Reading · Stop The Persecution

Written by Jibran Raja, our Religious Freedom Correspondent

On 26th April 1984, Pakistan’s military dictator Zia-ul-Haq brought Ordinance XX into force: a draconian amendment to Pakistan’s penal code that, for the first time, criminalised the free expression of religious beliefs for the nation’s Ahmadi Muslims. Coming ten years after Pakistan’s second amendment to the constitution, which officially labelled Ahmadi Muslims as being not Muslims, the ordinance went a dramatic step further by specifying penalties such as three years of imprisonment and a fine for any Ahmadi who “poses himself as a Muslim” (such as through the Islamic call to prayer, preaching or even calling one’s faith Islam (Section 298 B-C of the Pakistan Penal Code).

Such laws are extraordinary in Pakistan’s legal history, in the sense that they single out the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as a religious minority deserving of punishment. This has had significant detrimental effects on freedom of religion over the last forty two years.

Why Ordinance XX Is So Dangerous: Broad Wording, Harsh Consequences

Since the promulgation of the Ordinance, over 275 Pakistani Ahmadi Muslims have been killed for their faith, and there has been a widespread desecration of Ahmadi Muslim graves and mosques, including more than 7 desecrations of mosques in 2025 alone. Often these have been a direct result of Ordinance XX and its loosely defined offence of illegal blasphemous actions being those that ’outrages the religious feelings of Muslims’ in ‘any manner’ (Pakistan Penal Code 298-C). This has provided credence to a wide array of actions to harass, persecute and even kill Ahmadi Muslims.

On the one hand, the legal cards being unjustly stacked against Ahmadis through Ordinance XX has resulted in police forces either desecrating or sealing Ahmadi mosques, even without any legal order, such as in February 2025, when the Bait-ul-Nasir Mosque in Karachi was sealed by the police without legal justification after the extremist mob outside protested against Ahmadi Muslims being able to pray inside the mosque. Shockingly, rather than the mob that initiated disorder being penalised, it was those who were privately and peacefully practicing their faith who faced the ire of law enforcement. At other times, the police have even gone against explicit legal or Supreme Court rulings, such on the 27th–28th February 2025, when police desecrated a 120 year old Ahmadi Muslim mosque in Gujranwala. These examples highlight how the wide scoping legal persecution of Ahmadi Muslims outlined in Ordinance XX is and how it has contributed to an entrenched societal hate, providing little incentive for police to stay within the confines of the law, and undermining the ability of the legal architecture to constrain police activity that is free from clerical duress.

On the other hand, the statute has also emboldened extremist groups to carry out cold-blooded murders of Ahmadi Muslims. For instance on 18 April 2025, Mr Laeeq Ahmad Cheema was tragically killed by a mob of Tehrik-e-Labbaik (TLP) extremists in Karachi. This was part of a series of attacks carried out by the TLP, emboldened by Pakistani law, that were heinous crimes against a minority whose very existence has been deemed criminal. Indeed, the significance of Ordinance XX in this emboldenment was no clearer than the 2024 Mubarak Sani case, where an Ahmadi Muslim was unlawfully charged for distributing religious literature, but where the Supreme Court Justice Qazi Faez Isa ruled that Mubarak Sani had not broken the law. Mass protests organised by the TLP, including calls for a bounty on the Chief Justice, eventually forced a revision of the original ruling including the removal of the paragraph which stated that Ahmadi Muslims “have the right to practice their religion” in private (Dawn News). This is just one of many cases of how Ordinance XX has inspired unjust laws to work against freedom of religion in Pakistan with its effects outgrowing even its original draconian form.

Why Ordinance XX Hurts Pakistan Too

The ordinance and its significance in promoting extremism has not gone unnoticed.

The UK Home Office (Country Policy and Information Note: Ahmadis, Pakistan, March 2025) and NGOs have condemned it. Amnesty International has stated that the ordinance ‘violates the right to freedom of expression contained in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) (Amnesty International, 1991, p.9). Not only has it undermined Pakistan’s reputation on freedom of religion, but also it has undermined Pakistan’s own economy and civil society. Whereas before 1974, Ahmadi Muslim were leading contributors to Pakistan (including the nation’s first Foreign Minister and its first Nobel Laureate), since 1984 Pakistan, as a result of Ordinance XX, has criminalised its own talent: an unwelcome development in a nation which Pakistan’s own Institute of Development Economics has highlighted as suffering from brain drain, leading to a productivity loss of $303.4 billion in 2023 alone (Brain Drain in Pakistan: Analyzing Trend, Causes and Consequences, p.128). Ordinance XX, therefore, has been a sorry chapter in the history of Pakistan.

The unjust laws are clearly landing the country with a heavy cost, but it is a cost that they can readily banish at their will, to boost not only their religious freedom but also their economic freedom.

Sources:

When a Law Decides Who You Are Allowed to Be

Comments