The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

Akber Choudhry’s shameful interview on blasphemy law

Rashid Jahangiri has informed me that Akber Choudhry has responded on Message TV to my questions about his previous programme about Allama Iqbal. I will comment on it in a few days after listening to his response.

Before that, I make comment on his interview on Iqra TV on 19th December about the issue of the blasphemy law in Pakistan. In brief, Akber Choudhry failed even to mention the crucial religious issue at the root of this law and treated it merely as a legal question.

Moreover, it was the two Christian contributors who highlighted the true example of our Holy Prophet in this respect, which Akber Choudhry failed to do. It was a moment of shame for Muslims, that Christians could present Islam more accurately and favourably than the Muslim spokesman did.

Akber Choudhry began by stressing that a blasphemy law had already existed since 1927, brought in by the British, and this law was very effective in preventing abuse against the Holy Prophet. (Note: But Iqbal wrote in his famous statements against Ahmadis that the British are favouring Ahmadis against the interests of the rest of the Muslims!)

He then said that all that President Zia-ul-Haq did was to amend that existing law: by increasing the punishment, and by specifically mentioning abuse of Islam in it. Akber Choudhry made no mention at all of the fact that this new punishment was the death penalty, and that this was introduced because of the Ulama’s insistence that Islam prescribes the death penalty for blasphemy. This is obviously an act of concealment and distortion.

He was justifying this law on the basis that the British introduced it and that it continues in India, but made no mention of any Islamic basis.

The issue that everyone was interested in (as the later calls from viewers showed), whether this punishment has an Islamic basis, was ducked by Akber Choudhry.

He made a ridiculous claim (at 12 minutes) that this law in fact protects religious minorities in Pakistan such as Christians and even Ahmadis from abuse of their religious personalities and hate literature against them! Does Akber Choudhry think people are so ignorant that they don’t know that abusive literature against the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement is widespread in Pakistan? It is utterly blatant falsehood to suggest Ahmadis are protected by the law of blasphemy.

Then Rev. Napoleon John, a clergyman in the UK originally from Pakistan, was interviewed by phone. He ended by saying that he cannot find any support for the behaviour of the supporters of the blasphemy law in the Quran, or any Islamic source. He urged Muslims to pause and think, before applying this law to any person, whether the Prophet Muhammad would have acted in this way. How shameful for Akber Choudhry that a Christian reverend mentions the teachings of Islam, indeed shows them in a good light, while Akber Choudhry is trying to get away from Islam all the time!

Calls were received in the programme from three viewers, all asking whether there was any example in the Holy Prophet’s life of applying such a law. Akber Choudhry replied (at 54 minutes):

“I am not a religious scholar … I will pass on that question.”

The other Christian representative, who was in the studio, Mr Wilson of the British Pakistani Christian Association, then actually gave examples of clemency by the Holy Prophet towards his abusers! Another moment of disgrace for Akber Choudhry.

If Akber Choudhry is not a religious scholar, why is a group of anti-Ahmadiyya people relying on him for religious points? One of them put to me the objection that no person in Islamic history had ever himself claimed to be mujaddid in his own words. When I refuted this, he told me that they had been given that knowledge by Akber Choudhry. It seems he can be a religious scholar or not a religious scholar, depending on expediency.

Akber Choudhry also declared that there is no state-backed persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan. In the summer of 1985, when there was a Khatam-i Nubuwwat conference in London, President Zia-ul-Haq sent a message to be read out, saying that Ahmadiyyat is a cancer in Pakistan which I am determined to eliminate. Isn’t that state-backed spread of hate? There are scores of other examples. In any case, Akber Choudhry has no standing to defend the state of Pakistan; only a representative of the government of Pakistan can do that!

He also said repeatedly that international conventions allow a state to restrict the expression of religion by a community, and therefore the Pakistan government is entitled to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslim “for the purposes of the law” (he stressed). So I presume that Akber Choudhry does not consider Ahmadis as non-Muslim according to the teachings of Islam, but only for the purposes of the law of Pakistan.

On this point there was a further moment of shame and disgrace for Akber Choudhry when Mr Wilson said that Christians like him don’t consider certain groups (e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses) to be Christians, but they don’t ask governments to stop these groups from calling themselves Christians, rather they look to the power of God to bring them to the right path. How shameful for a Muslim, to be taught an Islamic concept by a Christian!

— Zahid Aziz