couldnt 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 wouldnt 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 cant be achieved unless attention is paid
towards understanding such closely-knit communities
and minorities from an insider perspective.
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the
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2015 The Explorer Journal of Social Sciences-Pakistan

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