The Wrong Kind Of Muslim - A book by Qasim Rashid. A must read for all.

Going through my Twitter trends, I noticed a rising trend - #TheWrongKindOfMuslim. I was intrigued and wanted to know what it was about. Little did I know that it would be about Ahmadis and how they have been persecuted in history of Pakistan and worldwide too, for that matter. Anyway, I clicked the link and lo and behold! A page full of that trend came before me, about a book soon to be released – The Wrong Kind Of Muslim by Qasim Rashid, the spokesperson for the Ahmaddiyya Community in USA.

There was so much hype about the book, especially among Ahmadis, because it was a book about Ahmadi persecution, and persecution in general of all the religious minorities residing in Pakistan. I was greatly interested in reading and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the book.

Soon after the release, an Ahmadi on Twitter lent it to me. I decided I’ll read it slowly and surely, digesting everything. However, I found myself awake at 4am on a work night, reading, desperate to get onto the next page, to read it as soon as I possibly could. I ended up finishing the book at 7 in the morning, went to work and dozed off every now and then, but the book was worth all of it.

The Wrong Kind Of Muslim is a book by Qasim Rashid, about Ahmadi persecution, and of persecution of all the religious minorities, residing in Pakistan – mainly the Christians, Hindus, Shias and the atheists. The book starts with an Evangelical Christian bullying the author for being an American Muslim, since Muslims were considered outsiders and terrorists in the US. A couple of years later, his boss at a workplace, who happens to be a Christian, tells him that Christianity is the true religion and that even the Quran mentions that. Shocked and confused, he goes home to read the Quran only to find that every verse that the Christian has quoted is true and he starts to have doubts over his own faith. So, he goes to his father and asks him to help him out, and his father gave him the best advice anyone could have ever given anyone – he asks him to found out the truth by himself. His father tells him that just following a belief for the sake of following is never a belief and that he should find out what he believes in and research on it himself.

Soon after, he visits Pakistan and goes to Rabwah, which is the Ahmaddiyya Community center in Pakistan. He goes to Pakistan and realizes that he has been living in a bubble in USA, where he has been granted freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Here, in Pakistan, anyone who is an Ahmadi, has always been persecuted, ridiculed and mocked at. For those of you who don’t know, Ahmadis believe Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani to be the Promised Messiah that the Holy Prophet (SAW) predicted would come to the much-awaited world. However, Pakistanis believe this to be an insult to the finality of the Holy Prophet (SAW) and after much riots and meetings and insults and threats, the government finally convened and a law was added in the Constitution of 1973, which declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslim. They could not say salaam. They could not declare their places of worship to be mosques. They could not say anything that poses them as Muslims. Hell, they could not even wear attire that a Muslim would normally wear. They couldn’t pray or fast or read Quran; moreover they weren’t even supposed to call their Holy Book the Quran. Even Dr. Abdul Salam, a renowned Nobel Prize winner (who was an Ahmadi) is not recognized by Pakistan, just because of that, his faith.

Life proved very hard for the Ahmadi Muslims as the books goes on, how they were killed, tortured, ridiculed. How sons watched their fathers die right before their eyes, how sisters lost their brothers, husbands lost their wives, how the author’s cousin was tortured and forced to watch men and women get killed and raped in front of him just because he was an Ahmadi. He talks about the Mong Massacre where people died because they wanted the next person to be given help instead of them, and the biggest possible Ahmadi massacre which took place on May 28^th,2010, where 86 Ahmadis were martyred and over 150 were injured in suicide bombings, grenade attacks and gunshots. It talks about how the government stood aside and watched everything happen, how the police refused to grant protection to any Ahmadi on any post, how the media conveniently “forgot” to mention Ahmadi attacks, moreover, it also talks about how the majority of the nation was ignorant about what was taking place right under their noses. The way the author described the Mong and Lahore massacre literally moved me to tears, knowing that even in the last moments that life had to offer the Ahmadi Muslims, they remained steadfast to their faith, and instead of screaming curses or shouting obscenities, prayed to Allah for their forgiveness and to give knowledge to all the oppressors, how people helping them would get frustrated because they kept denying help, saying the next person needed it more than them, how they kept dying, just like that because they wanted the next person to stay alive.

The persecution does not stop at Ahmadis. Christians and Hindus are a part of it. How Christians are the only ones hired for cleaning the gutters and how they just get paid $3 per day, which is never enough to feed a family, how they are constantly mocked for their faith, how they don’t get employment or education since they are not able to afford it neither is any school willing to take any Christians or Hindus in. The atheists are another story. The author was advised that atheists “do not exist” in Pakistan and he could not get a single narrative out of any atheist because of the security reasons. In a state where Jinnah declared that everyone was free to practice their own religion in whatever way they please, it’s a shame that technically only Sunnis have been allowed to practice it freely so far, since every other minority has been attacked and murdered, if they so much as raise a voice. Then comes the persecution of Shias. The author writes about Shia people, who have been recklessly persecuted for their faith and murdered thoughtlessly and senselessly.

However, on the other hand, he also talks about how an Ahmadi girl was defended by all her non-Ahmadi class when she publicly declared to her teacher that she was an Ahmadi. The author also mentions his late grandfather, who was a convert to the Ahmadi sect, who was defended by all his village people, even if they were against his sect, when the mullahs running to kill him. So, even if so much persecution is being carried out, voices have been raised before and are still being raised for the rights of religious minorities in Pakistan.

At the end, Rashid asks everyone to raise their voices in whatever way they can, not by a sword though. But he genuinely asks everyone to raise awareness about the religious minorities’ persecution by the Jihad of the pen, by uprooting all evil and spreading good. For that he says we just need to think of humanity rights, nothing more. It’s not a matter of who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about equality, that all of us are humans and all of us deserve and equal right to live. It is a must read for all of you if you believe that humanity should come before everything. Maybe Rashid might be able to convince you that without freedom of religion and speech, there can be no peace in this world, there will only be more and more intolerance. A must read.