A Pakistani-American cardiologist of the unorthodox Ahmadiyya Muslim sect, who practiced at Baltimore’s Franklin Square Hospital Center in the 1990s, was gunned down last week at a hospital he helped found in southeastern Pakistan.
The slaying of Dr. Abdul Mannan Siddiqui, which Ahmadiyya Muslim Community officials are calling religiously motivated, came a day before the slaying of another AMC official in the nearby hometown city of Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari.
“The murder of Dr. Abdul Mannan Siddiqi is a grave tragedy,” Dr. Nasim Rehmatullah, AMC spokesman, said in a press release. “His death was simply due to his being a peace-loving member of the Ahmadiyya community.”
Both slayings followed a televised commemoration of the 1974 passage of the Second Amendment to Pakistan’s Constitution, which declared members of the 119-year-old Islamic splinter group to be non-Muslim, said U.S. AMC spokesman Zaki Kauser.
“In that hourlong program [a local political party spokesman] clearly stated that the killing of Ahmadis is a good deed,” Kauser stated, noting that since 1982, 15 Ahmadiyya Muslim medical doctors and “hundreds” of other Ahmadis have been killed in Pakistan.
Under pain of imprisonment the Pakistani Constitution bars Ahmadiyya Muslims from preaching in public or proclaiming themselves Muslim, prohibits them from leading Muslim prayer calls and even forbids them from using the traditional peace greeting with non-Ahmadis, Kauser said.
“It was decided in [1974] by parliament that, according to their beliefs, [Ahmadis] are not Muslims,” said Nadeem Kiani, Pakistani press attache in Washington, who insisted the matter is passe in Pakistan.
Disavowing knowledge of any punishments stemming from the law, Kiani stated minority rights are protected in Pakistan and assured that the police will soon “come up with a report” on the slayings.
Ahmadiyya Muslims, who claim a moderate mantle within Islam, revere Muhammad but don’t believe him to be a final prophet; hold to a separation of mosque and state; and say that both Israel and the Palestinian people have the right to exist as nations.
The group, whose nonviolent beliefs preclude retaliation, have protested the killings. The AMC claims 15,000 members in the United States, 300 to 400 in the Baltimore area and “millions” in Pakistan.
“He was a man of God,” said Amatul Noor Ahmad, a Clarksville Ahmadi who said her uncle also was murdered in Pakistan, of Siddiqui. “The mullahs have been pushing [for the killing of Ahmadis], and the government is not taking any notice whatsoever.”
