Inter-faith dialogue: Where are we going wrong?

While lurk­ing around my Twit­ter time­line one morn­ing I came across a tweet by Pak­istan Ule­ma Coun­cil (PUC) Chair­man Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi, a repost con­tain­ing a link to his arti­cle about inter-faith and inter-sect dia­logue from a cou­ple of months ear­li­er. Real­iz­ing I had noth­ing bet­ter to do, I decid­ed to engage with Mr. Ashrafi by ask­ing whether Ahmadis were part of this ‘inter-faith dia­logue’ he was cham­pi­oning. Much to my sur­prise, he actu­al­ly respond­ed by say­ing:

@FarhanJanjua Qadiyani Kisi mazhab Ka nam nahi

— H M Tahi­rashrafi (@TahirAshrafi) August 6, 2014

It’s not a sur­prise that a vast major­i­ty of Pak­istani Mus­lims regard mem­bers of the minor­i­ty sect Ahmadiyya as non-Mus­lims, with hard­line cler­ics insist­ing that it is a dif­fer­ent reli­gion alto­geth­er. But what Tahir Ashrafi said in the tweet was a step fur­ther. Maulana actu­al­ly claimed that “Qadiyani [a deroga­to­ry term for mem­bers of the Ahmadiyya com­mu­ni­ty] is not the name of any reli­gion” imply­ing his refusal to rec­og­nize Ahmadiyya as a faith alto­geth­er.

With my curios­i­ty now aroused, I tweet­ed back ask­ing whether or not the pur­pose of inter-faith dia­logue was to stop reli­gious­ly fueled attacks on minori­ties like the one that took place in Gujran­wala recent­ly, result­ing in the deaths of a woman, two minors and an unborn child belong­ing to the minor­i­ty Ahmadiyya sect.

As expect­ed, I did not hear back from Maulana.

The need to sat­is­fy my curios­i­ty then took me to Maulana’s arti­cle in the Dai­ly Times, in which he boast­ed about the suc­cess of his ‘inter-faith’ dia­logue efforts. How­ev­er it was evi­dent that there was no rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Ahmadiyya com­mu­ni­ty in his arti­cle, an absence which Ashrafi prob­a­bly jus­ti­fied by the opin­ion he pre­sent­ed in his tweet.

But then he claimed “[…] the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all sects and reli­gions also agreed on a code of con­duct dur­ing the con­fer­ence.”

So I want to ask him, is it real­ly an ‘inter-faith dia­logue’ when there’s no rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a faith that has been per­se­cut­ed for decades?

Accord­ing to the arti­cle, all oth­er Mus­lim sects decid­ed for Ahmadis — in the absence of Ahma­di rep­re­sen­ta­tion – the fol­low­ing:
[block­quote style=“2”]The issue of Qadya­nis was also dis­cussed in detail dur­ing the con­fer­ence. It was clear­ly stat­ed that no Islam­ic schol­ar in Pak­istan has ever issued fat­wa to mur­der Qadya­nis nor do reli­gious lead­ers allow the killing of Qadya­nis. There are some obvi­ous reli­gious dif­fer­ences between the Mus­lims and Qadya­nis, but the rights of Qadya­nis as cit­i­zens of the coun­try that are guar­an­teed in Pakistan’s law and con­sti­tu­tion should be respect­ed. Qadya­nis should also com­ply with the law and con­sti­tu­tion, and Mus­lims should also respect that.”[/blockquote]

Great, we appre­ci­ate that. But is it real­ly enough? In spite of the claim that no Mus­lim cler­ic has ever issued an edict to mur­der Ahmadis, they remain one of the most vul­ner­a­ble groups in the coun­try. If there’s no fat­wa encour­ag­ing vio­lence against this group, then clear­ly there’s enough impli­ca­tion that moti­vat­ed the police to just stand there and watch silent­ly while the mob was set­ting peo­ple belong­ing to this sect ablaze, not to men­tion the cel­e­bra­tions of the mob after the attack.

I am sor­ry but there is some­thing wrong with this pic­ture. Inter-faith dia­logue doesn’t mean sit­ting only with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the faiths that you’re com­fort­able with; it means sit­ting togeth­er with peo­ple of all faiths, even the ones you don’t agree with, or in this case, you can’t even tol­er­ate. Only then can the process of real reli­gious co-exis­tence begin. Let’s be hon­est, if you can’t sit with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Ahmadiyya com­mu­ni­ty in a room where ‘inter-faith dia­logue’ is tak­ing place, how do you then expect soci­ety to grasp the impor­tance of inter-faith tol­er­ance?

Ask your­self Maulana: shouldn’t the aggriev­ed par­ty have a say in the whole dia­logue process? What right do you have to decide for any com­mu­ni­ty with­out giv­ing them a voice and then con­tin­u­ing in your fail­ure to pro­tect that com­mu­ni­ty?

I am sor­ry Maulana, but the prob­lem is much graver than ‘avert­ing clash between Sikhs and Hin­dus’ as you claimed in your arti­cle. Minor­i­ty faiths, par­tic­u­lar­ly of the Ahmadiyya com­mu­ni­ty, the Shia Haz­ara com­mu­ni­ty, Sikhs, Hin­dus and Chris­tians are being tar­get­ed fre­quent­ly. Clear­ly this mod­el of ‘inter-faith dia­logue’ is not work­ing. It seems that any inter-faith con­fer­ence with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all faiths is noth­ing but a gath­er­ing to enjoy free food and talk end­less­ly about an issue that is not going to improve until sin­cere efforts are made in this regard.